Z: Please don’t do it. He wasn’t that bad.

She: He sassed me, and now he must pay.

Z: Have you no mercy? Have you no sense of decency?

She: The boy needs to learn to not talk back to his mother.

Z: And for this, you’re forcing him to watch The Twilight Saga: New Moon? He’s just a boy!

She: I really can’t think of a much worse punishment. I could take away his Wii for a week, but I don’t think he’d miss it that much. I could cancel his allowance for a month, but he doesn’t buy anything. Or, I could take him to see the gush-fest that is The Twilight Saga: New Moon. I’m pretty sure the boy will never sass me again.

Z: I’m calling Child Protective Services.

She: Forced to endure two hours of Bella and Edward and Jacob pining after each other, constantly on the verge of smooching, and I guarantee that our child will be nothing but respectful from now on.

Z: He is a bit of a caricature when it comes to 10-year-old boys and movie kissing.

She: The slightest hint of romance sends him screaming. I just have to flash him a DVD with Julia Roberts and he’ll do anything I tell him to just to avoid watching.

Z: It’s amazing to me how even though we all love movies, everyone in this family still has some genre of movie that is nothing but torture.

She: If I never see another Pokémon movie in my life, I’ll still forever have Ash Ketchum’s herky-jerky, animated image burned into my retinas. That’s what I call torture.

Z: I kind of liked that movie.

She: That’s because you’re a child. Do you want to come see Twilight with us?

Z: No thanks. While I don’t love the gush, I can still sit through it.

She: True. And your under-the-breath comments have lessened over the years.

Z: That’s what she said.

She: What was that?

Z: Nothing, dearest. I love romantic comedies. They’re very romantical.

She: Cut it out, or I’ll make you go see Saw VI.

Z: Brrrrr. For me, it’s horror. I’m still not sure if I’ve ever seen an entire horror movie, or it’s just that the brief snippets that I have seen have scarred me so badly that I can’t even say the words Hannibal Lecter without flinching slightly.

She: Horror? I can’t imagine you going near a horror movie. You passed out when we saw Cape Fear.

Z: Nooo. Not true. I almost passed out at Cape Fear, and I still think it’s because I ate too much garlic beforehand. And DeNiro was freaky intense.

She: I still don’t know what happens after he poisons the dog.

Z: Ugh. Oh, yeah. But it really was the garlic that made me almost pass out.

She: Come to think of it, I saw a lot of half-movies when Koss was little. I still don’t know why the “First rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club,” why that volleyball was so important in Cast Away, or where the car actually was in Dude, Where’s My Car?

Z: I can’t believe we tried to get Baby Koss to sleep through all those movies.

She: We saw Runaway Bride six times that first year and he was fine.

Z: That’s what she said.

She: What was that?

Z: Yes, dear.

— Share your favorite family movie favorites with She and Z by e-mailing leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.