From bleak, sobering dramas like Raging Bull and Drive My Car to ambitious, mind-bending sci-fi epics like Dune and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the best movies on the HBO streaming service Max include some of the all-time greats of cinema history. HBO Max was rebranded as Max, but it’s still filled with all the classics from the Warner Bros. library of films. From the Harry Potter franchise to The Matrix movies to treasured comic book icons like Batman and Superman, the Warner Bros. library is the home to some of the most beloved I.P. ever created.
The expansive and wide-ranging collection of movies on Max has something for everyone. Horror fans can enjoy frightful fan-favorite gems like The Shining and Hereditary. Comedy fans can laugh out loud at the rapid-fire gags of lighthearted classics like Airplane! and darker, more subversive satires like Parasite. Action movie fans can enjoy the explosive set-pieces of cinematic thrill-rides like Casino Royale and The Dark Knight Trilogy. From Goodfellas to The Silence of the Lambs to The Lord of the Rings, the best movies on Max include many of the best movies ever made.
25 Dune (2021)
Decades after David Lynch attempted to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi opus Dune into one overstuffed movie, Denis Villeneuve reimagined the material as a two-parter. The first part, simply titled Dune, was a huge improvement over Lynch’s original adaptation, both critically and commercially. Timothée Chalamet leads the cast of Dune as Paul Atreides, who moves to the desert planet of Arrakis with his family and comes to the shocking realization that he’s the messianic figure destined to save the world. Villeneuve and his Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser immerse audiences in Herbert’s psychedelic world in this nuanced, meditative sci-fi allegory.
24 500 Days Of Summer (2009)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in 500 Days of Summer as a lovelorn greeting card writer and the woman he falls for, a deconstruction of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” stock character. With its nonlinear narrative chronicling a neurotic young man’s recollections of a failed relationship, 500 Days of Summer is essentially a modern-day take on Annie Hall – and one of the few romcoms to effectively recapture that movie’s magic. Critical acclaim and unexpected box office success made 500 Days of Summer a sleeper hit.
23 The Master (2012)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly anticipated follow-up to There Will Be Blood, The Master is equally epic, equally profound, and equally well-crafted. It’s a biting satire of the Church of Scientology led by incredible performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Phoenix plays an aimless, emotionally disturbed war veteran and Hoffman plays the charismatic cult leader who takes advantage of him. The Master is a powerful study of cults and how they work.
22 Ex Machina (2014)
The directorial debut of 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, Ex Machina is a perfect example of character-driven sci-fi, with its dynamic of a reclusive tech mogul, a low-level coder, and the duplicitous android playing them against each other. Oscar Isaac plays the wealthy CEO of a tech company opposite Domhnall Gleeson as the programmer who wins a competition to spend a few days at the boss’s remote mansion. There, he learns that he’s been selected for a Turing test of his boss’s beautiful robot. Ex Machina is a tense, thought-provoking meditation on the dangers of self-aware artificial intelligence.
21 The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022)
Martin McDonagh reunited his In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for another pitch-black comedy in The Banshees of Inisherin. Set in 1923, The Banshees of Inisherin sees Gleeson’s Colm unexpectedly calling off his life-long friendship with Farrell’s Pádraic. Farrell and Gleeson’s unparalleled chemistry carries a simple story about the end of a friendship juxtaposed against the intensifying Irish Civil War. The Banshees of Inisherin was met with universal praise and nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and acting nods for both Farrell and Gleeson as well as Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan.
20 Drive My Car (2021)
Hidetoshi Nishijima stars in Drive My Car as a theater director working on a multilingual production of Uncle Vanya while processing the death of his wife, played by Reika Kirishima. Misaki Watari plays the driver with whom he forms an unexpected bond. Thanks to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s compassionate direction and sharp script, Drive My Car is an enrapturing drama about grief and regret. It won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film and earned a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%.
19 Hereditary (2018)
Ari Aster burst onto the scene with his debut feature, Hereditary, about a grieving mother who dooms her family by performing a séance to contact her late daughter and unwittingly inviting a sinister pagan cult into their home. With an endorsement from none other than Martin Scorsese (via IndieWire), Hereditary is one of the most terrifying horror films in recent memory led by a powerhouse performance by Toni Collette. Hereditary is a deeply disturbing but thematically rewarding horror masterpiece.
18 Casino Royale (2006)
Daniel Craig made his debut in the role of James Bond in Casino Royale, which brought franchise tropes like diabolical villains and globetrotting espionage into the real world. In the hands of director Martin Campbell (who previously reinvented the Bond mythos in GoldenEye), Casino Royale is a refreshingly gritty revamp of the Bond franchise anchored by Craig’s pitch-perfect performance as 007. The action is brutal, the cinematography is stylish and moody, and the baddie played by Mads Mikkelsen is utterly frightening.
17 A Star Is Born (1954, 1976)
Although the original 1937 version and the Bradley Cooper-directed 2018 version are unavailable for streaming on Max, the 1954 and 1976 remakes of A Star is Born are both streaming on the site. In every incarnation, A Star is Born is a touching showbiz romance about the highs and lows of superstardom revolving around a washed-up, self-destructive star who falls for an aspiring artist. Both the 1954 version, starring Judy Garland and James Mason, and the 1976 version, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, are classic Hollywood romances that capture this timeless love story beautifully.
16 Blue Velvet (1986)
Blue Velvet stars Kyle MacLachlan as everyman Jeffrey Beaumont. The movie sees him return to his hometown, find a severed ear in a field, and get drawn into the seedy criminal underworld, where he becomes determined to save a captive sex worker (Isabella Rossellini in a career-best performance). Blue Velvet is David Lynch’s masterpiece, blending the mundane with the macabre; it saved the director’s career after the box office disappointment of Dune. The sadistic pimp Frank Booth, played by a wonderfully maniacal Dennis Hopper, is a truly unforgettable villain.
15 Superman (1978)
Led by Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder’s electric on-screen chemistry as Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Superman was the first modern superhero blockbuster to prove the potential of comic book movies. It took innovative special effects and a perfectly cast Reeve to bring the Man of Steel to the big screen. Even in an oversaturated market in which audiences are inundated with superhero movies, Richard Donner’s original Superman movie still holds up as a faithful adaptation of the time-tested Superman myth.
14 In The Mood For Love (2000)
Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung give heartfelt lead performances in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love as two married people whose respective spouses are having an affair, and who gradually develop romantic feelings for one another. In the Mood for Love is a touching love story about two lonely souls finding a kindred spirit in each other. It’s been hugely influential on the genre, providing particular inspiration for Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.
13 The Shining (1980)
Adapted from Stephen King’s bestseller of the same name, The Shining stars Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, a struggling writer who takes a job as the winter caretaker at a remote, snowbound hotel, where he slowly descends into madness and turns against his long-suffering wife and son. Stanley Kubrick ditched most of the source material besides the premise and the main characters and turned out one of the most chilling and iconic horror movies ever made. Mesmerizing visuals and an ominous score create a deeply unsettling atmosphere throughout the long-but-worth-it runtime of The Shining.
12 No Country For Old Men (2007)
The Coen brothers’ bleak neo-Western gem No Country for Old Men stars Josh Brolin as a hunter who stumbles across a briefcase full of blood money in the desert. Javier Bardem, who won the Oscar for his supporting performance, plays the ruthless hitman determined to get the money back. No Country for Old Men is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller with a chilling villain and subversive storytelling avoiding genre tropes and clichés at every turn. In addition to Bardem’s Oscar, it won three more Academy Awards out of eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for the Coens.
11 The Harry Potter Franchise (2001-2011)
In the Harry Potter movie franchise, which is available on Max in its entirety, Daniel Radcliffe stars as the title character, a boy who learns that he has magical powers and attends a secret boarding school where young wizards and witches hone their craft. With unparalleled critical and commercial success, the Harry Potter movies were a huge cultural sensation that set a high benchmark for every YA fantasy series that followed. From start to finish, the Harry Potter franchise is a spot-on adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s books that brings her magical world to life on-screen with perfect casting and immersive production design.
10 Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the finest film of a career full of fine films, revolves around a working-class family who all con their way into jobs working for a wealthy upper-class family. But when their employers go away and the working-class family infiltrates their house, they discover a dark secret. Parasite is a thrilling, darkly comedic tale of class warfare, tackling universal themes with relatable characters. As its 99% Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest, Parasite was met with near-unanimous acclaim, and it became the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
9 The Matrix (1999)
Keanu Reeves stars in The Matrix as Thomas Anderson, an office drone who learns that his reality is just a computer simulation when Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) bring him into the real world. Mr. Anderson is renamed “Neo” and told that he’s “The One” destined to save humanity from their robotic overlords. With a unique blend of mind-bending cyberpunk and thrilling martial arts action, the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece became a staple of popular culture. The Matrix revolutionized action filmmaking with its genre mashups and new camera techniques like “bullet time.”
8 Raging Bull (1980)
Martin Scorsese scored one of the biggest critical hits of his career with his black-and-white biopic of boxer Jake LaMotta. Raging Bull is a heartbreaking character study of a man who drove away everyone who ever loved him when he started taking out his anger outside the ring. Robert De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his raw, unflinching portrayal of LaMotta. Raging Bull offered a bleak, sobering portrait of a boxer to contrast with Rocky’s romanticized fantasy.
7 Airplane! (1980)
Often named the greatest comedy movie ever made, with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%, Airplane! revolves around an ex-fighter pilot who is called into action when the entire crew of a passenger plane comes down with food poisoning. There are few films that get laughs as big or as frequent as Airplane! does. Long after its spoof targets have been forgotten, from Zero Hour! to the Airport franchise, Airplane! still holds up. It’s full of timeless sight gags and one-liners that never get old.
6 Spirited Away (2001)
Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away tells the story of 10-year-old Chihiro Ogino, whose family is moving to a new neighborhood. Her struggle to adapt to the move is visualized by her entrance into the world of Kami and her quest to save her parents, who have been turned into pigs by a local witch. Spirited Away is a typically beautiful and moving Hayao Miyazaki animation, often described as the director’s magnum opus. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the first hand-drawn and non-English-language film to do so.