The 50 Best Movies on HBO Max, Updated for October 2025

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STARS: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard
RATING: PG-13

Does the top fall, or does it keep spinning at the end of Inception? Surely another watch will help you build your case to prove your theory. Or maybe you’ll come over to my side: it doesn’t even matter. For all the grief Christopher Nolan gets as a “cold” emotional filmmaker, the ending is full of the reconciliation and catharsis that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb claims we yearn for. Maybe that’s all that matters. Maybe it’s all that ever has.

Watch Inception on HBO Max

DIRECTORS: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
STARS: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring
RATING: Not Rated

Fan of Black Swan? You owe it to yourself to watch its spiritual antecedent, Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. This dancing drama charts the internal struggle inside a ballerina torn between her artistic and personal desires. The Technicolor bravura of the performances dates the film squarely in the classical era, but the thematic content still resonates in a contemporary context.

Watch The Red Shoes on HBO Max

DIRECTOR:: James Wan
STARS: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins
RATED: PG-13

There’s a growing terror that James Wan methodically unfurls in Insidious, a worthy spawn of The Exorcist as a possessed child in spooky domestic environs wreaks terror on a family. It’s quite chilling as two parents learn they must protect their comatose child from being pulled into a demonic realm called “The Further.” The climactic scene in which they must take charge of the situation to rescue their son and put an end to their paranormal haunting is bone-chilling in its sparse silence.

Watch Insidious on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Ken Kwapis
STARS: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Bradley Cooper
RATING: PG-13

Need that rom-com fix? The starry omnibus He’s Just Not That Into You is the perfect way to get your fill. The film is an entertaining riff on a number of familiar plotlines and stock characters within the genre – the cheater! the desperate single! the jaded cynic! the couple that can’t commit! – with just enough fresh insight and heart to make it worth a watch.

Watch He’s Just Not That Into You on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Raoul Peck
STARS: James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson
RATING: PG-13

Whether you need a primer on iconic American author James Baldwin or simply want to see his words vividly imagined for the screen, I Am Not Your Negro is the movie for you. Director Raoul Peck, through both archival footage and new narration by Samuel L. Jackson, makes Baldwin’s writing leap off the page and into our soul. The portrait that emerges is a thinker on race and the American psyche molded by his own time but built to speak with searing relevancy to ours.

Watch I Am Not Your Negro on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Stoller
STARS: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne
RATING: R

The sequel to Neighbors has absolutely no business being this funny, but it absolutely RIPS. Sorority Rising restages a lot of the original film’s conflict of adjoining properties between a family and a raucous college crew, only gender-swapped. But the real X-factor of this follow-up is how it wields Zac Efron’s Teddy Sanders from the first film as a frat star completely lost at sea as his brothers move on without him. It’s surprisingly sweet to watch him bop around the two houses in search of anything to provide him a sense of grounding and purpose in the absence of the fraternity that allowed him to be such a rockstar.

Watch Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
STARS: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon
RATING: R

Anne Hathaway made waves when she announced Gone Girl was one of her favorite romcoms. But honestly, without spoiling, where’s the lie? This acrid breakdown of a marriage saved by mutual recognition of each other’s psychopathy is just the kind of sick laugh that one could expect from Fight Club director David Fincher. Even if you know the big twist, this thriller about games couples play never gets old.

Watch Gone Girl on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
CAST: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow
RATED: R

“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for,” says Ernest Hemingway by way of Morgan Freeman’s weary detectives William Somerset at the end of Se7en. “I agree with the second part.” Perhaps you’ll feel similarly after ingesting David Fincher’s breakout film as two officers hunt down a killer staging grisly murders patterned after the seven deadly sins. As is often the case in stories such as this, their pursuit leads them to identify and confront the monster within.

Watch Se7en on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: M. Night Shyamalan
STARS: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Colette
RATING: PG-13

You may know the famous line from The Sixth Sense: “I see dead people.” You may even know the shocking twist at the end (it’s been over two decades, the moratorium on spoilers is over by now). But don’t let the enormous cultural legacy of M. Night Shyamalan’s breakout horror hit cloud the movie itself, which holds up as a tremendous work of suspense anchored in achingly vulnerable performances by Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment.

Watch The Sixth Sense on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Costa-Gavras
STARS: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas
RATING: PG

Political thrillers rarely manage to capture the raw rage of the people quite like Costa-Gavras does in Z. This fictionalization of the fallout from a Greek politician’s assassination is boiling over with a scaldingly potent fury. Expect an experience full of suspense and void of any rosy-eyed notions of false comfort.

Watch Z on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Gary Ross
STARS: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth
RATING: PG-13

The Hunger Games author Jennifer Collins claims she originated the idea for her series while toggling between reality TV shows and footage of the Iraq War on cable news. Her unique understanding of the fusion between spectacle and violence gives the film’s relevance beyond merely being another fad YA adaptation or the vessel that officially launched Jennifer Lawrence into superstardom. This is a blockbuster with surprising brain and brawn.

Watch The Hunger Games on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
STARS: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann
RATING: R

Don’t let the name fool you — Judd Apatow’s Funny People is full of jokes because it’s set amongst comedians, but it’s not much of a comedy. This tale of Adam Sandler’s aging movie star George Simmons and his post-cancer second lease on life plumbs the depths of regret and longing with a real inquisitiveness. Apatow channels The Great Gatsby here more than he does a ribald flick like The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Watch Funny People on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer
STARS: Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale, Edith Bouvier Beale
RATING: PG

And you thought your family was weird? Grey Gardens reigns as the champion of cinematic kookiness as a group of documentarians plunges us into the world of two distant cousins of Jackie O. Truth is truly stranger than fiction when it comes to dysfunction between mother and daughter Little and Big Edie, recluses on the slippery slope of isolation to outright entropy.

Watch Grey Gardens on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Jan de Bont
STARS: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock
RATING: PG-13

The setup is simple: keep a bus going above 50 miles per hour, or it blows up. As it turns out, you don’t need much more than that to create two hours of nerve-wracking, pulse-pounding action! Speed stands out in an age of over-complicated blockbusters for getting us on board with the mission of Keanu Reeves’ Jack Traven from the jump and keeping us on the edge of our seats all the way throughout.

Watch Speed on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
STARS: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver
RATING: PG-13

As far as genre mashups go, horror and comedy feel like they’d mix as well as oil and water. But somehow Sam Raimi makes it work in Drag Me to Hell, a supernatural scare-fest that follows the fallout from a loan officer who gets cursed by the gypsy whose mortgage extension she denies. Raimi renders her satanic torments with such unrelenting intensity that it’s entirely possible you won’t know whether to laugh or scream at any given moment.

Watch Drag Me to Hell on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Cory Finley
STARS: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano
RATING: TV-MA

Move over, All the President’s Men, there’s a new shoe leather investigative journalism movie in town. The less you know about Bad Education before you go in, the better. Prepare yourself to be shocked by the corruption that a simple high school journalism story can reveal — and the hilarious extent to which people will go to avoid accountability for what she uncovers.

Watch Bad Education on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman
STARS: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot
RATING: Not Rated

A Swedish movie best known for a pale-faced Grim Reaper playing chess against a soul he hopes to take might not sound like the most pleasant viewing experience. Yet Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal does not get nearly enough credit for having a real funny bone. The humor is quite dark, of course, given that it’s a film about God and death. But just because something plumbs the depths of some of the most complex ontological questions does not mean it’s an entirely heady, enjoyable experience!

Watch The Seventh Seal on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: McG
STARS: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy
RATING: PG-13

Tom Hardy says he’ll never do another rom-com after This Means War, but frankly, he should reconsider. He might have been miserable, but it doesn’t show on screen as Hardy’s Tuck vies against his friend and fellow CIA agent FDR (Chris Pine) for the heart of Reese Witherspoon’s Lauren. It’s a fun action movie paired with the inexhaustible “Reese Witherspoon can’t decide between two guys” romantic plot – what’s not to love in this gloriously goofy movie?

Watch This Means War on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón
STARS: Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson
RATING: PG

You can make an argument for just about any Harry Potter movie as the best, but it’s pretty hard to dispute that Prisoner of Azkaban is the most important of them all. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s infusion of dark ambiance and devilish humor helped the series graduate from kiddie literature into the stuff of serious adult drama. Rather than relegate it forever to the dustbin of fantasy, he grounded it in the realities of teenage anxieties and growing pangs. It’s got a wicked sense of style and fun that set the tone for all that was to come from the franchise on-screen.

Watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Hiyao Miyazaki
STARS: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki
RATING: PG

Pixar isn’t the only animation house capable of inspiring pathos with their imagination. HBO Max bought the streaming rights for the movies of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, which had all been previously unavailable online. If you don’t know where to start taking advantage of this opportunity, try Spirited Away. The story of a young girl, Chirono, who must rescue her parents from a world of spirits recalls the childhood classics that convinced us we could do anything.

Watch Spirited Away on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: D.A. Pennebaker
STARS: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding
RATING: Not Rated

D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop might be the closest thing to a time machine you can get from home. Press play to be transported back to the Summer of Love and experience the music festival that brought together Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and more. The real highlight, though, is Otis Redding’s sublime rendering of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” He’s shot in silhouette against the glare of the blinding spotlight, and the effect is nothing short of transcendent.

Watch Monterey Pop on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Joel Zwick
STARS: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine
RATING: PG

There may never be another word-of-mouth cultural sensation like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a film that rose from a modest limited release to a box office sensation with months of staying power. It’s the perfect movie to stop and watch anytime it plays on TV because you’re never more than a minute away from a really solid joke or gag. But it’s also great to watch straight-through on streaming to connect with the heart and soul of Nia Vardalos’ script. This is an unforgettable story about how we reconcile the people and culture who made us with the person we want to become when those two things appear to be in conflict.

Watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
STARS: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron
RATING: R

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who respect Ridley Scott’s return to the storied Alien franchise … and those who are wrong. Prometheus returns the series to its body horror roots, weaving another terrifying yarn about how extraterrestrial spores slowly infect and demolish a flight crew in the outer reaches of space. If that’s not enough, the film also features one of Michael Fassbender’s best turns as David, the ship’s icy and calculating android butler.

Watch Prometheus on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
STARS: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
RATING: R

We endured any number of shameless rip-offs of The Hangover in the wake of its unlikely success, but those (or the two brutal sequels) don’t diminish the shine of the genuine article. The hilarity of this reverse odyssey through a bachelor party’s drunken night of shame in Las Vegas still hits hard, even if you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve seen it on cable. The concept of having to piece together a night you blacked out from is genius stuff, and the comedic commitment from The Wolfpack sells it brilliantly.

Watch The Hangover on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Yasujiro Ozu
STARS: Chishû Ryû, Chieko Higashiyama, Sô Yamamura
RATING: Not Rated

“There is only one place for the camera,” said Martin Scorsese. “That’s the right place.” It’s astonishing to watch Yasuiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story and realize the camera is in the right place for the entirety of the film, perfectly calibrating its physical and emotional distance from the characters. This wistful story of two grandparents visiting their family will both warm and break your heart.

Watch Tokyo Story on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz
STARS: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid
RATING: PG

Whether it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship or you’re asking Sam to play it again, Casablanca always satisfies. This is the Hollywood studio apparatus working at its finest. From the iconic quotes to the passionate performances, this is pure excellence.

Watch Casablanca on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Aaron Schimberg
STARS: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson
RATING: R

Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man is the perfect response to any ludicrous comments that label an actor’s performance “brave” when they try to undermine their movie star good looks. The film starts with a fantastical premise: what if Sebastian Stan’s Edward, a struggling New York actor with neurofibromatosis, could take an experimental serum that cleared his facial disfigurement? From there, it becomes a fascinating, multilayered, and challenging exploration of constructs our true identity and self. While society might try to separate outer and inner beauty, Schimberg refuses to indulge polite clichés as his darkly comedic character study probes the depths of how deeply people can internalize the perceptions of their appearance. There are far too many polemics about representation gussied up as “conversation starters” these days, but A Different Man is the rare movie worthy of starting a serious and meaningful dialogue.

Watch A Different Man on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Tony Gilroy
STARS: Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti
RATING: PG-13

Fans of twisting, turning stories need look no further than Duplicity for their next movie night. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen sizzle as two amorous spies who go to work for corporate rivals in the hopes of pulling a long con. But they get more than they bargained for when they realize that everyone has something to hide — including each other. Filmmaker Tony Gilroy’s electric filmmaking will keep you on your toes until the credits roll.

Watch Duplicity on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho
STARS: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong
RATING: R

“We all live in the same country,” director Bong Joon-ho once said, “called capitalism.” Parasite beat the odds and became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture in large part because its commentary about class mobility transcends national borders. Everyone recognizes themselves in this thrilling portrait of families all trying to triangulate themselves in a social hierarchy so they can convince themselves they aren’t at the bottom. Director Bong’s airtight film is a precision machine like no other, providing a thrilling ride that culminates in a sobering diagnosis for a global ailment.

Watch Parasite on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Spike Lee
STARS: David Byrne
RATING: TV-14

I am not ashamed to admit that I got up and danced around my room when I watched Spike Lee’s stunningly filmed version of the Broadway show David Byrne’s American Utopia. The Talking Heads music would be great all on its own, sure, but Byrne weaves into a hopeful story that does not make choosing optimism seem naive. Try to stay in your seat, I dare you.

Watch David Byrne's American Utopia on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: François Truffaut
STARS: Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger
RATING: Not Rated

If you’re just trying to hit the movies you’d watch an intro film class, the Truffaut film to watch is The 400 Blows. But if you want to dig a little deeper into one of the titans of the French New Wave, the move has to be Shoot the Piano Player, his irreverent mashup of the comedy and gangster flick. This hilarious, inventive movie ought to dispel any mistaken notions that watching old foreign films is some somber chore.

Watch Shoot the Piano Player on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Mel Stuart
STARS: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum
RATING: G

With all due respect to Timothée Chalamet (and much less to Johnny Depp), Gene Wilder is the only true Willy Wonka. There’s something about the way he brings a sense of mischief and menace to the mysterious candy man looking to offload his factory to the next generation. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory plays out as something like a child’s fantasy, and even a half-century later, it’s never lost that dream-like quality.

Watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: David O. Russell
STARS: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro
RATING: R

I cannot deny that there is something a little too simplistic, and borderline problematic, about the way Silver Linings Playbook boils down to “love can overcome mental illness.” Yet I also cannot deny the way my heart swoons at this tender romance … nor the way the corners of my mouth curl into a grand smile. The aching, vulnerable performances of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as two newly single people connecting because of and through their brokenness make David O. Russell’s deeply personal film shine like gold.

Watch Silver Linings Playbook on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Peter Jackson
STARS: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen
RATING: PG-13

“Epic” only scratches the surface of Peter Jackson’s work bringing The Lord of the Rings to life on screen. Cinema at this scale and scope never ceases to amaze. The Fellowship of the Ring, the series’ kickoff, achieves a remarkable balance between easing us into the world of Middle Earth, introducing the characters and providing a taste of the heavily grounded fantasy action that would follow.

Watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Alexander Payne
STARS: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Robert Forster
RATING: R

The new movie Jay Kelly is built around the idea that George Clooney is such a big star that no one takes him seriously as an actor or recognizes that he’s capable of great emotional depth. Whoever might hold such a notion has clearly never seen The Descendants, a film where he’s all raw nerves as a father trying to hold his family together when his wife slips into a coma. Against a Hawaiian backdrop that ironically taunts him with its idyllic climate, he’s forced to reckon with the revelation that things were never as perfect as he once thought.

Watch The Descendants on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: James Wong
STARS: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Tony Todd
RATING: R

The Final Destination formula is simple: a group of people all die in a freak accident, which is revealed to be a dream. But the dreamer quickly learns that they’ve experienced a premonition of real deaths to come, which will all occur in the order of the imagined fantasy. Death has never been so delightful to watch unfold as it is in this series, and the concept has proven durable enough to sustain across two decades now.

Watch Final Destination on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Joel Coen
STARS: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi
RATING: R

How many movies can say they inspired their own religion? One need not convert to “Dudeism” to enjoy all the charms of The Big Lebowski, though! This Coen Brothers classic is an open book to engage with across any number of levels, be it as a stoner flick, a modern gumshoe mystery, or notes on the existential nature of being. Like Jeff Bridges’ iconic The Dude, the film contains many multitudes.

Watch The Big Lebowski on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Nancy Meyers
STARS: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin
RATING: R

Nancy Meyers is perhaps best known for providing easygoing cinematic comfort food. You get all of that in It’s Complicated and more — as it turns out, she’s got a real knack for bawdy, brassy comedy. As Meryl Streep’s cozy divorcee weighs her romantic options between her good-natured architect (Steve Martin) and her remarried ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), Meyers finds a way to make a raunchy sex romp go down with the silky smoothness of a chocolate croissant.

Watch It's Complicated on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Ryan Coogler
STARS: Michael B. Jordan, Winnie Mosuku, Hailee Steinfeld
RATING: R

Two Michael B. Jordan performances for the price of one is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pleasures of Sinners. Ryan Coogler’s lavish period vampire horror film is a treasure trove of spectacle. It delivers on all the action and drama promised by a showdown at a makeshift juke joint in the American South, but it also engages cerebrally with how race and class forge unlikely alliances between groups throughout time. It’s an opus like few others to ever exist.

Watch Sinners on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: David Lynch
STARS: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart
RATING: Not Rated

Want to get into the surrealistic stylings of David Lynch but find Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr. too impenetrable? Try his feature debut Eraserhead, a perfect mixture of artful and accessible. You don’t need to understand every image for it’s overwhelming terror about being a new parent to permeate your soul. Lynch’s images might be abstract, but their impact is chillingly real.

Watch Eraserhead on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Glazer
STARS: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller
RATING: PG-13

This is not your average WWII or Holocaust movie. The Zone of Interest isn’t about what you see — it’s about what you don’t. Jonathan Glazer’s masterful depiction of Auschwitz as seen from the perspective of the perpetrators forces us to conjure a vision of horror from nothing but staccato bursts of sound coming from inside. Our imagination can take us to some terrifying places, revealing the depravity of humanity as it remains still in the face of suffering.

Watch The Zone of Interest on HBO Max

DIRECTORS: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
STARS: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds
RATING: G

No movie about the movies captures the magic of the medium quite like Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain. This Technicolor musical captures all of Hollywood’s anxieties as it transitioned from silent films to talkies right when the ascendancy of television proved an existential threat to movies. One glimpse of Kelly’s exuberant dancing is all it takes to have your faith renewed in the enduring viability of cinema.

Watch Singin' in the Rain on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele
STARS: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford
RATING: R

How many movies can say they added an entire term to the popular lexicon? Say someone’s in the “sunken place” and they’ll instantly have a complex and frightening web of associations thanks to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. (As I once pointed out in my “Smells Like ‘10s Spirit” column, it’s perhaps the best embodiment of how memes remade moviegoing culture in the last decade.) The right movie for the right time, his “social thriller” provided America the release valve for all the tensions boiling in the turnover from Obama to Trump.

Watch Get Out on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig
STARS: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera
RATING: PG-13

Even apart from the “Barbenheimer” hype, Barbie still hits. It’s an intelligent, entertaining blockbuster that provides a sugar rush of nostalgia followed by a hearty helping of vegetables in the form of incisive cultural commentary. Filmmaker Greta Gerwig once again flips familiar narratives and figures on their head to explore what they say about our society — and, by extension, us. Margot Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie” and Ryan Gosling’s (just) Ken are ingenious vehicles to explore the traps of pre-set gender roles and the necessity of claiming one’s own identity and humanity.

Watch Barbie on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve
STARS: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac
RATING: PG-13

Dessert POWER! It feels like a shame to watch Denis Villeneuve’s fantasy epic Dune in any environment other than a giant cinema, but the grandeur of his vision is sure to translate on a screen of any size. This is classical hero’s journey monomyth as Timothée Chalamet’s young Paul Atreides comes to realize the full weight of his messianic potential. This is the rare work of cinema that truly aspires to inspire shock, awe, and wonder – and Villeneuve’s engrossing universe commands that respect.

Watch Dune on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STARS: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
RATING: PG-13

There are two distinct periods in cinematic adaptations of comic books. There’s the period before The Dark Knight, when people didn’t know it was possible to scale such an imposing height, and the period after The Dark Knight, when people didn’t know it would be so hard to reach such a height again. Anchored in Heath Ledger’s harrowing incarnation of terroristic mayhem as the Joker, The Dark Knight is the definitive piece of post-9/11 cinema. In the Trojan horse or superhero IP, Christopher Nolan stages a society-wide tussle over the limitations of lawfulness on the grandest canvas he could find. We’re still feeling the reverberations today.

Watch The Dark Knight on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Demme
STARS: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine
RATING: R

That Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for best leading actor despite only appearing in 16 minutes of The Silence of the Lambs speaks to just how powerful his portrayal of psychopathic Hannibal Lecter really is. This exquisitely executed thriller plays like a cat-and-mouse game between Dr. Lecter and Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling as she tries to hunt down another serial killer with his help. Who’s the predator and who’s the prey in any given situation can shift in an instant, which is part of what makes the film so exciting to watch unfold.

Watch The Silence of the Lambs on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STARS: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard
RATING: PG-13

Does the top fall, or does it keep spinning at the end of Inception? Surely another watch will help you build your case to prove your theory. Or maybe you’ll come over to my side: it doesn’t even matter. For all the grief Christopher Nolan gets as a “cold” emotional filmmaker, the ending is full of the reconciliation and catharsis that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb claims we yearn for. Maybe that’s all that matters. Maybe it’s all that ever has.

Watch Inception on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-Wai
STARS: Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Maggie Cheung
RATING: PG

Wong Kar-Wai’s tale of doomed would-be lovers in 1960s Hong Kong may well be a perfect movie. The sumptuous In the Mood for Love drips with longing as two neighbors who realize their spouses are cheating on them struggle to sublimate their own feelings for one another. With each subsequent needle drop of the plucky violin tune “Yumeji’s Theme,” Wong dials up the passion and the devastation.

Watch In The Mood For Love on HBO Max

DIRECTOR: Charlie Chaplin
STARS: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard
RATING: G

Cinema may never produce a filmmaker who understands the connection between form and content like Charlie Chaplin. His final official outing as his iconic Little Tramp character, Modern Times, is the very definition of a classic. This silent comedy of Depression-era woes was timely for its release, but it endures because it’s a timeless satire of industrial society. This winning movie warms the heart as it places fire in the belly to strive for a world where all humans and their work have dignity.

Watch Modern Times on HBO Max