Max Streaming Guide (July 17)

Here are the best movies and shows to stream on Max!

In terms of the “Streaming Wars,” Max is considered a tier-two platform. This week at the Sun Valley billionaire shin-dig, in the face of a plummeting stock price, Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav (who pretty much everyone already hates for cancelling movies, staging layoffs and losing the NBA) made it clear that he was hoping another content giant would swallow his company whole and put him out of his misery.

But Max still has two things that make it absolutely essential for aspiring cinephile and pop culture junkies like you and me.

First, it’s got HBO. There’s the old classics like “The Sopranos” or “The Wire,” the new blockbusters “Game of Thrones” and “Succession,” and like a dozen more of the best TV shows of all time.

And second, it has Turner Classic Movies. I realize this isn’t quite as sexy as the above, but if you’re really trying to become a movie person, at some point you’re going to have to take the plunge on Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Chinatown, Singin’ In The Rain and all the other titles that stuffy folks like me say are the “best movies of all time.” There’s really no other place to find this catalog of all-timers.

The following streaming guide is meant to go a little bit deeper than these obvious selections. I’m hoping that most of the movies (and the one show) on here are things you haven’t seen, and in a lot of cases haven’t even heard of, so you can discover something new that you love.

As with all these guides, I’m utilizing all of the 1000+ movie suggestions I’ve made over the past six years in my Friday edition of the newsletter, giving you the best of the best.

Much like my Cinephile Bucket List, I’ve broken these down into categories that should help you to browse depending on the vibe you’re looking for on a given night, with blurbs both new and old like a sales pitch to convince you to try out movies you’ve hopefully never seen before.

These guides will be updated regularly on a rolling basis. Next week I’ll have one for Hulu, then Amazon. Unless there is demand for other services, I’ll probably cycle back to Netflix at the start of next month as titles shuffle on and off the platform.

Without further ado, here’s my first Max Streaming Guide!

Hidden Gems