The Best Movies and Shows on Max You Haven't Seen Yet (Updated Oct. 15)

My official Max Streaming Guide!

For all Warner Bros. Discovery’s attempts to shoot themselves in the foot — axing finished movies, removing beloved properties from their library, selling off several others to Netflix — somehow, it remains pretty clear what the Max brand stands for. Even the most moderately pop culture literate people can identify Max as the home of prestige HBO television shows, and a bunch of old classic movies.

That’s an identity that Amazon, Apple or Hulu would kill for. If Netflix is the everything network, at least Max is the something network, and that’s why I think it will continue to survive much longer than its current financial dire straits would suggest.

That said, the one thing Max certainly does not have going for it is a strong UX (nerd speak for “user experience”). For a streamer that prides itself on curated content, the app and desktop player do a terrible job of guiding you through the endless scroll-wheels toward movies or shows you may want to watch. If you aren’t going there to look up a specific title, I think you’d have a very hard time just popping on and discovering something new.

That’s where my premium streaming guides come in! Utilizing all of the 1000+ movie suggestions I’ve made over the past six years in my Friday edition of the newsletter, I’ve hand-picked the best of the best on each platform (updated on a rolling basis…here is my last Max guide from July)

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. Let’s get into it!

Hidden Gems