The Best Discussion-sparking Movies to Watch on Max (HBO Max)
It’s no coincidence that many of the highest-acclaimed movies are also controversial. Serving beyond entertainment, these stories provoke essential social dialogues. As a case in point, here are the best discussion-sparking movies and shows available to stream now.
The best thing about The Rehearsal—Nathan Fielder’s elaborate Russian doll of social experiments and self-examination—is how seamlessly it goes from prank comedy to surrealist horror. The show’s concept of staging situations where real people can practice making an important decision (complete with actors playing all the background characters) pays off in spades. Fielder’s insistence on […]
x1After the only war the Americans have lost, American post-Vietnam war portrayals tend to lean as patriotic revenge fantasies or romanticized disillusionment, but rarely do they portray the people caught in between. HBO’s The Sympathizer is an adaptation of the Pulitzer winning novel of the same name, and while it’s mainly an American production, Park […]
Sometimes thinking about your home state can feel complicated, because while it’s your home, the events and issues and controversies of the state can make people think differently of it. With plenty of controversies but also having the most residents, Texas does have a distinct cultural identity, and Texan native director Richard Linklater explores its […]
City of God: The Fight Rages On is a traditional sequel. It takes place years after the events of the first movie and follows some of the same characters—mainly Rocket, who is starting to doubt his calling as a photographer. “I was selling innocent blood for shit salary,” he says as we see him take […]
Biographical documentaries tend to depict exceptional people– people who are so great that everyone wants to know about them, and people who are so terrible that they serve as a warning. Great Photo, Lovely Life depicts a serial sexual abuser in photojournalist Amanda Mustard’s family, able to get away with nearly all his crimes each […]
“No one lives just one article or one headline of a life. There’s more.” Last Call may be a true-crime docuseries, but it doesn’t pigeonhole itself as such; the advocacy for humanizing LGBTQ+ people is undoubtedly at its helm. The series expands past the context of each crime, giving testimonials and evidence of the […]
Initially, A Revolution on Canvas is about the Nodjoumi family’s quest to retrieve the patriarch’s missing paintings in post-Islamic Revolution Iran. Necessarily, it goes through Nodjoumi’s troubled childhood and shocking life as a resilient revolutionary. But the documentary eventually evolves into a knotty and heartbreaking tale about family, specifically about the sacrifices the partner of […]
If you’re familiar with the upscale Chinese restaurant chain owner, or that Chinese boy in old 60s British films, or with his paintings, Aka Mr. Chow might surprise you because they’re one and the same. Born with two names, Zhou Yinghua and Michael Chow, Mr. Chow is just so cool that telling his life story […]
The particulars of the scandal are enough to shock, enrage, and move anyone, but the directors of BS High also put Johnson in the hot seat and skewer the guy until they wring all ego and delusion out of him. The result is a compelling and terrifying look into a con man’s mind. Johnson alternates […]
Erin Lee Carr, the director of Britney vs Spears, returns with a scoop. Ringleader is not just another pop culture doc, because it features a first-time interview with the young woman at the center of The Bling Ring robberies in Hollywood, Rachel Lee. But this is not the kind of film that tries to pick […]
It’s a near-impossible feat to turn something as tragic and devastating as the Chernobyl disaster into a gripping and enlightening tale, but the HBO miniseries does just that. Through insightful storytelling, affecting performances, and sharp dialogue, Chernobyl the show stuns viewers into awareness and, at its best, galvanizes them into action. It’s a well-crafted five-hour […]
Self-proclaimed scumbag Sam Lipman-Stern opens the series by explaining how long he’s wanted to make a documentary on the telemarketing company Civil Development Group (CDG). What follows is a massive deep dive into how the CDG used lies and a happy-go-lucky/free-for-all work environment to scam everyday people out of money for a non-existent charity. The […]
The bizarre case of Kathleen Peterson’s death, which has yet to be fully resolved to this day, has been the subject of many a media article. The press covered it relentlessly when it all started in 2001, then a critically-acclaimed documentary was released in 2004. This was followed up with a sequel in 2018, and […]
Alexandra, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, has been working as an documentary filmmaker for HBO for more than 20 years now and the theme of her newest work does not surprise. Turning the camera on several Jan Sixers, she asks them about that day, and whether their belief in Trump and the conservatives has changed following […]
It’s a bold move, centering a drama around a creature as docile as a donkey, but EO pulls it off without ever leaning on the crutch of CGI. Instead, the film makes ingenious use of a hundred-year-old film technique: the Kuleshov effect. By splicing the image of the titular donkey’s placid, expressionless face against visual […]
If you’ve ever been puzzled by “Greek life”, this documentary will go some way to demystifying that somewhat baffling phenomenon of American college culture. Bama Rush follows four hopefuls as they “rush” the University of Alabama’s sororities, a TikTok-viral weeklong recruitment process so cutthroat some candidates spend months preparing for it. The documentary digs deep […]
If Katrina Babies seems like a somewhat disjointed account of the myriad responses to Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. government’s horrible, anti-poor response to the disaster, director Edward Buckles Jr. uses this structure with much more intent. For once this is a documentary that feels like citizen reporting and not a sanitized report from experts […]
We Own This City is a six-part miniseries following the ins and outs of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. Hailed by critics as the “spiritual successor to The Wire” (both shows were developed by David Simon), the gritty crime drama works as a smart and gripping exposé not just of the Baltimore […]
x1In the words of the journalist Christo Grozev, Alexei Navalny isn’t just a politician; he’s also an internet personality, reporter, investigator, lawyer, and opposition leader who’s up against one of the biggest regimes in the world. He’s a dangerous man, a top Kremlin target, and the documentary gives us incredible access into the ins and […]
These days, pandemic stories can go either of two ways: horribly or profoundly. The realism may be too much to bear, causing so-called pandemic fatigue, or it can compel you to move in the world in kinder, more self-aware ways. Thankfully, HBO’s overlooked Station Eleven falls under the latter category. Epic, poignant, and lighthearted, the […]
This Japanese animated film employs a gorgeous blend of CGI and traditional animation—as well as intricately orchestrated original songs—to present a plausible simulation of virtual reality where people are truly free to do anything. Belle might not be as careful with its characters and the difficult situations they’re put into “off-screen,” but this is still […]
Survivors are often painted in a brave light; they’re applauded for their resilience and toughness, and in the case of school shootings, many of them are also expected to take up arms and fight the good fight. While this is of course laudable, many survivors are simply trying to get by. Unable to process trauma […]
Most people take for granted that for the longest time, certain sectors of society had no one in their corner on screen, at least until someone bold and brilliant enough dared to meet the world on their own terms. Veneno is a series about the iconic titular trans TV personality, but it’s also a story […]
Featuring real, in-the-moment footage of operations to rescue young queer individuals from the continuing anti-gay purges in the Chechen Republic, Welcome to Chechnya makes for a demanding but essential call to action. There’s a genuine sense of fear that pervades the documentary, not just for those being rescued after being forcibly outed, beaten, and trapped […]
By imagining a plausible world in which World War II is avoided when an American populist president cozies up to Hitler, The Plot Against America becomes an effective allegory for all the ways well-meaning citizens gradually allow fascists to take power. Every perspective espoused by the Levins—a Jewish family grappling with the new president’s endorsement […]
If all live-action superhero media stopped here, it would’ve been a triumphant conclusion. Carving its own path from the subversive Alan Moore classic and still so much gutsier than most superhero films and TV shows, Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen miniseries continues interrogating the idea of powerful masked vigilantes to explore institutionalized racism, America’s history of anti-Black […]
While today’s moviegoers would likely pick Black Swan as the ballet film of choice, there is one film classic that brings the title of the best ballet film in contention. That is The Red Shoes. It first divided critics of film and ballet alike, but as time went by, the spectacular drama from Michael Powell […]
When history shoves you in the corner and current generations start to forget their roots, it makes sense to take up an urgent if frantic tone. That’s what the showrunners of Equal have done here. Scenes are packed with busy animation, star-studded reenactments, and paragraphs of history lessons (sometimes all at once), so much so […]
Though the drag scene is alive and well today, Paris is Burning is an important reminder that it didn’t always used to be that way. Over the course of seven years, Director Jennie Livingston leads us underneath the crime-ridden streets of 80s New York, where a glittery drag subculture is flourishing, despite all odds. Leading […]
There are moments in our childhood that we deeply regret, even if we didn’t know better, even if innocence can excuse us, and even if we weren’t the ones primarily responsible for the mistake. The memory of it can be haunting, but none has been as devastating as the memory depicted in Louis Malle’s semi-autobiographical […]
The prospect of death puts everything into perspective, but Cléo from 5 to 7 crafted a totally new one altogether. As it says in the title, the titular singer wanders the French capital in real time, with an ominous tarot card reading turning Cléo’s world into black and white, shifting the mood even as she […]
In Fatih Akin’s In the Fade, Katja is seeking justice after the killings of her Turkish husband and their young son in a terrorist bomb attack. Diane Kruger in the role of Katja delivers a powerful and rather grueling performance, for which she was awarded Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival. Her grief is vivid […]
While the mixed reception of its near-faithful American remake Vanilla Sky might make some viewers pause, there’s an intuitive brilliance in the Spanish original Open Your Eyes that isn’t easy to translate. Sure, the apparent differences help– it’s shorter and less complicated, and Cesar’s face turns more grotesque than David’s does. But what’s startling about […]
This post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure might have escaped the radar of most Ghibli fans, but that’s mostly because it isn’t a Studio Ghibli film. Shocker, I know. But that’s the reason why Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind deserves more love. In its manga form, Nausicaä proved that Hayao Miyazaki was capable of the nuanced, […]
Watching Carol is like reading a really interesting book while relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. It is one of those movies that you probably heard about during its Oscar run, and have since delayed actually viewing it. Well now that it is on Netflix and other streaming services you have no excuse! It’s refreshingly unique, […]
In this film-within-a-film, we and a fictional version of actress Maggie Cheung are brought through the disorienting experience of French filmmaking. The film’s washed-up director wants to remake the classic silent film Les Vampires to revive his career. But as with all plans, everything inevitably goes wrong. On top of depicting the regular chaos of […]
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s trilogy reflects both the colors and the values of the French republic: liberté, égalité, fraternité. In Trois couleurs : Blanc (Three Colors: White), Kieślowski explores not only the theme of equality, but also the ramifications of defining and “achieving” equality as a European ideal. After failing to consummate their marriage, Dominique (the ever-bewitching […]
After finishing his contract with Shochiku, Yasujirō Ozu shifted gears with Floating Weeds, an adaptation of one of his previous black-and-white silent films. There are a few differences. It has sound and color, it’s set after World War II, and Ozu works with a new team, including actual kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjirō II. With these […]
When Castro took over Cuba in the 1950s, Havana’s nightlife shifted as clubs and casinos were closed down, leading to certain traditional step-based genres like son, bolero, and danzón to decline. A few decades later, prominent American musician Ry Cooder travelled to Cuba with his friend documentarian Wim Wenders, to pay homage to traditional Cuban […]
See, usually, when American violence in media is critiqued, it’s usually through analytic studies or overly exaggerated lectures stirring moral panic. Instead of doing this, however, auteur Michael Haneke decided to surpass the crime genre, playing with the form and emotions in Funny Games. It’s terrifying, not because it immediately delves into the violence, but […]
Long before his battles with King Kong, this sci-fi classic set the foundations of what was to become the world’s longest running film franchise. It’s an interesting rewatch, decades later. That’s not because the monster in the title is huge and awesome, though it certainly helped when it finally emerged from the water. No, what […]
With the Hays code, the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel had to be changed to depict Mildred Pierce in a less sympathetic light. More than half a century later, Todd Haynes teamed up with HBO to pick up the book and adapt it once again. Kate Winslet may not have the stern determination […]
Given the name, Revanche seemed to be a revenge thriller, and to a certain degree, that’s correct, but the way writer-director Götz Spielmann frames the plot makes it feel much more like a naturalistic character study of the way love and violence walks hand-in-hand, leading to a tragedy that shifts its thrill each time ex-con […]
Activism is never easy, especially when there is scant information available and when public opinion is set against you. The Normal Heart captures the struggle for gay men during the AIDS crisis, and director Ryan Murphy infuses Larry Kramer’s original play with the melodramatic tendencies Murphy has, but for a cause such as this, an […]
A mother and her two children move from Colombia to Queens, New York to join the father. Once there, he abandons them and moves to Miami. With no family to fall back on, barely speaking English, an inexistent social welfare system and two little kids who require care; the mother quickly runs out of options. […]
When depicting a person known best for an advocacy, you have to be accurate to their story, but it’s rare to see a biopic match the ideas of that advocacy in its direction. It’s because of this that the HBO film Temple Grandin is great. While made for TV, it’s not a by-the-numbers biopic that […]