19 Best Movies & Shows Released in 2020 On Hbomax (Page 2)

16. The Vow, 2020

This HBO docuseries is about NXIVM, a multi-million dollar personal development coaching company whose leader was arrested for sex and human trafficking, branding his followers, and other serious crimes. New levels of insanity unwrap at every episode in a smart and engaging way: the show follows the progression of the story as it happened and makes you wait for its biggest revelations. It becomes a come-for-something-stay-for-something-else kind of deal, since even without the sex cult angle, the show dissects the manipulation tactics that led many successful people to be part of the organization, and later on to recruit others like them.

17. The Flight Attendant, 2022

Cassie Bowen (Kaley Cuoco) is a hot mess. She’s flirty, flighty, and constantly blackout drunk, so when she wakes up one day to find a dead man next to her, it’s not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that she's responsible for it. But as Cassie uncovers new memories over time, it gets harder and harder to track the truth. Is she a murder suspect or a frame-up victim?

That’s what Cassie sets out to solve, but with the FBI and multiple hitmen on her tail, not to mention bouts of alcoholism and PTSD getting in the way, it’s up to her to figure things out on her own before it’s too late.

To be sure, The Flight Attendant is a well-crafted thriller, with rousing music and noir-like editing adding to the classic whodunnit experience. But it’s also refreshingly not that serious. The performances are big and loud and self-ridicule often drives the characters’ dialogue. What makes The Flight Attendant stand out from its darker counterparts is that it has a sense of humor about itself, which makes it all the more engaging to watch. It's pulpy good fun, and it knows it.

18. Perry Mason, 2023

Set in 1930s Hollywood, a decadent city festering with crime and corruption, Perry Mason is a stylish noir series that fully recalls the crime classics of its era. It has the hallmarks of an old-fashioned mystery, the most prominent of which is the titular detective himself, Perry Mason—a boozy antihero with a heart of rusty gold—but it keeps plenty of secrets up its sleeve, making it fresh and surprising at almost every turn.

Sometimes, it gets ahead of itself and takes on too many plot lines for its own good, but if you can forgive the occasional convolutedness, the show rewards you with shocking twists and rich performances.

19. Weathering with You, 2019, 2020

There is a great deal of disbelief to suspend with this film, arguably the weakest of Japanese animation director Makoto Shinkai’s oeuvre. It follows Hodaka, a broke high school student in Tokyo looking for a job. The story kicks off when he meets Hina, a cheerful girl who lives with her younger brother and has the power to control the weather.

Again, as with all of Shinkai’s work, it’s remarkably beautiful. Rainfall, skies, and cityscapes are eye candy here, probably more than in any piece of animation ever. But this has every high school romance trope elevated to an extreme level, like Shinkai’s best known film Your Name but on steroids—a teenage boy and cute girl fit together like pieces of a puzzle, a grand adventure starts, forces beyond their control threaten to separate them, and the standard anime couple seemingly never see each other again, until they dramatically meet years later.

For the sake of an against-all-odds romance, Weathering with You downplays its insane plot devices. It glosses over runaway kids wielding firearms, an underage girl almost going into sex work, and a climate disaster potentially displacing millions of people—all for a love story.