The 50 Best Movies on Max (Formerly Known As HBO Max), Updated for July 2024

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
STARS: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin
RATING: PG-13

The cultural legacy of Walk the Line now lives in the shadows of Walk Hard, the spoof film that so expertly skewers the cliches of musician biopics from the aughts. But something can be ripe for praise as well as parody. Thanks to two committed and compassionate performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny Cash and June Carter, Walk the Line proves there’s nothing wrong with a cliché so long as it’s executed with conviction.

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DIRECTOR: Joel and Ethan Coen
STARS: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
RATING: R

The question of an absent God looms large throughout the work of the Coen brothers, but none engage with it so openly as A Serious Man. This deeply Jewish parable restages the story of Job in the Minneapolis suburbs as Michael Stuhlbarg’s Larry Gopnik struggles to make sense of the parade of horrible things happening to him for seemingly no reason. The Coens allow us to laugh at both his grim trajectory and the absurdity of trying to assign logic to the events of our lives.

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DIRECTOR: Ang Lee
STARS: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway
RATING: R

Over 15 years after busting open the possibilities for queer cinema, Brokeback Mountain is worth watching (or rewatching) away from the hype of its release. This is a movie that deserves to be seen and remembered for what it is, not just what it inspired. The tenderness between Heath Ledger’s Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack is almost unbearable as they try to navigate a world that is not ready to accept the love they feel for each other.

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DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky
STARS: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel
RATING: R

Don’t let the fancy ballet trappings or the Oscar win fool you. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a werewolf movie through and through, just wrapped in a high-brow setting and suffused with psychosexual thrills. Natalie Portman’s ballerina Nina Sayers seeks mastery over her craft beyond the technical precision she’s mastered. In order to embody this duality, Nina must give herself over to the darker, more impulsive side of her nature. This means surrendering control to a wolf – er, black swan – bursting out from inside of her. Aronofsky elicits screams and swoons alike as he renders his protagonist’s journey to self-actualization in all its promise and peril.

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DIRECTOR: William Friedkin
STARS: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey
RATING: R

Fifty years later, that Best Picture win for The French Connection – a rare victory for an action-thriller – sure has aged well! William Friedkin’s story of two cops determined to bust up a French drug smuggling ring still crackles with craftsmanship in its stunning car chases. Contemporary viewers might also find that the way the film portrays the police’s dogged pursuit of a bust at all costs to contain surprising nuance and perspective as well.

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DIRECTOR: George Miller
STARS: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult
RATING: R

I run the risk of you just closing this list altogether by saying that I think the simplicity of Mad Max: Fury Road’s holds it back from being a truly great movie. But that quibble doesn’t matter all that much when the visceral force of George Miller’s filmmaking hits. The editing, the camerawork, the sound, the sheer vision … it’s just undeniable.

Watch Mad Max: Fury Road on Max

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Stoller
STARS: Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Kristen Bell
RATING: R

We see all of Jason Segel in the simultaneously uproarious and unsettling opening scene of Forgetting Sarah Marshall where his titular girlfriend unceremoniously dumps him. But the moment of exposure doesn’t feel like a gimmick because Segel spends most of the movie emotionally naked as well, openly grappling with his post-breakup insecurities. A less gifted performer would have made the film an insufferable pity party, but Segel’s sincerity tinged with self-awareness makes this an essential deconstruction of the male romantic ego.

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DIRECTORS: Josh and Benny Safdie
STARS: Adam Sandler, Julia Fox, Lakeith Stanfield
RATING: R

Every few years, Adam Sandler reminds us that he’s not just phoning it in – he’s a genuinely talented actor willing to use his comedic chops and outsized personality to bring an outrageous character to life. The Safdie Brothers crank that talent up to 11 in Uncut Gems, a film so stressful in its cinematic tension that the pressure generate could generate a diamond. Sandler’s Howard Ratner, trade name “Howie Bling,” is a diamond dealer with a compulsive gambling habit and penchant for getting himself into binds with impossible odds. Warning: you may develop high blood pressure from watching him try to wiggle his way out of the stickiest situation ever here.

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DIRECTOR: Nora Ephron
STARS: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Rosie O’Donnell
RATING: PG

Movies always require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but few stretch those boundaries quite like Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle. This analog romance asks us to believe any number of implausible occurrences between Meg Ryan’s lovelorn (but also engaged) reporter Annie and Tom Hanks’ widowed architect Sam after she hears his story on a radio call-in show. Credit to Ephron for rooting the film in such sincerity and emotionality so we buy in and swoon anyways.

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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.

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DIRECTOR: Craig Johnson
STARS: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Luke Wilson
RATING: R

The end of life is just the beginning in Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, a dramedy featuring SNL stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as suicidal siblings. They both fail in their attempts on the same day, bringing the estranged brother and sister back into each other’s orbit for the first time in a decade. Their misadventures in trying to keep it all together are heartbreaking, heartwarming and – of course – hilarious. It is scientifically impossible not to break into a big grin when the stars lip sync to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

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DIRECTOR: Joel Coen
STARS: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi
RATING: R

It’s entirely debatable which of about five movies by Joel and Ethan Coen is the brothers’ best. But it’s pretty easy to identify which would serve as their calling card: Fargo. This chilly crime comedy features unforgettable characters and wild (but believable) tonal swings as it charts a tale of greed gone wrong. It’s “Minnesota nice” in a nutshell, especially as epitomized by the sweet yet steely sheriff Marge Gunderson (the inimitable Frances McDormand).

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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.

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DIRECTOR: Bradley Cooper
STARS: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott
RATING: R

At least for now, HBO Max has access to multiple versions of A Star Is Born. There’s value in seeing them all just to see the evolution of this paradigmatic narrative of fortunes rising and falling in the entertainment industry. But the most recent incarnation is particularly striking because director and star Bradley Cooper cracks one of the toughest conundrums of the story: making us care about the fall from grace of Jackson Maine. By starting him on a downward trajectory from the beginning rather than having his decline come at the decline of an ascendant starlet, this A Star Is Born sells its central tragedy to devastating effect.

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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.

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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!

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DIRECTOR: Paul Greengrass
STARS: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, David Straithairn
RATING: PG-13

Pretty much every action movie owes a huge debt – and an apology, if we’re being honest – to Paul Greengrass for pioneering the rapid-cut action aesthetic in the Bourne franchise. The series took the style of quick, disorienting edits as a way to convey disorientation on a physiological level but still tell a coherent story within a sequence. It’s worth returning to the pinnacle of the original trilogy, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum to see just how effective this technique can be when deployed with intention rather than as lazy shorthand for chaos.

Watch The Bourne Ultimatum on 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 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 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.

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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.

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DIRECTOR: Michael McCullers
STARS: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Dax Shepard
RATING: PG-13

The comedic chemistry of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s on-screen pairing makes it so that, as the old adage goes, they could make reading the phonebook entertaining. But luckily they have much better material in Baby Mama as a single career woman desperate to have a baby (Fey) and the hapless surrogate whose womb enables her dream to become a reality (Poehler). This mom-com is packed to the brim with great one-liners, zany supporting characters, and hilarious gags.

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DIRECTOR: Joe Talbot
STARS: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Rob Morgan
RATING: R

“You don’t get to hate San Francisco unless you love it,” insists Jimmie Fails in The Last Black Man in San Francisco. The line perfectly sums up this movie and any that captures the tumultuous relationship anyone has to a changing city. Jimmie laments a gentrifying city that seems to no longer have a place for him, yet it only steels his resolve to identify with it all the more. It’s a gorgeous tribute and elegy all rolled up in one.

Watch The Last Black Man in San Francisco on 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.

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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.

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DIRECTORS: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
STARS: Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Jennifer Jason Leigh
RATING: R

Most people probably know the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time because of that cursed meme featuring a gnarly-looking Robert Pattinson standing awkwardly in a kitchen. Let’s change that and get people to recognize the film for its value as a gripping, propulsive thriller. The title is a bit of a misnomer – Good Time applies to the audience but certainly not for Pattinson’s Connie, a slimy criminal evading consequences by the seat of his pants. He’s on a noble mission to protect his developmentally disabled brother, but the way he’ll use anyone in his path to achieve those ends makes him quite the conundrum as a protagonist. This night from hell through the grimy corners of contemporary New York makes for quite the ride.

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DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle
STAR: James Franco
RATING: R

The survival drama 127 Hours first made headlines on the festival circuit for multiple people passing out during the film’s graphic amputation, the climactic scene where James Franco’s Aron Ralston frees himself from the boulder crushing his arm. (Fun fact: Fox Searchlight even sent out “I Kept My Eyes Open for 127 Hours” shirts to people who made it through the scene.) But there’s more to the film than shock value. Danny Boyle’s visually inventive work turns one man’s miserable misadventure into an invitation for us all to rediscover our humanity and priorities. It’s nothing short of ebullient.

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DIRECTOR: Lulu Wang
STARS: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Zhao Shuzhen
RATING: PG

Make sure you have some tissues handy for The Farewell, a family drama told with delicate gracefulness. Filmmaker Lulu Wang crafted the narrative from her own experience as a Chinese-American going back to her native country to grapple with the illness of her beloved grandmother, Nai Nai. Her avatar in the film, Awkwafina’s Billi, must deal not only with her own grief but also with cultural customs dictating she must keep Nai Nai in the dark about her condition. It’s a devastating but enriching examination of how best to handle hardship.

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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 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.

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DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
STARS: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson
RATING: R

Amy Schumer’s take on the rom-com in Trainwreck is unforgettable entertainment. She’s a devotee of the genre and ensures that the starring vehicle she wrote for herself hits all the classic hallmarks. But she’s also got a keen eye for who is not particularly well-served by these stories – who gets love, who gets attention, who must change – and tweaks it to her own delightful and enlightening ends.

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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.

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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 Max

DIRECTOR: Ang Lee
STARS: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang
RATING: PG-13

Get over the one-inch barrier of subtitles, to quote Bong Joon-ho, and immerse yourself in the glory of global cinema. Besides, great action transcends language anyways, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has that in spades. The martial arts choreography in Ang Lee’s adventure is truly a stunning sight to behold.

Watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Max

DIRECTOR: Jason Reitman
STARS: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick
RATING: R

The passing of the Great Recession might have dulled some of the topical sting from Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, an irony-rich dramedy about a man who finds professional satisfaction in firing people he doesn’t know. But separated from the immediate context of its release, the poignancy of its emotional story really shines. Its themes about making connections and finding the humanity in unexpected places have a timeless resonance.

Watch Up in the Air on 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 Max

DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
STARS: Harrison Ford, Sean Bean, Anne Archer
RATING: R

With all due respect to John Krasinski, Chris Pine, Ben Affleck, and Alec Baldwin … the character of Jack Ryan belongs to Harrison Ford. His first outing in the character developed by Tom Clancy, Patriot Games, is the platonic ideal of ‘90s-era dad cinema. Ford’s CIA analyst Ryan protects the world from the IRA, but the thrills get real as the assassins start to target his family. Anyone with a strong protective instinct will find themselves roused by the film’s climactic action battle.

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DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
STARS: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood
RATING: G

Over 50 years later, the wonder and awe of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 remains intact. The movie that made all your favorite directors want to make movies is a beguiling mystery box, indescribable as it conjures the ineffable. The visuals have not aged a bit, nor has the film’s understanding of the twinned promise and peril in the vastness of outer space.

Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on Max

DIRECTOR: Robert Luketic
STARS: Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Luke Wilson
RATING: PG-13

A look back at turn-of-the-millennium comedies often yields cringe-worthy results, but one that has aged quite flawlessly is Legally Blonde. This female empowerment tale of Elle Woods rising from flippant fashionista to high-powered Harvard Law graduate is remarkably ahead of its time in many ways. Here is a comedy that refuses to make easy punchlines out of its protagonist’s intelligence or insist she has to change herself completely to ascend to her position; the prowess and possibility has been within Reese Witherspoon’s iconic character all along. (And the film does not pit her against other women to achieve her success, either!)

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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 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.

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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 Max

DIRECTOR: Andrea Arnold
STARS: Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough
RATING: R

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to see a place for what it really is, and American Honey uses Andrea Arnold’s British gaze to see America clearly and compellingly. Her guerilla filmmaking style captures the heartland through the eyes of a roving group of teenage magazine sellers. The film feels as alive as its adolescents, taking everything in – the good, the bad, the ugly – with sensory receptors wide open to the fullness of life. Their mostly, raw unprocessed experiences are as vivid as cinema gets. Nothing is sweeter.

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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.

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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.

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DIRECTOR: David Frankel
STARS: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt
RATING: PG-13

With a decade and change of distance, it’s safe to say The Devil Wears Prada is the millennial workplace movie. The adventures of Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs as she tries to please her demanding and mercurial boss, Meryl Streep’s sinfully savvy magazine editor Miranda Priestly, are a crash-course in how to navigate the corporate world. The lessons Andy learns as she tries to find that delicate balance between work and life are timely to the emergence of a new generation in the workforce and also timeless to mull over. That’s all.

Watch The Devil Wears Prada on Max

DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig
STARS: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Beanie Feldstein
RATING: R

I’ve made the case that we should all watch Lady Bird on Thanksgiving because it’s as persuasive a case for us to express our gratitude as a movie can make. “The film can – or dare I say, should – serve as a yearly reminder to return to the table and count our blessings,” I wrote. “As Christine finds, it’s hard to tune out the constant cultural noise that the best version of yourself is off in the distance. The answers to a more grateful life are already there at home and in ourselves, like nourishing food for the soul perfectly arranged by Greta Gerwig.” It’s a lesson we could stand to hear on the other 364 days of the year besides Turkey Day, too.

Watch Lady Bird on Max

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
STARS: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
RATING: PG-13

The movie of a generation, nothing less. Aaron Sorkin’s airtight script for The Social Network restages the founding of Facebook as both the stuff of Greek drama and hopelessly millennial. David Fincher’s execution effectively stages these grand stakes into something that feels era-defining in all its provocative contradictions. The term “masterpiece” gets thrown around far too loosely these days, and it cheapens the label for films like this that actually deserve it.

Watch The Social Network on 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 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 Max