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25 of the Best New Movies Streaming on HBO Max
From Oscar faves "Sinners" and "One Battle After Another," to action fare like "Superman" and "Dead of Winter," to fresh horrors ("Weapons") and dark thrillers ("Eddington").
HBO was, for at least a couple of generations, the home of movies on cable—no one else could compete. For a while, it seemed like HBO Max could well be the ultimate streaming destination for movie lovers, but the jury is still out.
Even so, HBO Max maintains a collaboration with TCM, giving it a broad range of classic American and foreign films. It's also the primary streaming home for Studio Ghibli and A24, so even though the streamer hasn't been making as many original films as it did a few years ago, it still has a solid assortment of movies you won't find anywhere else.
Here are 25 of the best of HBO Max's recent and/or exclusive offerings.
One Battle After Another (2025)
Perennial awards-season darling Paul Thomas Anderson is back, the director's dark comedy/action thriller scoring an impressive 13 Oscar nominations. Leo DiCaprio is Bob, a retired and consistently stoned former revolutionary living off the grid with his daughter, Charlene. It's all going—well, pretty terribly, actually—when the shoe drops and Sean Penn's Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) shows up. Charlene's mom humiliated him when their group liberated an immigrant mass detention center, and the corrupt and generally nuts officer has been hunting members ever since. Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro, and Leo all earned acting nominations. Stream One Battle After Another.
One Battle After Another (2025)
at HBO Max
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)
Rose Byrne earned a Best Actress nomination here playing Linda, a woman who is going through it. With a tone that's nearly that of a darkly comedic fever dream, Linda is raising a daughter with a rare disorder requiring nearly around-the-clock care while dealing with extremely dramatic and demanding clients in her day job as a psychotherapist. That's all before when her apartment floods, forcing her and her daughter into a cheap hotel while her husband remains wildly unsupportive. Think Beau is Afraid, but with a working mom. Stream If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)
at HBO Max
Sinners (2025)
Ryan Coogler's dusty, sweaty supernatural horror movie became the year's crossover hit, defying expectations for an R-rated horror movie—particularly when that movie is also a Depression-era period drama with an almost entirely Black cast. Michael B. Jordan plays a dual role as Smoke and Stack Moore, returning to rural Mississippi after having made names for themselves in Chicago. They intend to open a juke joint with some help from their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), an up-and-coming blues singer whose music has the power to bust down barriers—between the local Black and immigrant communities, and between our world and a darker one. Beautifully unclassifiable, and an increasingly rare example of a major studio movie with an original concept—it's already one of the year's best. Stream Sinners.
I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not (2026)
Love him or hate him (and, let's be honest, there are at least as many in the latter camp as the former these days), there's no question that Chevy Chase had an outsized impact on American comedy in the late 1970s and early '80s. Filmmaker Marina Zenovich explores that career in this documentary, Chase here himself to offer up commentary on his career and current life. It's neither hagiography nor hit piece, but the subject himself is fascinating (which is often here another way of saying: kind of a jerk). While looking back, the movie hunts for the bits of humanity within a subject who seems absolutely determined to come off like a giant asshole—your take on that, the extent to which he's a broken genius, a self-satisfied has-been, or something more complicated entirely, may well serve as a kind of Rorschach test. Stream I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not.
I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not (2026)
at HBO Max
Superman (2025)
David Corenswet dons the cape in this James Gunn-led reboot that brings a light touch back to the DC movie universe. While the plot turns on Superman's dive into international power politics and unexpected betrayals, the pulpy also brings us old-school robots, flying cars, and a thoroughly ill-behaved superdog. Rachel Brosnahan's Lois Lane is as tough as she is big-hearted, Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor is a perfectly punchable billionaire, and Edi Gathegi steals every scene as Mister Terrific. It's a ton of fun, which is a nice change of pace after a decade of far more dour Superman flicks. Stream Superman.
Eddington (2025)
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