What is a Max Original Movie? Well, it’s not just a movie that debuts on Max same day as a theatre. Despite a bunch of name changes, Max actually has been making its own films since the summer of 2020. Since then, they’ve actually churned out enough good films to warrant a top 10! I guess it’s good to partner with one of the great directors of the last 30 years, Steven Soderbergh: he might appear on this list a couple times.
I shouldn’t even put the trailer here because it might make you think this movie will be terrible. Quite the opposite. The movie holds faithful to the sweet nostalgic 1983 film, flash forwarding to Ralphie as an adult visiting his fictional Indiana hometown. The nostalgia is a bit different this time around, but the movie still captures in small pieces some of the ubiquities of growing up in the United States in a small town around Christmas. No guns this time though, sorry.
A great musical doc about a heinous music festival. Woodstock 99 was supposed to be this great reincarnation of one of the great music festivals in history. But when you replace the love based freedom fest of the original with soulless corporate profiteering, you get what happens in Upstate New York over the course of 3 devolving days: mostly angry young white men fueled on by the bands, with no place to release it except on unsuspecting women, themselves, and the festival grounds itself.
One of the better movies sorta revolving around the Covid 19 Pandemic. Zoe Kravitz is incredible here, starring as a germaphobe who’s slowly becoming agoraphobic as a result. Working as a sound editor, she hears something distressing on the job, but finds all sorts of resistance when she tries to report it to the authorities. Another of Steven Soderbergh’s wonderful stripped down thrillers only he can make as well as he does.
Just your run of the mill abortion road trip comedy. But thanks to Barbie Ferreira and one of the underappreciated actors working today, Haley Lu Richardson, the movie is built around the frayed relationship these two girls have as they drifted apart in high school, while also not forgetting why the road trip needs to happen, in all its absurdity and occasional heaviness. Props to Rachel Lee Goldenberg for finding just the right tone to keep this movie from careening off the rails.
Mid tier Steven Soderbergh is still so much better than most movies released. Consider this film: on its surface, it is a crime caper/thriller which anyone can do. But in the Out of Sight/Ocean’s Eleven/Logan Lucky guy’s hands? This movie is as compelling when people are talking as when violence happens, twisting and turning in unexpected ways. Soderbergh’s third act here is a plot dump yes, but the movie earns it by its surprising casting choices and murky fun story it was telling before with Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle.
Poor Reality Winner. Sydney Sweeney turns in a great performance here playing the tragic leaker, and the movie does a great job taking her real time arrest and turning it into a harrowing, troubling, engaging thriller for our times.
This is the other Soderbergh/HBO partnership, also incredible, about Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen trying to reconnect on a cruise while Streep is writing a new book. Soderbergh turns a story of frayed friendship into a low key mystery, letting us in little by little as to the history of the personal relationships between these people. A new wrinkle with this one is Soderbergh let his talented cast improvise a lot, but his direction is so good you have no idea what was/wasn’t written. It certainly helps when Streep, Wiest, and Bergen add their immense talents to your story, giving it the necessary emotional grounding to make the movie work.
A sharp satire that will make you lose faith in America’s education system. Hugh Jackman is wonderful playing the school superintendent of the 4th best school district in the country. The movie is a pretty solid journalism/thriller film, but it’s best as a dark study of the effects of power on the brain, as the endless lies you tell yourself become so complicated you slowly lose your identity and grip on reality.
For those who don’t know him, Alexei Navalny is the man who dared to politically challenge Vladimir Putin for control of Russia. This amazing documentary looks at how difficult that task is, and how uniquely gifted Navalny was to rise and find ways to get his message out to the Russian people. Plus, the doc is a real life political thriller about Navalny’s poisoning, and the investigation to prove Putin’s regime was behind the attack. Intense, but memorable, stuff.
Movies about school shootings are obviously inherently dramatic and tense, but can quickly become unsavory if handled incorrectly. No such problems exist in Megan Park’s subdued, perceptive screenplay. Jenna Ortega is a revelation as a high schooler who survives the shooting, but is left with horrific PTSD she isn’t prepared to cope with. The story parallels nicely with any teenager struggling with their journey into adulthood, moving on from their past selves into this new normal through the guidance of friends, family, and other sources. It’s heavy, but necessary, brilliant stuff, and necessary viewing for anyone who says there’s “nothing we can do” about gun control and gun safety so they can see the consequences of that choice.
