There's a lot coming to streaming service Max in May, so to save you the effort, I've winnowed down the list to highlight only the newest and best movies and shows. This month's lineup includes the thoughtful coming-of-age story Turtles all the Way Down, a new season of Hacks, and only-on-Max movies The Iron Claw and Stop Making Sense. Read on to discover the best things streaming on Max this month.
Turtles all the Way Down
Based on the young adult novel by John Green (The Fault in our Stars), Turtles all the Way Down is a great choice if you're looking for a deeper than usual coming-of-age movie. High-schooler Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced) suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, so the normal moments and milestones of her teenage life are informed by her mental illness—i.e. a first kiss is about both an expression of young love and her paralyzing fear of a potential bacterial infection. Green's novel has earned 4.5 stars from readers on Goodreads, and early reviews of the film are positive, so this is definitely worth a stream.
Starts streaming May 2.
Hacks, Season 3
The first and second seasons of HBO original show-biz comedy series Hacks earned rare 100% fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and the new season aims to continue that perfect record. Picking up a year after Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) went their separate ways, season three finds Deborah enjoying a career resurgence (thanks to Ava's writing), while Ava is working on a Daily Show-like nightly comedy program. Fate, as you'd probably guess, soon brings the odd couple back together.
Starts streaming May 2
Stop Making Sense
Stop Making Sense is the best concert movie ever been made, and I will fight you if you disagree (it's also great to watch when you're high). To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release, A24 has restored and remastered Jonathan Demme's masterpiece to preserve a pristine, streamable 4k vision of the Talking Heads at the height of their power for posterity (or for at least as long as it remains in Max's rotation). The years have done nothing to diminish the pure joy of watching a new wave band jamming out with funk legends like Parliament keyboardist Bernie Worrell and Brothers Johnson guitarist Alex Weir on banger after banger.
Starts streaming May 3
Stax: Soulsville USA
If you've finished watching Stop Making Sense a dozen times, check out Stax: Soulsville USA, a four-part HBO original music documentary series about the legendary Memphis record label that brought us Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, The Staple Singers, and many more iconic artists.
Starts streaming May 20
The Iron Claw
Even though The Iron Claw was nearly universally lauded by critics, it wasn't nominated for a single Oscar. Rip-off! Maybe a movie about professional wrestling is too lowbrow for "The Academy," but their loss. Yes, The Iron Claw is about wrestling, but it's also about mourning, loss, and the resilience of family. Plus, The Iron Claw features fantastic performances from Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), and Harris Dickinson as the real-life Von Erich brothers, a wrestling dynasty beset by so much tragedy they come to believe they've been cursed. After watching this flick, it's hard to argue with them.
Starts streaming May 10
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School
The first season of the Pretty Little Liars reboot is a rare thing: A horror TV show that's actually good—so good, it was dubbed "one of the best horror TV shows of the past two decades" by the horror-freaks over at Bloody Disgusting. Season two, subtitled "Summer School," finds high schoolers Tabby, Noa, Imogen, Faran, and Mouse in class for the summer. The season of romance and fun they imagined is interrupted by a terrifying new villain: Bloody Rose, a mysterious knife-wielding murderer who gets off on testing their limits. Choose this if you like genre-bending horror.
Starts streaming May 9
Stupid Pet Tricks, Season 1
Sometimes, you just need to look at some cute animals. Sarah Silverman hosts this comedy-variety program featuring performing cats, dogs, camels, hamsters, foxes and all manner of other smart animals doing stupid things. David Letterman originated the gag as a segment on his show back in the 1980s, and lends a hand here as the executive producer of this piece of pleasantly brainless feel-good television.
Starts streaming May 8
MoviePass, Moviecrash
On paper, a documentary about a dead movie-ticket subscription service might not sound interesting, but MoviePass's meteoric rise and plunge back to earth is a fascinating study in bad business ideas, hubris, and corporate double-dealing. MoviePass, Moviecrash is told by the men who started the company and later had to watch from the sidelines as new executives piloted the aircraft straight into the ground.
Starts streaming May 29
The Lighthouse (2019)
If you like dark, claustrophobic cinema and you haven't seen director Robert Eggers The Lighthouse, you're making a mistake. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe star as isolated lighthouse keepers who slowly drive one another insane (with horniness?). Shot in black-and-white and crammed with disturbing and surreal imagery, The Lighthouse isn't quite like any other movie, but it is quite a movie.
Starts streaming May 1
Last month's picks
The Sympathizer
Legendary filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) teams up with actor and co-producer Robert Downey Jr. on this sweeping historical black comedy series. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer tells the story of a Vietnam-era spy with conflicting loyalties. When the war ends, the North Vietnamese agent, who goes by the moniker "The Captain," is forced to flee to America, but he's not finished his job, and reports on his neighbors to the Viet Cong.
Starts streaming April 14
The Jinx – Part Two
Andrew Jarecki’s Emmy-winning series The Jinx caught lightning in a bottle when it came out in 2015—how often does a guy confess to multiple murders while mic'ed up for a true crime documentary, right? The Jinx—Part 2 completes the story of weird-rich-dude-turned murderer Robert Durst, and promises shocking new revelations. Durst is dead, so he won't be confessing to any more murders, but it's a fascinating story nonetheless.
Start streaming April 21
Conan O’Brien Must Go
Conan O'Brien is the funniest person alive, maybe, and this series puts him in situations designed to draw out his supernatural ability to be spontaneously hilarious. The premise: Conan visits fans in Norway, Thailand, Argentina, and Ireland, interacts with locals, and creates inspired, impromptu comedy. It's a formula that worked great on his late night shows, but HBO money means Conan O'Brien Must Go will feature better production values—they even got Werner Herzog to narrate.
Starts streaming April 18
The Synanon Fix
Synanon is hands-down my favorite cult of all time, so I'm psyched HBO is giving proper cinematic treatment to the off-the-chains crazy story of how a drug rehab center devolved into a heavily armed, post-hippie nightmare cult. Told through glorious insider film footage and interviews with ex cult-members and others who were there, The Synanon Fix's highlight include dead-eyed cultists with shaved heads wearing matching overalls and wielding axe-handles, attempted-murder-by-rattlesnake, and music from Synanon's in-house band that featured jazz immortals Joe Pass and Art Pepper among many others. There are not enough thumbs in existence for the number of thumbs-up this series deserves.
Starts streaming April 1
The Zone of Interest (2024)
Winner of the Best International Feature at this year's Oscars, The Zone of Interest examines the chilling banality of evil by telling the story of concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig raising their children in a charming little house next to Auschwitz. A searing, intense masterpiece, The Zone of Interest will stay with you long after the last frame.
Starts streaming April 5
We're Here, Season 4
Season four of HBO's Emmy-winning reality show features some big changes: Original cohosts Bob the Drag Queen, Shangela, and Eureka have been replaced with RuPaul's Drag Race franchise winners Sasha Velour, Jaida Essence Hall, Priyanka, and Latrice Royale. The essence of We're Here will remain the same though; the quartet of drag queens will travel to small communities around Murfreesboro, Tennessee., and Tulsa, Oklahoma, to spread the good word that drag is actually fun and maybe you should loosen up?
Starts streaming April 26
Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion
I don't know if you're aware, but there is a dark side to the fashion industry. Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion tells the story of a fun, flashy fashion brand that was once extremely popular with teen and tween girls, taking viewers behind-the-scenes at the Brandy Mellville company, which turns out to be a scummy cesspit of racism and sexual exploitation. The doc then goes deeper and broader with commentary on the environmental and societal devastation that fast fashion factories can bring to the places where they're located.
Starts streaming April 9
Take My Tumor
The success of shows like Dr. Pimple Popper and Botched proves a lot of people enjoy reality shows about often grotesque medical conditions. If you're among them, I bet you'll like Take My Tumor, a show about extreme tumors, the people who have them, and the dedicated medical professionals who remove them. It's from TLC, formerly The Learning Channel, who seem to have cornered the market on this kind of programming.
Starts streaming April 3
An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th
This documentary digs into the story of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, detailing not just the tragic explosion on April 19, but the massive FBI investigation that followed, and the seething underground of anti-government conspiracy theorists and hate-mongers who inspired Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder.
Starts streaming April 16
Men (2022)
The monster in this "elevated horror" film is men—not a particular group of men, but men in general. From this provocative premise, director Alex Garland builds a creepy, disturbing narrative that explores the cultural and historical roots of misogyny through the victimization of the film's main character, Harper Marlowe (played by Jessie Buckley). In a stroke of genius, all the men in the movie (but one) are played by the incredibly talented Rory Kinnear, because men are all basically the same.
Starts streaming on April 18