Table of Contents
Topline
A list of the best movies on HBO Max, from Singin’ in the Rain, to Casablanca.
TV remote control is seen with HBO Max logo displayed on a screen in this illustration photo.
Key Facts
Warner Bros. Discovery announced HBO Max will be renamed to Max on May 23, bringing on shows and movies from Discovery+ and new prices.
These are the HBO Max films with the highest combined Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores.
No. 1: Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% | Metacritic: 99% (99)
American dancer and actor Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood and Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Seldon in ‘Singin’ … [+]
This 1952 musical was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. It stars Kelly as Don Lockwood, Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Seldon, Donald O’Connor as Cosmo Brown and Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont. In the movie, Lockwood and Lamont are movie stars who are making the difficult transition from silent movies to “talkies.” Their new movie requires singing, which Lamont is terrible at, so Seldon is hired to record over her singing parts. Lockwood begins growing feelings for Seldon, making Lamont very jealous. The film grossed over $7.2 million at the box office with a production budget of $2.5 million. O’Connor won a Golden Globe for the Best Actor – Comedy or Musical. Singin’ in the Rain has impacted culture in several ways, including inspiring the award-winning 2016 film, La La Land. It is number 83 on IMBd’s list of top rated movies of all-time.
No. 2: “casablanca” (1942)
Rotten Tomatoes: 99% | Metacritic: 100% (99)
American actor Humphrey Bogart and Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman on the set of Casablanca.
Casablanca is a romantic drama directed by Hungarian-American film director Michael Curtiz and is based on the unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The 1942 film stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund, Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo and Claude Rains as Captain Louis Renault. It was filmed and set during World War II and follows the story of Blaine, an exiled American who runs a popular nightclub in Casablanca and his battle of whether to help his former lover (Lund) and her fugitive husband (Laszlo) escape from Nazis. The film won many awards, like the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay. Casablanca is IMBd’s 43rd top rated movie of all-time.
No. 3: “the Maltese Falcon” (1941)
Rotten Tomatoes: 99% | Metacritic: 97% (98)
Scene from Maltese Falcon. Motion pictured released in 1941.
This noir crime film was directed by John Huston and based on the novel of the same name. Humphrey Bogart plays Samuel Sade, Mary Astor plays Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Gladys George plays Iva Archer and Peter Lorre plays Joel Cairo. The film follows Detective Spade as he takes on a case brought to him by O’Shaughnessy. Spade gets caught up in the murderous search for the bejeweled Maltese falcon statue. The Maltese Falcon is pegged as being influential in the film noir genre, a term given to American thriller and detective movies with dim lights and tragic tones produced between 1944 and 1954 by the French. It was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Picture, but lost to How Green Was My Valley. The film’s budget was $381,000 and grossed $1.7 worldwide.
No. 4: “hoop Dreams” (1994)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | Metacritic: 98% (98)
Subject of documentary film Hoop Dreams, William Gates, w. wife Catherine & 6-yr-old daughter Alicia … [+]
American film director and producer Steve James directed the 1994 sports documentary, Hoop Dreams. The film stars William Gates as himself, Arthur Agee as himself, Emma Gates as herself (William’s mother) and Sheila Agee as herself (Arthur’s mother). Set in the 1990s, it follows the lives of William and Arthur, two inner-city Chicago boys with aspirations of playing professional basketball. The pair travel 90 minutes to a predominantly white school known for its excellent basketball program. Though the duo both went on to play college basketball, neither ended up in the NBA. However, they reconnected to form the Agee and Gates Podcast. Hoop Dreams’ budget was estimated to be $700,000 and it grossed $11,830,611 worldwide. The film was nominated for the 1995 Academy Award for Best Editing but lost to Forrest Gump.
No. 5: “the Lady Vanishes” (1938)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | Metacritic: 98% (98%)
A poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 comedy ‘The Lady Vanishes’ starring Margaret Lockwood.
The Lady Vanishes is regarded as one of British director Alfred Hitchcock’s early classics. It stars Margaret Lockwood as Iris Matilda Henderson, Michael Redgrave as Gilbert Redman, Paul Lukas as Dr. Egon Hartz and May Whitty as Miss Froy. The film is based on the 1926 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. It follows Henderson as her train to England is delayed by an avalanche in a fictional European country. While waiting, she befriends the elderly Froy, but when Henderson awakes from a bout of unconsciousness, she finds Froy never existed. So, she embarks on a quest to find Froy alongside love interest Redman. Hitchcock won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director for the film.
Most-Searched Hbo Max Movies
“Goodfellas” (1990)
Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino, and Joe Pesci publicity portrait for the film … [+]
Goodfellas was released in 1990 and is directed by Martin Scorsese. The mobster movie, based on the book “Wiseguy,” stars Robert De Niro as James Conway, Ray Liotta as Henry Hill and Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito. It follows Hill and his journey rising through the ranks of the mob while handling battles like drug addiction, his relationship with his wife and the horrors the New York-based mafia has caused to the community. Pesci won the 1991 Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The film reportedly had a $25 million budget and grossed $47 million worldwide. The movie is IMBd’s 17th top rated movie of all-time.
“The Dark Knight” (2008)
A still from The Dark Knight featuring Heath Ledger as Joker.
The Dark Knight is an action and adventure movie released in 2008 and directed by Christopher Nolan. A lot of the movie’s plot is based on the 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore. Based on Batman, the DC Comics superhero, The Dark Knight is the sequel to the 2005 film Batman Returns. Batman forms an alliance with district attorney Harvey Dent and police lieutenant James Gordon to take down organized crime in Gotham City, but Joker makes their plans difficult, forcing Batman to teeter on the line between hero and vigilante. The film stars Christian Bale as Batman (or Bruce Wayne), Heather Ledger as Joker, Aaron Eckhart as Dent and Gary Oldman as Gordon. The movie won awards like the Oscar for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ledger) and the Golden Globe for the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Ledger). It was a box office hit, grossing $1.006 billion with a budget of $185 million. The movie is IMBd’s third top rated movie of all-time—its sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, is 69th.
“Inception” (2010)
Actors Elliot Page, Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard arrive at the “Inception” Los Angeles … [+]
Inception was released in 2010, the award-winning movie Inception was also directed by British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan. The movie follows Don Cobb, a thief who has the ability to steal people’s secrets from their dreams, who is given the difficult task of planting an idea in the mind of a CEO, but an enemy follows his every move. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Elliot Page as Ariadne and Tim Hardy as Eames. Inception has won awards like the Oscar for the Best Achievement in Cinematography (Wally Pfister). It did great at the box office, earning $826 million worldwide with a budget of $160 million. The science fiction drama is IMBd’s 14th greatest movie of all-time.