We have a big list of seven movies that have debuted on HBO and are on Max. We hope that you will seek one or more of them out via the HBO channel or the streamer. There is a thriller, a horror drama, and even a musical to explore. This post offers a look at the plot, cast, trailer, and critical remarks at the very least. Here are the highlights starting with…
THE FRONT ROOM
This movie is a psychological thriller out of A24 written & directed by Max and Sam Eggers. This is the first film for these guys, the younger brothers of Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse and Nosferatu). Do they have the chops to frighten audiences? They make an attempt with this 95-minute movie starring Brandy (Descendants: The Rise of Red), Kathryn Hunter (ROME, Megalopolis), Andrew Burnap (the upcoming Disney’s Snow White), and Neal Huff (THE WIRE, MARE OF EASTTOWN).
A pregnant Belinda (Brandy) and her husband Norman (Burnap) receive a phone call from his stepmother Solange (Hunter) that his father has recently died. The young couple’s life is thrown into disarray when they reluctantly agree to take his estranged stepmother in under the agreement that they will inherit her wealth. As tensions rise, the couple’s seemingly normal home becomes a battleground of paranoia and fear. The old woman’s erratic behavior and mysterious past unveil dark secrets that threaten to unravel the couple’s relationship. As they grapple with the sinister presence that takes over their home, they must confront their own demons and the haunting reality of what lurks in the front room. This psychological thriller delves into themes of family, trust, and the thin line between reality and madness.
Creepy old biddy, but creepy enough? FandomWire stated “Kathryn Hunter’s performance is worth the price of admission alone, but it’s disappointing to see her be the only genuinely great part in an otherwise tedious dark comedy. Blu-ray.com liked Hunter’s performance as well as it remarked, “For those comfortable with pure oddity, the effort has its positives, including a delightfully demented supporting turn from actress Kathryn Hunter, who commits Grand Theft Movie with her striking performance.”
The movie has been on HBO/Max since January 04. Is this in-law from Hell enough for you to check out THE FRONT ROOM?
LOOK INTO MY EYES
This is a documentary film, directed and produced by Lana Wilson. It follows a group of psychics in New York City, conducting intimate readings for their clients and revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2024. It was released on September 6, 2024, by A24 and named one of the top 5 documentary films of that year. Wilson has been noted for the acclaimed documentaries After Tiller, The Departure, Miss Americana, and Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
The Sound and Sound magazine stated, “The genius of Lana Wilson’s portrait of New York City psychics is that she doesn’t ask us to believe, but to feel” and goes on to call the film “an exquisitely made documentary that puts compassion before cynicism.” This 98-minute piece was called one of the best movies at Sundance 2024 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s Bazaar.
The trailer explains it quite well. We are not to sit here and judge whether the psychic readings are genuine or just shrewd persons feeding people what they want to hear when they need to hear it. What it tells us is to listen to how worried, or stressed these clients are about their lives and what’s thoughts occupy their minds. For example, one lady wants to know what she’ll regret about her life on her deathbed. Wow.
The Los Angeles Times noted, “Human connections are gifts, imagination is powerful and empathy isn’t a trick. These are the things “Look Into My Eyes” patiently communicates to us from its watchful perch.” Not many critics weighed in on this one, but a theme resonates with them all – the powerful, heartfelt themes.
We’re not sure if that is the best Consensus statement to put out about it, but either way, feel free to watch LOOK INTO MY EYES on Max if you have empathy.
A DIFFERENT MAN
A different kind of movie, but right up A24’s alley. This is a dark comedy written and directed by Aaron Schimberg; only his third movie and an Oscar nominee. It stars Sebastian Stan (MCU’s Captain America franchise), Renate Reinsve (Presumed Innocent series), and Adam Pearson (Chained for Life). The 112-minute movie is a film fest darling and an award-winning success.
Aspiring actor Edward Lemuel (Stan) undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. He suffers from neurofibromatosis which manifests as a disfiguring facial condition. How can he be a successful actor with such a deformity? But his new dream face (which makes him look an awful lot like Sabastian Stan, Haha) quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Edward kills that identity as no one recognizes him as his former self. Not even his playwright friend Ingrid (Reinsve). She writes a play based on the Edward she knew and she eventually casts Oswald (Pearson, who is an actor who actually suffers from neurofibromatosis). Edward’s mental state begins to deteriorate, at the very least, over the absurdity of all of this. He eventually storms the stage of the play one night to physically attack Oswald. To find out how it spirals from there – you’ve got to watch A DIFFERENT MAN.
Okay, clearly if it has big nominations it is a well-done piece of cinema, but what makes it so? USA Today states, “With strangely thoughtful panache and a helping of absurdity, Schimberg makes us rethink how we look at people and ourselves alike – and who’s to blame when we don’t like the view.” Ah, it is well done because it allows us to judge ourselves without consequence. The Chicago Star-Times mentions, “This is a quirky and often bleak treatise designed to make us think uncomfortable thoughts about self-identity and how physical beauty can’t save your soul if you’re ugly inside.” So, it offers a good moral lesson we need to hear. Finally, the Washington Post says, “An existential black comedy delivered with flair and a steady gaze — and two remarkable performances at its center — it mucks about in themes of identity and exploitation, perception and personality, fate and foolishness.” No, good acting, really? To be fair, for a negative review, TIME Magazine exclaims, “The dynamic between Oswald and Edward is rich territory by itself. The problem is that Schimberg keeps adding layers of plot to drive his points home, instead of just stepping back to let his characters do their thing.”
Either way, A DIFFERENT MAN is a movie to take in. Find it on HBO and streaming on Max. RT sums it up this way –
GOODRICH
GOODRICH is a 2024 comedy/drama written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (Home Again). The film stars Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice, Batman), Mila Kunis (Luckiest Girl Alive), Laura Benanti (THE GILDED AGE), Carmen Ejogo (THE PENGUIN), Michael Urie (Shrinking), Kevin Pollak (Sweetwater), Vivien Lyra Blair (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Andie MacDowell (The Way Home). It debuted on Saturday, February on HBO and on Max the day prior.
The title is the surname of our title character played by Keaton. Andy Goodrich is a 60-year-old Los Angeles art dealer who hardly sees his family, and his boutique gallery is starting to fail. One night, he’s awakened by a phone call from his younger wife Naomi (Benanti) who informs him that she has entered a 90-day rehab program for prescription pill addiction. Furious that Andy hadn’t even noticed she was having issues with substance abuse, she informs him that she is leaving him and asks that he not contact her. He drives to the rehab facility anyway, where he’s turned away.
That’s hard enough to take, but there are two 9-year-old twins for him to parent alone now. Plus, he has a tense relationship with Grace (Kunis), his 36-year-old daughter from his first marriage, since he was also always at work when she was growing up and her mother primarily raised her. Andy asks Grace for help with watching her younger siblings and they begin to speak more regularly. Do they reconnect? Does the household get through its crisis? Does Naomi get through hers? Uh, Uh, Uh, you got to watch GOODRICH to get those answers.
The movie, which clocks in at 1 hour 51 minutes, didn’t get a lot of play theatrically. The film premiered in Los Angeles on October 8, 2024, and was released on October 18, 2024, in the United States by Ketchup Entertainment. It made $1,333,431 domestically at last count. Four months later it arrived on HBO/Max. It is also one of those movies that didn’t get a lot of reviews from top critics. Here, however, are two in favor of the film. The Observer says, “Keaton’s nuanced performance in this smart, tender comedy proves that Hollywood still has room for complex, emotionally rich leading men.” Slant Magazine notes, “Goodrich is a moving and warmly humanist story of a vaguely unseemly, mostly harmless guy trying to be a better person.”
Could it have been a better movie? Maybe, but I say just enjoy Batman’s…uh…Betelgeuse’s…Michael Keaton’s range.
WE LIVE IN TIME
This movie is a romantic drama from last year directed by John Crowley (The Goldfinch, a couple of episodes of TRUE DETECTIVE S2) and written by Nick Payne (BBC’s Wanderlust). It follows the relationship of a 
couple, Tobias Durand, played by Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spiderman), and Almut Brühl, played by Florence Pugh (Oppenheimer), over the course of a decade. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024 and was released in the United States in October by A24. Almut and Tobias are brought together in a surprise encounter that changes their lives. Through snapshots of their life together — falling for each other, building a home, becoming a family — a difficult truth is revealed that rocks its foundation. As they embark on a path challenged by the limits of time, they learn to cherish each moment of the unconventional route their love story has taken, in filmmaker John Crowley’s decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.
Tobias while out purchasing a pen to sign divorce papers served to him by his wife, wanders into the road and is struck by a car driven by Almut. At the hospital, Almut offers to treat Tobias and his wife to a meal at the restaurant she works at, though Tobias does not disclose his divorce to her. On the night of this dinner, Tobias, now separated, goes to the restaurant alone, informing Almut this time of his divorce. The two go to Almut’s flat after dinner, spend the following day together and eventually move in together. It sounds like the perfect setup for a perfect tale of romance. But, what is the catch to this movie?
The catch could be Crowley’s cinematic choices as the story spools out in a non-linear fashion. It could also be driven by the chemistry between the leads. It could just be a well-crafted heart-tugging tale that reminds viewers of their romances. Critics seemed to like the fully encompassed journey of this coupling, but be forewarned it does give the birth, bloom of life, and the death of a couple in full spectrum. We don’t want to spoil it, but there is plenty of joy & grief in the telling.
WAITRESS: THE MUSICAL
Do you feel like singing? Well, you can if you know the Broadway musical this film is based on. Actually, we need to clarify that. This is a movie consisting of a live stage recording of Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’s 2015 musical based on the 2007 movie Waitress by Adrienne Shelly. You know the movie, right? Kerri Russell was the lead. It then was adapted as the musical and had a Broadway run. This film was produced in the fall of 2021 during its limited run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City, as part of the efforts to slowly reopen Broadway in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with this being the first musical to begin performances near the end of the shutdown. It didn’t see a theatrical run until it ran at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023.
Jenna is a waitress and expert pie baker at Joe’s Pie Diner in the American South. She bakes pies to distract herself from her unhappiness with her home life. She begins another day at the diner with her boss Cal and 
fellow waitresses Becky and Dawn. After Jenna almost throws up, Becky and Dawn convince her to take a pregnancy test which, to Jenna’s dismay, comes back positive; Jenna deduces the pregnancy came from a night when she drunkenly had sex with her abusive husband, Earl. Earl comes to the diner and suggests he wants to make Jenna quit and give up her passion for baking. He takes the tips she has earned from working so far that day. She decides not to tell him about her pregnancy.
We learn of her incompatible marriage, her love of baking, and her need to be more for herself. Can she turn it all around one apple pie at a time? With about two dozen musical numbers this movie is set for the fans of the show already, but what about everyone else? Yes, you can argue that live performances are always better, but this film makes the whole story up close & more personable instead of being up in the bleeding nose section of some theater. Experience WAITRESS: THE MUSICAL for the first time or from a new angle. It debuted on HBO on Saturday, February 15, and on Max the day prior.
ELEVATION
Our last movie offers up the following plot: Three years prior to the events of the film, mysterious apex predators called Reapers emerged from sinkholes underground and exterminated humanity, with 95% killed in the first month. Survivors live in pocketed communities 8,000 feet or more above sea level — elevations that the creatures do not venture into. But a father named Will has a dilemma on his hands. His young son Hunter has a lung disease and has run out of filters for his apparatus. That means Will has to venture below the safe elevation point into Boulder Colorado for the sake of Hunter. He asks a scientist called Nina to go along in the hopes she can reach her old laboratory and find a way to kill the Reapers.
How successful they are at that, of course, is the movie. Plus we feel the monsters in these kinds of movies have got to be awesome to hold our attention. We don’t know if Reapers fall into that category or not, you’ll have to tell us. It debuted on HBO on Saturday, February 22 and on Max the day prior.
ELEVATION is a post-apocalyptic action film directed by George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) and written by Kenny Ryan and Jacob Roman. It stars Anthony Mackie (Captain America: Brave New World) as Will, Morena Baccarin (Deadpool franchise as Nina), and Danny Boyd Jr (as Hunter). But does it work? RogerEbert.com wrote, “So, while Elevation may never rise above its genre trappings or escape the shadow of its influences, it never stoops so low as to be mindlessly vapid. Simply executed at ninety minutes, it’s escapism of the highest order, offering perils at a screen’s distance of safety.” RT posts –
There you go. Seven movies. Surely you can see yourself watching one of them at least. Check the HBO schedule for times or play or hit the streamer to watch anytime. It’s okay, you don’t have to thank us. We’ll check back next month for a few more. Enjoy!
