It’s the first weekend of 2025, and you’re probably too tired to do much of anything. I know I am; if I look at another firework or attend another party, I may just scream out loud. Instead, what I’m doing this weekend is staying in, logging on to my Max account, and watching some good movies.
The streamer has tons to choose from, including recent additions like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Juror #2. If you’ve already seen those excellent films, then the following three movies should be just the ticket to start your year off on the right foot.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
Captain Fantastic (2016)
We all share a fantasy of escaping from it all and living in the woods, secluding ourselves from the pitfalls of the modern world. But what if someone actually did that? What would life be like, not only for him, but for his family as well? Those are the questions Captain Fantastic asks, and the answers it finds aren’t exactly comforting.
Ben (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife, Leslie, made a decision years earlier to live in the Washington wilderness on a 10-acre homestead, far away from “normal” society. Through the years, the couple have six children, and Leslie leaves for a while to seek help for her bipolar disorder in New Mexico. After Ben finds out Leslie has killed herself, he decides to take his children on a road trip to attend her funeral. Now exposed to the outside world, some of the kids begin to question their father and their secluded existence.
Captain Fantastic explores issues of parenting, mental health, and life on the margins of society that few other movies even attempt to confront nowadays. The supporting cast, which features Agatha All Along‘s Kathryn Hahn and The Beast‘s George MacKay, is stellar, but it’s Mortensen as Ben who impresses the most. The Lord of the Rings actor earned a surprise Best Actor nomination for his performance, and by the end of the movie, you’ll be convinced he deserved to win the award.
Captain Fantastic is streaming on Max.
Gloria Bell (2018)
Julianne Moore is one of the most gifted actresses alive, and she had one of her best roles in this little-seen 2018 comedy-drama that’s a remake of an acclaimed 2014 Chilean film. Moore stars as Gloria, a middle-aged divorcee with two kids who likes to spend her nights dancing. One night, she meets a fellow divorcee, Arnold (Severance‘s John Turturro), and soon they begin a tentative romance that involves meeting each other’s children.
Complications ensue, as they usually do in situations like this, and Gloria realizes that love in her 50s isn’t the same as it was when she was younger. Even though her children are grown, she still has to be a full-time mother to them all while living a single life fraught with everyday challenges. Still, she manages to find laughter through heartbreak, and always finds time to hit the dance floor to shake away her momentary blues.
Gloria Bell isn’t anything more than a showcase for Moore’s talents, and to me, that’s enough. She’s luminous here, and whether she’s tripping her brains out in the desert or shaking her groove thang to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart on the dance floor, she’s never less than captivating.
Gloria Bell is streaming on Max.
Pulse (2001)
You’ve probably heard of Ringu, the 1998 horror film that pretty much put J-horror on the map and spawned dozens of imitators, remakes, and rip-offs. Most of them aren’t as good as that one, but there’s one that’s arguably better: Pulse. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s creepy horror movie melds the supernatural with technology in its tale of ghosts haunting people in downtown Tokyo via computers.
The unfortunate targets for this supernatural wraith are the young employees at a plant shop. After Taguchi is found dead, hanging in his apartment, his co-workers Michi, Junko, and Yabe experience strange visions and phone calls of him staring at his computer monitor and saying, “help me.” Soon, one of them falls victim to this strange haunting, and it’s up to the survivors to figure out what’s going on … and how to stop it.
Pulse is streaming on Max.
