Licensed movies don’t stay on streaming services forever, but the positive flipside of this is that the regular expiration announcements can serve as effective reminders to finally get around to the films that will soon disappear from your queue. HBO Max has a lot of movies leaving its library on October 31, but which of these movies should you prioritize?
The options range from horror films that make for memorable Halloween viewing to romances that will warm your heart as the weather gets colder to a pair of wildly different but similarly underrated DC superhero-related films. The following list should help you plan your HBO Max viewing schedules for October before these films are gone from the service in November.
The Films of Pedro Almodóvar
HBO Max added many major works of director Pedro Almodóvar to its service this past spring as part of the TCM Classic Movie Festival, but now all nine of his films still on the service will be leaving after October. Highlights from these include his breakout hit comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the family drama/ghost story Volver, which earned Penelope Cruz a Best Actress nomination, the Antonio Banderas-starring horror film The Skin I Live In and his most recent experimental short film The Human Voice with Tilda Swinton. For all HBO Max subscribers who haven’t yet explored the works of this acclaimed queer Spanish auteur, now is your chance.
Clerks
It’s hard to believe there was once a time when critics were hailing Kevin Smith as “the next Martin Scorsese.” Smith himself will be the first to say that he’s much more adept as a writer and storyteller than as a director, but it makes sense how Clerks‘ Sundance success got him hyped up by critics as the next big thing. Shot in black-and-white for a minimal $27,575 budget, this movie about retail workers colorfully discussing life, sex and Star Wars was vital to both the ’90s independent film scene and the rising mainstream visibility of geek culture. Smith’s follow-ups Mallrats and Chasing Amy are also leaving HBO Max in November.
Freaks
Dracula director Tod Browning envisioned Freaks as a love letter to the circus performers he grew up around. The studio, MGM, pushed it to be a horror movie. The resulting film ended up being a bit too scary for audiences in 1932; a whole half-hour of footage was cut and lost. What remains is a flawed, fascinating, one-of-a-kind film that inspires a range of emotional reactions. Circus freak shows were inherently exploitative of people with disabilities, and Freaks‘ portrayal isn’t entirely free from a sense of exploitation, but it also treats its disabled characters with humanity, empathy and respect, directly challenging the eugenic ableism of its era.
Lars and the Real Girl
In the 2007 dramedy Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling plays a man who falls romantically in love with a sex doll. It’s a premise that’s both wacky and sad, and one that Ray Romano’s character in the HBO Max original series Made for Love was clearly inspired by. What is truly impressive about the film is that it never becomes mean-spirited, forgoing any punching-down humor in favor of a surprisingly sweet story about tolerance, community and recovering from trauma. Nancy Oliver’s script was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, while director Craig Gillespie went on to direct I, Tonya and Disney’s Cruella.
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
Released in 2017, the same year Wonder Woman received her first theatrical movie, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women chronicles the sexy true story of the character’s creation by psychologist William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) and his polyamorous partners Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Rebecca Hall) and Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote). Angela Robinson directed the film in a very traditional “Biopic 101” style, which may have led some to overlook it in favor of flashier awards season fare, but telling a story this kinky, queer, feminist and sex-positive through such a traditional style is a radical act in its own right.
The LEGO Batman Movie
A serious argument can be made that The LEGO Batman Movie might just be the best Batman movie of all time. It might not be the winning argument, but the fact that this can even be put up to debate says something about how inexplicably great Chris McKay’s Caped Crusader spin-off of a toy movie franchise turned out to be. Hilarious and visually stunning in many of the same ways Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s The LEGO Movie was, The LEGO Batman Movie is also an extremely thoughtful examination of Batman’s psychology as a character, filled with deep-dive comic references and some sharp jabs at the direction of the DC Extended Universe circa 2017.
When Harry Met Sally…
Rob Reiner’s run in the ’80s was filled with one genre classic after another. After making stand-out mockumentaries (This Is Spinal Tap), coming-of-age stories (Stand by Me) and meta fantasy films (The Princess Bride), Reiner directed When Harry Met Sally…, a movie many consider the gold standard for romantic comedies. With a brilliantly constructed script by Nora Ephron and great performances from Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, the 1989 film is dated in as much as it never fully challenges Harry’s sexist heteronormative worldview, but its big laughs and realistic portrayal of evolving relationships still have a sense of timelessness.
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