The end of May usually means a few things: school is ending, work vacations are happening and there are tons of movies to watch at the theater.
And while you could spend some hard-earned cash watching the latest Mission: Impossible movie, wouldn’t you rather stay in and watch a good movie for far less?
If your answer is “yes” and you have an HBO Max subscription, then you’re reading the right article.
The streamer has hundreds of underrated movies just waiting to be discovered, and Watch With Us has selected three of them for your weekend viewing pleasure.
‘Maggie’ (2015)
Before Pedro Pascal’s Joel guided Bella Ramsey’s Ellie through the zombie apocalypse in the hit HBO series The Last of Us, Arnold Schwarzenegger did something similar in the 2015 movie Maggie. He stars as Wade Vogel, the father of the titular character Maggie (Abigail Breslin), who has been infected with a virus that will turn her into a zombie in a few weeks. Instead of letting her go to the authorities, who will surely kill her, he brings her home, where he hopes to contain her disease and spare her life. But nothing can stop her transformation, and both Wade and Maggie will have to make some hard choices sooner than they’d like. Will Wade really kill his own daughter for the safety of mankind? And when the time comes, will Maggie let him?
When you think about a zombie movie featuring the star of The Terminator and Commando, you probably think it will be a nonstop action flick with excessive amounts of gore and violence. And while there is some blood and spilled internal organs, Maggie is primarily a drama about a dying child and how a father deals with his grief. Schwarzenegger gives arguably his best performance ever in Maggie, and the film’s ending is poetic, brutal and heartbreaking. Who would’ve thought Maggie would shed more tears than blood?
‘Cedar Rapids’ (2011)
Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is a naive insurance agent sent by his boss, Bill (Stephen Root), to attend an important conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Tim and his coworkers need to win a sought-after award to save the company, and he may have to resort to unfair tactics to make that happen. That’s hard for Tim, especially when he bonds with fellow agents Dean (John C. Reilly), Joan (Anne Heche) and Ron (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and he realizes that, by winning the award, they could all lose their jobs. Tim wants to do the right thing, but he also wants to keep his job.
Released in an era when The Hangover movies and Judd Apatow comedies reigned supreme, Cedar Rapids was a surprising box-office dud in 2011. That’s a shame, as the movie is very funny without ever being cheap or mean. As Tim, Helms has a dopey charm that makes you root for him to win, and the supporting cast, which includes Sigourney Weaver as Tim’s former teacher and current lover, is excellent. Cedar Rapids should appeal to fans of Office Space and Waiting since all three movies are workplace comedies that use their bland corporate settings as ideal locations for hilariously inappropriate situations.
Cedar Rapids is streaming on Max.
‘All the Way’ (2016)
The year 1964 was pivotal in American history, and Lyndon B. Johnson (Bryan Cranston) was probably the most important man at the center of it. As President of the United States, Johnson presided over a divided nation that was still recovering from John F. Kennedy’s assassination the prior year. In addition, the Civil Rights Movement galvanized supporters like Martin Luther King Jr. (Anthony Mackie) and detractors like Strom Thurmond (Randy Olgesby) and threatened to divide the Democratic party before the next presidential election. With a never-ending series of domestic and international crises, can Johnson find a way to unite his party and country and somehow win re-election?
Based on the hit 2012 play by Robert Schenkkan, All the Way focuses on one of the most consequential — and dramatic — eras in American politics. The film throws a lot of history at you, with the Civil Rights Act receiving the most attention, but it’s never overwhelming. It helps to have Cranston as your guide throughout all this drama. As LBJ, his performance goes beyond effective caricature and conveys what the actual man must have been like — and the extreme pressure the native Texas experienced every day of his two-term presidency. All the Way shows that, however chaotic you may think modern politics are right now, it doesn’t compare with what Johnson experienced in 1964.
All the Way is streaming on Max.
