June 20 is the official start of summer, but no one told us here at Watch With Us. We’ve been taking advantage of our HBO Max subscription to watch some of the best summer movies around.
Aside from new movies like Mountainhead and A Minecraft Movie, HBO Max offers a slew of older titles that are as underrated as they are entertaining.
Those looking for some quality films to watch this weekend should take advantage of the following three underrated movies on HBO Max. With stars like Jason Statham, Jacob Elordi and Bill Murray, how could you not?
‘Meg 2: The Trench’ (2023)
Jaws will always be the best shark movie ever made, but right up there is The Meg. Ridiculously over the top in the best way possible, The Meg starred Jason Statham as rescue diver Jonas Taylor, who encounters a murderous megalodon while on a rescue mission deep in the Pacific Ocean.
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Both Jonas and the prehistoric shark are back in The Meg 2, and while it doesn’t match the original’s WTF energy, it’s still a blast to watch, especially during the summertime. This time around, Jonas must battle not one, not two, but a whole family of megalodons plus a traitor among his crew who wants him dead. What’s a heroic rescue diver to do but blow stuff up, slay some sharks and battle other sea creatures like a giant octopus?
Meg 2 is extremely silly, but it knows what it is and Statham is perhaps the only action star who could sell this ridiculousness without being condescending about it. He’s having a blast, so will you.
Meg 2: The Trench is streaming on HBO Max.
‘Priscilla’ (2023)
Everyone knows about Elvis Presley — the hip-shaking debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, the legendary rock and roll songs like “Hound Dog,” the late ‘60s comeback in Las Vegas and his tragic death in 1977. But how many people know about his first wife, Priscilla? Sofia Coppola’s biopic aims to put you in the shoes of a teenage girl who finds herself married to music’s biggest star and experiencing the highs and lows of being caught in a celebrity’s orbit.
Cailee Spaeny stars as Priscilla, who meets Elvis (Jacob Elordi) at an army station in West Germany. Despite a 10-year age difference, they hit it off and later marry, but Priscilla can’t seem to adjust to a high-profile life filled with drugs and infidelity. She loves Elvis, and he loves her, but his fame and his weakness for excess prove to be fatal for their relationship.
You probably know how Priscilla ends, but what makes the film so absorbing is how convincingly it portrays its main character. Priscilla is a teenager when we first meet her, and her world is colored by specific things and details — her hairstyle, the way her clothes look on her and the way she walks.
Coppola has always prioritized a young female’s POV in films like The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette, and her approach here works to deconstruct a public figure that most people have taken for granted. Priscilla Presley is more than just the wife of Elvis — she has her own story to tell, and Priscilla tells it brilliantly.
Priscilla is streaming on HBO Max.
‘St. Vincent’ (2014)
Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray) is your typical crotchety old man — he hates pretty much everyone he knows and isn’t nice to strangers. When his neighbor’s tree damages his car, he’s quick to demand repayment. But Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), his put-upon neighbor, doesn’t have a lot of cash, and when she needs someone to watch her pre-teen son Oliver (Jaeden Martell) while she works overtime she asks Vincent to do it — for a price, of course. But something strange happens: Vincent starts to like Oliver and teaches him valuable life lessons. Can this old dog learn new tricks and feel compassion for others? Or is he too set in his own ways to really change?
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St. Vincent has a plot you’ve seen before, but its stellar cast elevates the familiar material. Nobody can play cranky like Murray, and his Vincent is not that dissimilar to his other famous characters in Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers. The actor convincingly sells Vincent’s gradual transformation into a good person without overdoing too much on sugar, and the rest of the cast are just as convincing. St. Vincent is heartwarming in the best sense, and it will appeal to those who need a pick-me-up after a particularly rough work week. (That’s pretty much everyone, right?)
St. Vincent is streaming on HBO Max.
