Max once again lives up to its name this month with a ton of new movies for you to stream. Its huge catalog is one of the reasons why we think Max is among the very best streaming services, but of course the downside of all that choice is that it's easy to miss some really great movies. So we're here to help.
As you can see from our guide to everything new on Max in December 2024, there are dozens of new movies adding to Max's already extensive catalog this month. There's lots of good stuff there, including these three highly rated gems; each one has a very high critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and two are well-loved classics. The third is much more recent but no less deserving of your time.
The Shop Around the Corner
Score: 99%
Rating: not rated
Run time: 1h 37m
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
This is one of the greatest romantic comedies ever made, and the years haven't dulled its considerable charm. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, friends off-screen, star in what the New York Times called "a genial and tender romance" in its 1940 review – it's funny but never sacrifices the story for cheap laughs.
The Shop Around the Corner is a classic odd-couple rom-com, with Stewart as his usual genial everyman and Sullavan as a straight-talking, no-nonsense woman with little time for fools. It set the template followed by later films such as You've Got Mail, but it did it first and did it better with its tale of two colleagues who can't stand each other but who fall for pen pals that turn out to be – you've guessed it – the very people they think they dislike.
The Maltese Falcon
Score: 99%
Rating: not rated
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: John Huston
Often imitated, occasionally parodied but rarely bettered, this glorious noir movie features Humphrey Bogart as hard-bitten private eye Sam Spade in what the London Evening Standard called "the best crook film that's ever been made".
The famously hard to please critic Pauline Kael of The New Yorker loved it too: "It is (and this is rare in American films) a work of entertainment that is yet so skillfully constructed that after many years and many viewings it has the same brittle explosiveness – and even some of the same surprise – that it had in its first run." It's beautifully shot and beautifully acted; most of it hasn't aged, although the occasionally overlong bits of exposition lifted straight from the book wouldn't make it into a modern script. But that's a minor quibble about what's widely recognized as a cinematic masterpiece.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Score: 98%
Rating: PG-13
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Ian Bonhôte , Peter Ettedgui
For people of a certain age, there will only ever be one Superman: Christopher Reeve, who played the titular alien in four 70s and 80s blockbusters. But sadly Reeve's career was cut short in 1995 when he suffered terrible injuries in a horse riding accident – injuries that left him paralyzed. This documentary tells his story.
The consensus is that while structurally this is standard celeb-documentary fayre, Reeves himself makes the film something bigger – especially through his advocacy work on behalf of disabled people. As Empire magazine put it: "the film is a compelling document of a man who had special abilities in his own right, using his influence to change the ways the world views disabled people... its emotional account of Reeve’s life is a fitting tribute to a true superhuman."
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