HBO Max has just about every kind of movie on its platform. This week, its best offerings include a gentle masterpiece from revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and a 1940s noir that still packs a real punch. It is, additionally, the streaming home for South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, which flew under the radar last year and deserves a second chance. Fortunately, HBO Max subscribers have the ability to give it exactly that.
Here are the three best movies you can watch on HBO Max this weekend.
“The Set-Up” (1949)
A gem of Hollywood’s noir-filled Golden Age, director Robert Wise’s “The Set-Up” is a boxing drama unlike any other. Based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March and adapted by former professional sportswriter Art Cohn, “The Set-Up” follows an older boxer (Robert Ryan) as he prepares to fight a 23-year-old up-and-comer (Hal Fieberling) backed by a powerful, corrupt local gangster (Alan Baxter). What he does not know is that his underhanded manager (George Tobias) has already promised that he will take a dive.
Unfolding almost entirely in real time across its 72 minutes, “The Set-Up” is a ruminative and tense, shadow-soaked drama about a man fighting against a world that wants him to put away his gloves and just give up. Beautifully photographed by cinematographer Milton R. Krasner and featuring a heartbreaking, against-type lead performance from Robert Ryan, “The Set-Up” is a must-see classic.
“Mickey 17” (2025)
You would not have thought that “underseen” and “underrated” would be two terms you could apply to director Bong Joon-ho’s long-awaited follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2019 thriller “Parasite,” but they unfortunately do fit “Mickey 17.” Director Bong’s whacky, surprisingly heartfelt adaptation of Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel about a man (Robert Pattinson) who unwittingly becomes a cloned, disposable worker on a space colony voyage received little attention when it hit theaters in early 2025 and was quickly forgotten by many.
Time will undoubtedly be kind to “Mickey 17,” though, a film that casts a strange, unexpectedly melancholic spell. Pattinson’s many performances as the film’s abused lead are comical and yet endearing. Even more importantly, they suit “Mickey 17,” which tells with maniacal glee a story about an everyday man who comes to realize that the bad things that befall him are not punishments for his own indiscretions, but injustices of the world’s capitalistic system. Both entertaining and necessary, it is far more of an achievement than its slight reputation would suggest.
“Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989)
One of Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki‘s many masterpieces, 1989’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” is a coming-of-age story the likes of which only its maker could deliver. Based on a 1985 novel by Eiko Kadono, this colorful animated adventure follows its eponymous heroine, a 13-year-old intrepid witch, as she sets out on her own to live in a big city with her animal familiar, a black cat named Jiji. Once there, she sets up a delivery service using her magic broom and starts to make friends and money along the way.
However, Kiki gradually starts to feel her spirit and magical energy dampened by the increasing demands of her work. In other words, while “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is filled with whimsy and magic, both visual and narrative, it takes its heroine’s coming-of-age story seriously. In doing so, it touches on themes of burnout and the sustaining powers of joy that not only make it one of Miyazaki’s best films, but one of his most touching, universal and relatable.
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