The 3 Best Movies to Watch on HBO Max This Week

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” became one of 2025’s films that proved itself unforgettable. After premiering at Sundance Film Festival all the way back in January, the film remained in the “best of the year” conversation until the bitter end, picking up an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Rose Byrne.

Byrne is, of course, exceptional, delivering one of the most memorable, emotional and intense performances of the year as a struggling mother beset by incident after incident. But only praising Byrne does a disservice to the whole film that Bronstein cooked up, a thrilling, empathetic and sometimes torturous story of a spiraling mother at wit’s end. It’s a great movie — not just a great performance — worth revisiting.

“The Lego Batman Movie”

“The Lego Batman Movie” is one of the best Batman movies yet.

That’s not just because it’s hilarious, though that helps. This family film, directed by Chris McKay, may be more lighthearted than your typical movie starring the Dark Knight, but it still demonstrates a great understanding of what makes this DC character tick. The film celebrates his whole history, both serious and silly, with no shame for the character’s decades-long mythos. It’s one of the few films willing to tackle the Batman/Robin relationship, so core to the comics yet frequently deemed too implausible for film.

This is a movie that understands Batman and loves Batman, warts and all (much like the newly released “Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight”). Some of the mingling of the larger Warner Bros. IP threatens to derail the story, but when Batman, Robin, Alfred and Barbara are at the center, “The Lego Batman Movie” soars.

“Seven Samurai”

Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” is, simply put, one of the most influential films of all time. The action epic, which he co-wrote alongside Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, tells the story of a motley crew of (you guessed it) seven samurai, who agree to defend a village from bandits.

The 207-minute film features thrilling action and an engaging story, later riffed on several times over in films such as “The Magnificent Seven” and the “Star Wars” franchise (including a Season 1 episode of “The Mandalorian”). It’s a titanic act of filmmaking, making it easy to see how it got so ingrained in cinema history going forward.