HBO Max is a great platform to stream movies this holiday season. But what if you’re already tired of the usual favorites, like Santa Claus and anything featuring Macaulay Culkin?
What With Us has you covered. We’ve curated a small list of new-to-HBO Max movies to watch this weekend.
Gen Xers should tune in to It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, an absorbing documentary about the late music icon, Jeff Buckley.
Baby boomer music fans can relive their glory days by streaming Taking Woodstock, a sweet comedy about how the famous festival came to be.
And everyone should watch Perfect Blue, a ‘90s anime classic that still holds up today.
‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’ (2025)
Leonard Cohen’s haunting ballad “Hallelujah” wasn’t a big hit until Jeff Buckley covered it in 1994 for his debut album, Grace. That’s the song Buckley is still best known for, but there’s more to the late singer’s life than his haunting rendition of Cohen’s classic. In the 2025 documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, the director, Amy Berg, restores Buckley the man to the popular consciousness, highlighting how ordinary he seemed when he wasn’t showcasing his extraordinary musical talent as a singer and songwriter.
With the blessing of his estate, Berg uses pretty much every archival interview and song outtake she could get her hands on to compile her portrait of the artist as a young man. Buckley’s voice, at times sweet and angelic, in others low and brooding, is always there, but it’s paired with images of Jeff as a messy twentysomething dude who loved being a musician, even if he felt ambivalent about the rock stardom some thought was destined to attain.
It’s Never Over reinforces the myth of Jeff Buckley as a doomed rock god, but it also breathes life into someone dead for nearly 30 years. It reminds you of Buckley’s immense talent and charismatic personality, and makes you realize what was lost when he was swept away forever by the Mississippi River in 1997.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is streaming on HBO Max.
‘Taking Woodstock’ (2008)
Everyone knows about Woodstock, but few know how the iconic music festival came to be. Taking Woodstock provides the background of that incredible true story by focusing on Elliot Tabler (Dimitri Martin), whose parents own a small hotel in upstate New York. When he hears that concert promoter Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) needs a permit and some land to host a music festival, Elliot decides to help out. But neither man anticipates that the modest concert they’d help make happen would quickly turn into a cultural event that would forever define a generation. It would dramatically change Elliot’s life forever, leading him down a path of professional growth and personal self-acceptance.
Taking Woodstock is a fascinating movie to watch due largely to its subject matter. It’s inherently interesting to get a peek behind the curtain, and the film gives you a ground-level look at all the sweat and tears shed to make Woodstock happen. It’s also an unabashedly sentimental story of a grown adult, Elliot, who still loves his parents, even if they drive him crazy with their old-world ways. While director Ang Lee leans into the family comedy a bit too much at times, it’s never fatal to the good-natured charm the movie exudes throughout most of its runtime.
Taking Woodstock is streaming on HBO Max.
‘Perfect Blue’ (1997)
Mima (voiced by Junko Iwao) is a member of a successful J-pop girl group, CHAM!, who decides to retire to become a full-fledged dramatic actress. The career change proves to be stressful and soon Mima starts to buckle under the pressure to succeed. As she starts to hallucinate an apparition of her former pop music idol self taunting her, she begins to question her sanity. When several close associates are murdered, all the evidence points to Mima being the culprit. Has her fragile mental state caused her to kill those around her? Or is someone exploiting her vulnerability for their own mysterious purposes?
A cult hit since its release in the late ‘90s, Perfect Blue just gets better and better with age. The hand-drawn animation remains stunning, with several images inspiring filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream with Jared Leto and Black Swan with Natalie Portman, and its tortured pop star narrative remains more relevant than ever in this age of K-pop superstars and Britney Spears. Director Satoshi Kon isn’t afraid to get weird, but he never lets his artistry stand in the way of telling a good, nasty thriller that no one has quite been able to replicate in the decades since it debuted.
Perfect Blue is streaming on HBO Max.
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