The best movies streaming on Max Australia

Sure, there are thousands of films you should probably watch before you go ahead and rewatch every Final Destination movie but coming from someone who did just that recently, you won't regret it.

Somewhat spurred on by the recently released Final Destination: Bloodlines, one of my first missions on Max was revisiting the film series that made me far too cautious about Death's ever-looming presence. Max has every film except the terrible fourth film (the one that cashed in on the latest 3D gimmick at the time). Having watched the rest of the series, I can assure you it's not essential viewing (but it is on Prime Video if you absolutely must). 

If you're concerned about the quality of the Final Destination movies, don't be. They have that special thing that only long-running horror franchises have: the worse they get, the better they get. 

A modern take on classic legal dramas like Twelve Angry Men, Juror #2 casts Nicholas Hoult as a man on the eve of becoming a father who finds himself in the unlikely position of being on the jury for a crime he committed. He’s the only one who knows for sure that the accused is innocent and must try to sway the rest of the jury without accidentally incriminating himself. Juror #2 is a tightly-paced and smartlt put together drama with a cast that includes Toni Collete and JK Simmons and a runtime that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Fergus Halliday

In a huge twist, one of the most unnecessary sequels of Hollywood history turned out to be one of the best Hollywood blockbusters last year.

A direct sequel to the 1996 film Twister, Twisters follows meteorology major Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as she's pulled back into the windy world of storm chasing in Arkansas. Wracked with guilt from an earlier incident, the clean cut Kate must form an alliance with a fast-talking YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) to survive the mounting storm. 

It shouldn't work but it does and thanks mostly to the phenomenal casting and chemistry of the main characters. 

The second part to Denis Villeneuve's Dune trilogy closes out the first book in the series, detailing Paul Atreides rise to power on Arrakis as the Lisan Al Gaib. Dune:  Part Two is a little longer than the first film, clocking in at a whopping 166 minutes but it's also more action-packed, thanks in part to Austin Butler's chilling turn as the vicious Feyd Rautha. 

The best part about streaming Dune: Part Two on Max is that you can roll straight into the TV series Dune: Prophecy when you're done. 

Christopher Nolan set such a high bar with his Batman trilogy that nothing in the DC Cinematic Universe has managed to come close except Matt Reeves' return to a broodier Bruce Wayne with 2022's The Batman. 

Running even longer than Dune: Part Two, The Batman doesn't feel almost three hours long. Robert Pattinson turns out a fantastic performance as a younger, grumpier Bruce Wayne who must channel his detective skills to unmask The Riddler (Paul Dano.) 

While you wait for the next instalment in Matt Reeves' Batman series, you can explore his grim version of Gotham in the Max original series The Penguin. 

A live-action Barbie movie sounds like something that would be parodied in Apple TV Plus's The Studio but against all odds, Greta Gerwig created a hilarious tribute to the controversial doll that's not without teeth.

When Margot Robbie's Barbie Prime feels sadness for the first time in her life, she begins to question her existence in the picture-perfect Barbie Land. With the help of a Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon,) Barbie travels to the real world, her Ken (Ryan Gosling) in tow, to discover the cause of her worries. 

George Miller's follow-up to 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road chronicles Furiosa's rise through the ranks in the Australian wastelands. Set over a decade, Furiosa see's Charlize Theron's iconic character played by Anya Taylor-Joy (and earlier by Alyla Browne) as she searches for her home after being kidnapped by the maniacal Dementus (Chris Hemsworth.) 

The DC films have been in a rough spot since Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy with two major exceptions: Matt Reeves' previously mentioned standalone The Batman and James Gunn's sequel to one of DC's most maligned adaptations, Suicide Squad. 

2016's Suicide Squad went through a series of reshoots to try and capture the light-hearted fun of the Guardians of the Galaxy series but failed to deliver an ounce of the same charm. So for the 2021 sequel/soft reboot The Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. enlisted none other than the Guardians director James Gunn to huge success.

The Suicide Squad brought back the few elements that did work from the original film; Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller; and surrounded them with an all-new cast of colourful characters like Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) and Bloodsport (Idris Elba.) Most importantly, 2021's The Suicide Squad perfectly captured the comic book's sense of humour, delivering some genuine kneeslappers thanks mostly to John Cena's foulmouthed antihero Peacekeeper. 

Peacekeeper proved so popular, in fact, that John Cena went on to lead his very own series, which is also streaming now on Max. 

Since the advent of streaming in Australia, the original The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been one of the most consistently difficult series to stream in full. Now, the entire series is on Max and hopefully its there to stay. In fact, there's an entire section dedicated to the Tolkien adaptations called the Middle Earth collection. Not only does it include all three films from the Fellowship trilogy (sorry, only the theatrical releases) but it also has the recently released animated feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.