This article is part of a directory: Best Movies Coming to Major Streaming Services in October 2022

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As fall finally settles in to give us some reprieve from the heat of the summer, it means another month has gone by. A new month means a new set of movies to come to each of the streaming services, including HBO Max. There are plenty of new shows and movies coming to the service this month. However, if you’re looking for something spooky for Halloween, there aren’t really any new horror movies coming to the service other than Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! which can be streamed on Oct. 18th, four days after airing on Cartoon Network.

While HBO Max is continuing some of their fall TV programming, there are a few original movies coming to the service too in the form of documentaries, such as Mama's Boy and Year One: A Political Odyssey, about the difficult first year of the Biden presidency. Otherwise, everything movie-related has already been released, and ranges from when movies were still in black and white all the way to movies that were released this year. There’s sure to be something new on HBO Max to spark your interest this month.

Mama’s Boy

Mama's Boy Documentary on HBO Max
HBO

The new documentary Mama’s Boy is about the upbringing of Dustin Lance Black, the activist and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk, Under the Banner of Heaven, J. Edgar, and more. The film is adapted from his memoir Mama’s Boy: A Story From Our Americas, published in 2019. The documentary features Black traveling back to where he grew up, reminiscing on the good and bad aspects of his childhood, but especially on his close relationship with his mother. Not only does it show how he grew into the activist he is today, but it shows his mother’s courage too and how she taught him to stand up and fight for his beliefs. Featuring interviews with Black and members of his extended family, along with a few other activists who know him, the documentary is sure to be a moving, intimate success.

Oliver!

A group of kids in tattered clothes in Oliver
Columbia Pictures

Oliver! is a musical based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Oliver is an orphan who lives in terrible conditions at a workhouse with owners who don’t care at all for the kids. He manages to escape this terrible situation and makes his way to London, where he is quickly swept up into a gang of criminals and thieves. A pickpocketing gone bad ends up with Oliver’s arrest, but before the court can deem him guilty, Mr. Brownlow, a local owner who had witnessed the crime, says Oliver is innocent. He then takes Oliver home with him and offers him a life there. The only issue is, the gang is worried about him talking and giving them over to the police. The movie was a great success, earning many different award nominations and winning the Best Picture Oscar and Best Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes.

District 9

Scene from District 9
Sony Pictures

Partially presented as a found footage movie, District 9 is a science fiction thriller where aliens arrive on Earth in 1982. In a twist, instead of coming to attack, they are actually seeking refuge and are all sick themselves. They are given a camp on Earth to recover in, called District 9. They aren’t very welcome to begin with, but as the years continue on more and more people believe they are stealing Earth’s resources from humans.

Related: District 10 Could Begin Filming Next Year, Says Sharlto Copley

To get them out of the public eye they begin plans to move them into District 10, but a field agent from the company who works with the aliens accidentally catches a virus and begins mutating into one of them, bringing trouble for him and the other aliens. The movie had several award nominations relating to the movie and how it was put together, from the Oscars to the BAFTAs, the Satellite awards, and Golden Globes. District 9 is a technologically stunning, intelligent allegory for immigration and the refugee crisis, using sci-fi in a sociopolitical way.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid battered down and taking shelter
20th Century Fox

The western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is loosely based on true stories. It follows two outlaws: Robert LeRoy Parker, also known as Butch Cassidy, and his partner Harry Longabaugh, also known as the Sundance Kid. With their hole-in-the-wall gang, the pair decides to rob the same train on its east and west runs, believing the second robbery would result in even more money than the first, because they wouldn’t be expecting it.

However, things had changed on the second run and part of the train was destroyed in their heist, revealing a posse that is after the gang to take them down. The pair, along with Sundance’s lover, now have to try and flee from them if they have any hope of surviving. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe, and is considered not just one of the best western movies of all time, but one of the best films ever made.

Call Me By Your Name

hammer-chalamet-call-me-by-your-name-2017-sony
Sony Pictures Classics

Call Me By Your Name is a romantic drama about a teen named Elio and one summer off of school. His father invites Oliver, a grad student in the same field he is in, to live with them that summer. The main reason is so that Oliver can get help on his academic papers. Though they aren’t very far apart in age, Elio first believes they don’t have anything in common and doesn’t spend time with Oliver, leaving him to his papers and anything else he wanted to do. However, the closer it gets to the end of summer they naturally grow closer, soon inseparable as a romantic relationship begins to develop between them. Call Me By Your Name is considered a groundbreaking LGBTQ+ movie from the 2010s, and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Satellite Award.

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal primed with a camera and shooting a crime scene in Nightcrawler
Open Road Films

Nightcrawler follows Louis Bloom as he lives by scavenging and the occasional petty theft. While trying to find something a little more stable to work at, but having issues because of his crime history, he runs into a group of people filming police pulling a woman from a car wreck. He quickly finds out they are filming it to sell to local news stations. He finds his next job here, getting a camcorder and a police scanner and beginning to chase down crime scenes to film.

Related: Best TV Series Coming to HBO Max in October 2022

After catching the eye of news director Nina Romina, and being told they are especially interested in more graphic accidents and violent crime in the more wealthy areas, he begins to take greater risks in order to get the shots. Jake Gyllenhaal is absolutely incredible in Nightcrawler, playing one of the creepiest humans in recent movie history, a man with such disturbed ambition that he'd do anything to climb the ladder of success.

Spotlight

The spotlight team in an office trying to solve the problem together
Open Road Films

Based on a true story, Spotlight is a biographical drama about the Boston Globe. Their Spotlight team, which was a group of investigative journalists, began investigating and eventually brought public attention to a large problem tying numerous Roman Catholic priests to child sexual abuse. The group goes through many ups and downs not only with the investigation but with personal issues as well.

The problem was largely covered up in the area, and the team managed to expose it and begin to put a stop to it, though the problem continues. The wonderfully acted ensemble drama won the Oscar and Satellite Awards for Best Picture, and remains one of the best films about journalism.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

The main character in C.R.A.Z.Y. with a lot of David Bowie memorbilia
TVA Films

The Canadian coming-of-age drama C.R.A.Z.Y. is all about Zachary Beaulieu and his conflicting feelings. His Catholic upbringing directly crashes with his newfound confusion about his sexuality, which also then causes issues between himself and his parents. In an attempt to save face, Zach tries to form a relationship with girls, hoping to fool his parents and maybe even himself, but he finds this even more difficult to deal with. It seems like now he’s going to have to decide between being himself or staying in his family’s good graces. The movie went on to win almost all the awards it was nominated for across many awards shows and film festivals, including the Atlantic Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, but is still unfortunately underrated. Hopefully HBO Max will change that.