HBO Max launched this week—a new streaming service combining the HBO catalog of movies and TV with the Warner Media catalog. If you’re thinking of signing up, I’ve painstakingly sorted through the library to find all of the car content worth watching.
I’m working with my traditional, loose definition of “car content.” Previously, we’ve featured reviews of shows and movies that highlighted or utilized cars in a unique way, so that’s all I’m looking for here. Don’t worry about it too much.
I imagine most of you are stuck at home burning through TV show streams—anything long enough to kill as much time as possible between work (if you’re working), meals, and sleep. So let’s start there.
Television
- “Adam Ruins Cars” – S01E03 of Adam Ruins Everything
- “Flying In Alaska” – S01E07 of Alaska Extreme
- Chernobyl paints a fascinating and grim picture of Soviet life with its cars.
- Motorheads is a fun variety car show featuring Tom Ford and Jonny Smith from those other car shows.
- On Tour with Asperger’s Are Us follows a comedy troupe as they go on their first cross-country tour in a big ol’ bus.
- Top Gear – Seasons 17 through 25.
- In Vice’s Special Report on “The Future Of Work,” the U.S. auto industry and the south’s political and economic reliance on those companies is featured.
- Watchmen does a great job of showing us what cars of an alternate reality could look and drive like.
Movies
- The battle tank in Aliens is just one of many explosive reasons this is one of the best movies ever made.
- Alita: Battle Angel has a sick scene I can only describe as “high-speed hockey on a racetrack.”
- Agnelli is a biopic that highlights the life of the guy who revived Fiat in the 1980s.
- 2019’s Anna features a (brief) Luc Besson car chase.
- If you have to ask about Armageddon, you have to watch it.
- The Art Of Racing In The Rain
- Bonnie And Clyde
- Casino Royale (2006), the best James Bond movie ever made.
- Cast Away, because why not?
- People forget Commando had a car chase, among other things.
- It’s Jay Leno and Pat Morita in a buddy cop movie set in Detroit! It’s Collision Course!
- Cold Pursuit is a surprisingly interesting movie about Liam Neeson as a snow plow driver.
- The fifth Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, asks—and answers—the question: “What if a Bullitt-style car chase, but with an RC Car?”
- Die Hard With A Vengeance does what everyone secretly wants to do in Central Park. And it’s the best Die Hard.
- For many of you, watching Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana will be like staring into a mirror.
- Eagle Eye features your run of the mill action movie shit, including the inevitable Crown Vic carnage.
- Can a dirtbike outrun a giant spider? Find out in Eight Legged Freaks.
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum features a horse and motorcycle chase filmed on the street my friend lives at.
- The Lego Movie
- The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
- The Lego Batman Movie
- Fast Five. One of the good ones, with the bank vault.
- Hobbs And Shaw. Not one of the good ones, but Kristen Lee would have you watch it.
- A Good Job: Stories Of The FDNY. Did you know Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter?
- Gran Torino is what an Oscar-caliber car movie looks like.
- I will never forget the 1962 Ford Anglia in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. It’s also nice that HBO numbers the eight movies on the thumbnail.
- Rutger Hauer is the last person you want to pick up on the side of the road, like this idiot in The Hitcher.
- The Island shows you what a Transformers movie would look like without Transformers, because Michael Bay used the same footage for both movies.
- The second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, features a more traditional car chase than the fourth.
- Eddie Murphy does a few car chases in 1997’s Metro.
- If you’ve never seen a Hollywood car bomb, Michael Clayton has a beautiful one.
- Bad guys in BMWs are no match for hot people with guns in Mr. And Mrs. Smith, a movie I watched hundreds of times growing up.
- The Nice Guys is one of the better recent unintentional car movies.
- North By Northwest is more about planes and trains but you still have to see it.
- If you just want a general soak in automotive Americana while watching a lovely, devastating film, Paris, Texas is available.
- If you want a good idea of the ridiculous trials U.S. military vehicles go through before ever seeing battle, watch The Pentagon Wars.
- Point Blank has one of the most satisfying depictions of dealing with a used car salesman ever put to film.
- Jackie Chan sure can fight his way around a car, a bus, whatever, even at speed! Just fuckin’ watch Police Story.
- I will fight for Quantum of Solace until the day I die.
- Rush deserves so much more attention. One of the best racing movies ever made.
- Saudi Women’s Driving School is a fascinating look at history in the making.
- Saving Pelican 895 shows you how the BP oil spill nearly undid 45 years of endangerment care for the brown pelican bird.
- Stuber is basically, “What if a cop kidnapped an Uber driver on the job?”
- Team America: World Police
- I was blown away by They Shall Not Grow Old.
- Three Kings is kind of like a western, but set during the first Gulf War.
- Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. This is the one with the thing in the Egyptian pyramids.
- Watch one of the funniest movies ever made, Tropic Thunder.
- Watch one of the best action movies ever made, True Lies.
- War Of The Worlds gives you a taste of the value of a working car in the apocalypse, so take note.
- Wild Hogs. (Just kidding.)
If you’re still not convinced by the above, Lucy In The Sky, Ad Astra, Ford V. Ferrari, and more are all listed as “coming soon,” too.
HBO Max also has a huge collection of Turner Classic Movies I haven’t seen much of, and it’s the same for the rest of the catalog. So if I missed anything you think should be on the list, drop it in the comments below.
