Films that make you cry on HBO Max
24 films worth watching on HBO Max right now, with audience ratings and exactly where to watch them. Updated September 25, 2026
Your Name. leads with 8,5 out of 10, ahead of Modern Times (8,3). Ratings range from 7,5 to 8,5. The oldest, The Circus, goes back to 1928. The selection leans toward films before 1970, 11 of 24.
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Your Name.
High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other.
Modern Times
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time...
City Lights
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.
Casablanca
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
In the Mood for Love
In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
Chungking Express
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
Weathering with You
The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of solitude, he finally finds work as a freelance writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then, one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.
The Red Shoes
A fledgling ballerina falls in love with a brilliant composer, but the jealous head of the ballet company plots to drive them apart.
Love, Simon
Everyone deserves a great love story, but for 17-year-old Simon Spier, it's a little more complicated. He hasn't told his family or friends that he's gay, and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he's fallen for online.
La Notte
A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.
The Circus
Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.
Gone with the Wind
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
Limelight
A fading music hall comedian tries to help a despondent ballet dancer learn to walk and to again feel confident about life.
Three Colors: Red
Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog, and Valentine decides to keep it. But the two form a bond when she returns to his house and catches him listening to his neighbors’ phone calls.
Millennium Actress
Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.
Sing Street
A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes.
The Wind Rises
A lifelong love of flight inspires Japanese aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose storied career includes the creation of the A-6M World War II fighter plane.
Wings of Desire
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.
A Woman Under the Influence
Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.
Brief Encounter
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
The Young Girls of Rochefort
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.
Happy Together
A couple travels from Hong Kong to Argentina to revive their relationship but experience turbulence when both men's lives drift in separate directions.
L'Avventura
Claudia and Anna join Anna's lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna's disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.
What to know before choosing
Wanting to cry at a film is a very healthy want and very badly served by catalogs, which file these films under "drama" with ten thousand others. What is wanted here is specific: a film whose destination you know from the start and that you watch anyway. Sorting is by rating, because in this category a high rating marks a film that earned its tears rather than extracted them.
HBO Max carries two catalogs with nothing in common: the Warner library, very wide and very old, and the in-house productions, few and much noticed. A by-genre list almost always leans to the Warner side, which gives an unusually spread-out distribution across decades. It is one of the rare catalogs where looking for a 1970s film genuinely makes sense.
Frequently asked questions
How were these 24 films chosen?
They come from the TMDB catalog, filtered on audience rating and on a minimum number of votes — without that second filter, a film rated 9 out of 10 by eleven people would outrank a classic. No place is for sale: no platform, distributor or studio can enter this list other than by being well rated.
Which film in this list is rated highest?
Your Name. (2016), with 8,5 out of 10 from 13,018 audience votes.
Are these films really available on HBO Max in the US?
Yes, as of the day the page was built. Availability comes from TMDB and JustWatch for the catalog in the US, and the list is rebuilt daily. Streaming catalogs move constantly: a title can leave between two passes, which is why the page carries its date.
How often does this list change?
It is recomputed every day. Ratings move slowly, catalogs move fast: availability is what mostly pushes titles in and out.
Do I need an account?
No. Taro eira is free, asks for no account and no subscription, and the two-or-three-question flow works without installing anything.
See also
- Films that make you cry
- HBO Max
- Films that make you cry on Netflix
- Films that make you cry on Prime Video
- Films that make you cry on Disney+
- Films that make you cry on Apple TV+
- Films that make you cry on Hulu
- Films that make you cry on Paramount+
- Films that make you cry on Peacock
- Films to make you laugh
- Films that scare you
- Films that make you think
- Films to escape into
- Films to watch as a family
- Films to watch with friends
- Films full of adrenaline
How this list is built
Films come from the TMDB catalog, filtered on audience rating and vote count, then cross-checked against real availability in the country. No paid placement, no partnerships. How we choose the films.
Film data and posters: TMDB. This app uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.