Another month, another new slate of movies and television shows to watch on HBO Max. January is already long gone, and HBO Max subscribers are saying hello to what the streaming service has to offer for the shortened month of February.

This weekend, subscribers can catch up on new critically acclaimed A24 movies from all genres, like Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan's Swiss Army Man and Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade. The Hobbit fans can also rejoice in knowing that the third film in the trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, now has an extended version available to stream on HBO Max. And no one can forget about TV, where Search Party and Lovecraft Country have risen from hiding to become the most popular series on the platform.

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Search Party Puts a Fresh Spin on a Tired Trope

Before Only Murders in the Building led a trio of unqualified true crime fans to solve a mystery, there was Search Party. The series, starring Alia Shawkat in the lead, proposes what happens when a group of friends takes matters into their own hands to search for a missing person. The plot has been overdone to the max (i.e., Stranger Things and Pretty Little Liars), but Search Party lasted for five seasons, so people are clearly still interested in mysteries like this.

Search Party stars Shawkat as Dory Sief, a resident of New York City who becomes entangled in a disappearance case after setting out to find her missing college acquaintance. Reluctantly along the ride is Dory's passive boyfriend Drew, the show-off Elliot (easily the best character in the series), and actress Portia. While searching for Dory's missing friend, the friend group also deals with personal matters and other relationships, such as Dory's ex-boyfriend Julian who is also a journalist getting in the way of their investigation. The series is incredibly well-crafted throughout its arc, putting innocent people into morally ambiguous situations that set them down a path of darkness.

Lovecraft Country Combines Realism With the Supernatural

It's undeniable that Jonathan Majors is in for a big year in 2023. The actor will appear as the next big villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kang the Conquerer, in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and will face off against Michael B. Jordan's Adonis Creed in Creed III. But Majors has always been an actor meant to be in the spotlight, evidenced by his role in the HBO series Lovecraft Country.

Lovecraft Country, unfortunately, only got one season before being canceled, but it's a season worth savoring. The series follows Majors as Atticus Freeman, a man who goes on a cross-country road trip in 1950s Jim Crow America with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) to find his missing father. The trio has to face racism and hate crime in the segregated counties but also encounters supernatural monsters ripped straight from an H.P. Lovecraft novel. The series was produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, who both undoubtedly lent a hand to boost the supernatural and horror aspect of the show.

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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Questions Friendship and Loyalty

The third and final film in The Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, is a sequel to The Desolation of Smaug and a prequel to Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The ensemble cast returns for the final film in the trilogy -- including Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly and more -- to close out the epic saga.

In the extended edition of The Battle of the Five Armies that is only available to stream on HBO Max, the races of Men, Elves, and Dwarves debate whether to fight together or die as Middle-earth's fate hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, after securing the treasure beneath the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug, Bilbo desperately attempts to rekindle his friendship with Thorin, who has gone off the deep end. While less critically acclaimed than its predecessors, The Battle of the Five Armies is still a worthy conclusion to an all-around exciting trilogy in the universe of Middle-earth.

Swiss Army Man Is a Bizarre Buddy Movie About Friendship

One of the strangest additions to HBO Max's library this month by far is Swiss Army Man, an A24 film that pushes boundaries and embraces its outlandish quirks. The film stars Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It follows Hank Thompson (Dano) on the verge of suicide until he finds a corpse (Radcliffe) on a deserted island. He discovers he can manipulate the body as he would a Swiss army knife and uses it to guide himself home.

On the surface, Swiss Army Man might seem like a film full of childish gags for shock value (and don't be mistaken -- it is), but it's also an oddly beautiful story of friendship and what it means to be human. The film is also directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan in their feature directorial debuts. They would go on to write and direct the Academy Award-nominated film Everything Everywhere All at Once.

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Eighth Grade Follows a Week in the Life of the Average Middle Schooler

Stepping back from incessant flatulence-filled Swiss Army Man, A24 also knows how to hunker down and get serious. In Eighth Grade, it does just that. Directed and written by Bo Burnham in his feature-film debut, Eighth Grade stars Elsie Fisher as Kayla, a middle school teenager navigating her final week of eighth grade while also struggling with anxiety and fitting in with her peers.

True to her generation, Kayla spends most of her time making videos for YouTube and obsessing over social media, much to the dismay of her father (Josh Hamilton, also known as Lance Hornsby on The Walking Dead), who wants to connect with her as a single parent. The film also explores how Generation Z deals with mental illness, sexuality, social media and creating an identity. Eighth Grade has received astounding praise for its accurate depiction of Gen Z and the troubles of being a middle school teenager.