September is ending, and HBO Max is preparing for October. Following tradition, HBO Max is taking off many movies this month to make room for more coming into October -- hopefully horror movies to get ready for Halloween. There are also many new television shows to catch up on if subscribers aren't in the mood for a movie. At CBR, we've compiled the best of what readers need to catch up on this weekend, from reality competition shows to action-packed thrillers.
The Hype Is Back for More Fashion in Season 2
One television series that survived as HBO Max was cleaning house is the reality series The Hype. The series follows the formula of established fashion design shows Project Runway and Making the Cut, taking several designers into a competition and putting their talent and skills to the test. Each designer is assigned various challenges, will be eliminated one by one in each episode and is ultimately hoping for a cash prize at the end. The contestants take their love for streetwear and use it to win the ultimate prize.
Season 2 of The Hype sees new contestants from all over the country showcasing their talent for designing streetwear for the judges (known as "co-signers" in the show). Co-signers Offset, Beth Birkett and Marni Senofonte return to judge the up-and-coming designers who will knock the audiences' socks off. Special guests are expected to premiere through the second season, including DJ Khaled, Law Roach and Angelo Baque. Additionally, Speedy will return to host the eight-episode sophomore season.
Living Single Is One of the Most Underrated '90s Sitcoms
Coming this week is all five seasons of Living Single, which aired from 1993 to 1998. The sitcom stars Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Erika Alexander and more as five friends who live in a Brooklyn brownstone together. The show centers on their shared life experiences, personal and professional, and how they navigate life's troubles while maintaining their relationships. The show struggled to be one of the highest-rated programs during its airing, but it's remained a fan-favorite and beloved sitcom to look back on -- to some people, it's their Friends or The Office.
As said before, Living Single focuses on six people living in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. All of them are single, and their households are broken up in the brownstone: four women live in one apartment together, and two men who have known each other since childhood live in another. In the first apartment are an editor and her cousin who aspires to be an actress. There's also her childhood friend who is looking for a man to spend her life with and is a little conscious with her money-spending habits. The last woman in the apartment is an attorney who acts as the mother of the group and likes to start trouble with the men next door.
Super 8 Remains One of J.J. Abrams' Best Films
One movie leaving HBO Max this week is Super 8, starring Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning as teenage filmmakers attempting to make a zombie movie. Kyle Chandler also stars in the film as a grieving father to one of the teenagers. The movie is said to be director and writer J.J. Abrams' love letter to Steven Spielberg, who also produced the film (and was recently revealed to have been in the running to produce Hocus Pocus). The connection can be obvious at times, with references to Spielberg's 1980s work E.T. and The Goonies. But sometimes, those references and homages make the movie all the better.
Super 8 focuses on the teenage filmmakers as they try to make their movie when a train derails and strange events begin to occur. The events can only be explained by aliens, which the children's biology teacher seems to have known about. The kids are the obvious highlight of the film, as all of their personalities shine through in the background of 1979. Their relationships and the mysterious entity causing all the mayhem in the town make it one of the best sci-fi films of the 21st century, proving that J.J. Abrams is a master at the science fiction genre.
Journey to the Center of the Earth Is a Favorite for Brendan Fraser Fans
There's sort of a Brendan Fraser renaissance occurring in 2022, with his recent film The Whale already receiving critical acclaim after its release at the Venice Film Festival. While Fraser has had reoccurring roles in television shows such as Doom Patrol and the canceled Batgirl film, many believed he would never return to acting like he once did in the early 2000s. But with his standout performance in The Whale -- a performance most people haven't seen yet but are applauding -- people are dying to dive back into Fraser's most iconic roles. One of these roles is as volcanologist Trevor Anderson in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is based on the 1864 novel of the same name by Jules Verne, a book that had previously been adapted multiple times in film. Starring alongside Fraser is Josh Hutcherson before The Hunger Games-era, Anita Briem and Seth Meyers (yes, the talk-show host). The film follows the first three as they travel to the "Center of the Earth," believing Verne's novel to be based on actual scientific account. What they find down there are things they would've never expected and discoveries that will stay with them for a lifetime.
Check Out the Scary Movie Franchise Before It's Too Late
The Scary Movie franchise has had its ups and downs. The fifth movie is one of the worst-reviewed movies of all time, but the first few films being absolute classics make up for the bad reviews. Despite it being just the right time for horror movies (and their parodies), HBO Max is taking the first three films of the Scary Movie franchise off the platform. This is every more reason to binge-watch the movies this weekend to get into the spooky Halloween season.
The Scary Movie films are spoofs of multiple genres across the horror spectrum. The movies and shows that are spoofed include Scream, Friday the 13th, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so many more. The first movie itself follows a group of teenagers who accidentally hit someone in their car and bury the body in the lake. A year later, they're hunted by a man in a Ghostface mask, killing them off one by one.