Showtime boasts one of the largest offerings of streaming movies of any premium cable channel with more than 500 movies available on demand. The channel not only has a massive library of films, but has a ton of exclusive movies that you just won’t find anywhere else. We’ve gone through its extensive catalog and collected the best movies available now.
And Showtime’s not just a cable add-on anymore: You can add a subscription to your Amazon, Hulu or PlayStation accounts or access it via Apple, Android or Roku devices via Showtime Anytime.
You can also check out our guides, some more updated than others, to what’s on other platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Max and Redbox, as well as The Best Movies in Theaters. Visit the Paste Movie Guides for all our recommendations.
Here are the 20 best movies streaming on Showtime now:
1. Hard Truths
Year: 2024
Director: Mike Leigh
Stars: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone
Rating: R
Hard Truths follows the daily routine of outspoken Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in the week leading up to Mother’s Day. Although the mentions of COVID are few and far between, there are remnants of that period of intense isolation left behind in Pansy’s behavior. She spends her days meticulously cleaning her house and pestering her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) about his lack of ambition while simultaneously warning him of the dangers of going outside. She feels everything in extremes and seems unable to sort through her emotions rationally, instead allowing these feelings to completely overwhelm her and dictate her interactions with others. Though she may initially come across as difficult, it becomes apparent that these are the actions of someone who is still recovering from a time where her interactions with others were few and far between.
Leigh is a dab hand at portraying nuanced and assertive female characters, and Hard Truths adds to his repertoire. Pansy is a thoroughly complex character, the likes of which actress Jean-Baptiste recently stated she rarely gets the chance to play. She’s prickly and acerbic, and Leigh forces us to sit with her nastiness for much of the film. She has bottled her frustrations for so long that when her emotions bubble over and her complaints are allowed out, they come in droves. She can’t stand “disgusting grinning people,” she bristles at any interaction with service staff, and she gets into screaming matches with strangers in car parks. If she isn’t calling her son lazy then she’s berating her husband or a sales assistant for daring to offer her any assistance and insulting their appearance in the process. All the evidence stacks up to build Pansy as one of the most unpleasant characters put to screen this year, but beneath this hardened exterior lies a woman so hurt by her circumstances that she doesn’t know how to move through the world with kindness. —Nadira Begum
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2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
Year: 1981
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Wolf Kahler, Ronald Lacey
Rating: PG
A near-perfect distillation of the excitement and fun of the radio and pulp serials of yesteryear, Raiders of the Lost Ark established Harrison Ford’s wookie-free leading man credentials once and for all (with an assist from Blade Runner). The film also raises the question: Has anyone had a more impressive, more industry-transformative five-year run than Spielberg and Lucas did from 1977-1982? —Michael Burgin
3. Chinatown
Year: 1974
Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
Rating: R
When you look at Jack Nicholson’s run of films in what I’ll call the “New Hollywood” era, starting with Easy Rider in 1969 and ending with The Shining in 1980, it’s truly astounding. There’s barely a dud on the list, so it’s really saying something that Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s crime classic, stands out among the best. The central mystery is bold for its complexity, revolving around water rights in 1930s Southern California—a plot that remains relevant today—and was undoubtedly an influence for the second season of True Detective. Like much of Polanski’s work, an ominous atmosphere works alongside the plot, shadowing every character in doubt and undermining the possibility of a clean conclusion. In Polanski’s world, the mere fact that a mystery is solved doesn’t mean there’s a happy ending, and his incredible powers of ambiguity have never been so strong as in Chinatown. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won the Oscar for Robert Towne’s original screenplay. Add Nicholson at his most essential, along with a young Faye Dunaway and an aging John Huston, and this is truly one of the classics of American cinema. —S.R.
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4. Zodiac
Year: 2007
Director: David Fincher
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch
Rating: R
I hate to use the word “meandering,” because it sounds like an insult, but David Fincher’s 2007 thriller is meandering in the best possible way—it’s a detective story about a hunt for a serial killer that weaves its way into and out of seemingly hundreds of different milieus, ratcheting up the tension all the while. Jake Gyllenhaal is terrific as Robert Graysmith, an amateur sleuth and the film’s through line, while the story is content to release its clues and theories to him slowly, leaving the viewer, like Graysmith, in ambiguity for long stretches, yet still feeling like a fast-paced burner. It’s not Fincher’s most famous film, but it’s absolutely one of the most underrated thrillers since 2000. There are few scenes in modern cinema more taut than when investigators first question unheralded character actor John Carroll Lynch, portraying prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, as his facade slowly begins to erode—or so we think. The film is a testament to the sorrow and frustration of trying to solve an ephemeral mystery that often seems to be just out of your grasp. —Shane Ryan
5. Black Box Diaries
Year: 2024
Director: Shiori Itō
All stories documenting the personal anecdotes making up the #MeToo movement are courageous. Speaking up about a painful truth, knowing that if society at large was going to listen with generosity or empathy, well, it wouldn’t need a movement to get these tales told. They are brave alliances between survivors and journalists, battling entrenched sexism with unrelenting professionalism and mutual trust. Black Box Diaries tracks a moving #MeToo story that brought the movement to Japan, from the crime itself, through the journey of going public and to the uneasy closure of its long war of attrition. Its devastation is familiar. But because filmmaker Shiori Itō is both survivor and journalist, and recorded her own investigation into her assault in real time, the documentary becomes a thrilling testament to her exceptional, tenacious agency in the face of a hostile world.
A bit like how Navalny saw Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny pursue the men Vladimir Putin sent to assassinate him, there’s a macabre adrenaline running through the first-person perspective of Black Box Diaries. Nobody has the same incentive to bring about justice than the survivors themselves. There’s also the same interconnectedness of sinister power on the other side: Itō’s attacker is Noriyuki Yamaguchi, biographer of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government maintained the same sexual assault laws for over a century. Yamaguchi’s political and police connections protect him from arrest at least once, and gets a helpful detective removed from Itō’s case. If all sexual assault cases are uphill battles, Itō’s is a Sisyphean conspiracy. And we get a front-row seat to the endless struggle. —Jacob Oller
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6. Big Night
Year: 1996
Director: Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci
Stars: Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, Isabella Rossellini, Tony Shalhoub, Stanley Tucci
Rating: R
“Sapienza” is Italian for “knowledge,” and this spirited and completely adorable ensemble piece is all about the gap between what you know and what you know. Primo and Secondo (Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci) lead a sparkling ensemble cast in this tale about a floundering Italian restaurant that’s on the brink of collapse because Primo (Shalhoub) is a high-octane chef who refuses to “give the people what they want” and insists on his integrity to the point of collapsing his business, while across the street, the hideous Pascal’s Italian Grotto, helmed by Ian Holm (who really shines in evil restauranteur roles) and Isabella Rossellini, packs ’em in with pure cheese (and I don’t mean cave-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano). Holm’s Pascal helps to kill Primo’s restaurant by persuading the brothers to spend their last dollars on a meal they’re told will be attended by jazz great Louis Prima. Of course Prima never shows, and of course in the meantime, dinner at the Paradiso that night is a life-changing experience for several people. Under its lighthearted, slightly neurotic exterior, this film has subtle and wonderful depths, speaking about foodways and the American immigrant experience, about the conflict between artistry and hustle, about sibling rivalry and family support, about food as a shorthand language for art and love and approval and moxie. It’s about know-how, and how it both is, and is not, enough. —Amy Glynn
7. Punch-Drunk Love
Year: 2002
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman
Rating: R
It may be hard to recall now that we’ve all rallied around his talent—allowing him to transcend the stigma of his Netflix deal while he still profits ludicrously off it—but there was once a time when the world doubted Adam Sandler. Long before the Safdies or even Noah Baumbach got their time getting tight with the Sandman, we have P.T. Anderson to thank for inspiring such hope. Compared to the scope of There Will Be Blood, or the melancholy of Boogie Nights, or the inexorable fascination at the heart of The Master, or the obsession and obfuscation of Phantom Thread, Punch-Drunk Love—a breath of fresh, Technicolor air after the weight of Magnolia—comes off like something of a lark for Anderson, setting the stage for the kind of incisive comic chops the director would later epitomize, and complicate, with Inherent Vice. A simple love story between a squirmy milquetoast (Sandler) on the verge and the woman (Emily Watson) who yanks him back to life, Punch-Drunk Love is as confounding as it is a delight, an expression of unmitigated, sputtering passion—sad and febrile and, most importantly, optimistic about what anyone is truly capable of doing. This might be as sincere as Anderson gets. —Dom Sinacola
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8. The Return
Year: 2024
Director: Uberto Pasolini
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer
Rating: R
The basic beats of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey are familiar to millions thanks to high school English classes the world over, but the things you probably remember about its story, which follows the hero Odysseus’s decade-long journey home from the Trojan War, are the most fantastical. A saga of angry gods and vindictive goddesses, larger-than-life monsters and powerful sorceresses, The Odyssey sees its hero face off with everything from a six-headed dragon and a giant sentient whirlpool to cyclopes, man-eating giants, and Sirens. At various points in the story, he is kidnapped by a sea nymph, his men are turned into pigs, and he spends considerable time on an island whose inhabitants essentially do drugs all day.
Director Uberto Pasolini’s bleakly lush The Return isn’t interested in any of that. This Odyssey retelling is restricted to the poem’s more overtly human final third, in which Odysseus finally returns home to his kingdom of Ithaca. The film chooses to excise almost all of the original’s supernatural elements, opting instead to tell a gritty tale about war and trauma that manages to feel surprisingly modern for all its spears and loincloths. Without the handy excuse that the gods (or a witch or a random monster) made Odysseus do it, this stripped-down version of the story forces its hero to confront the trauma that becoming a legend has made of him and the loss he subsequently left in his wake. —Lacy Baugher Milas
9. Personal Shopper
Year: 2016
Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie
Rating: R
The pieces don’t all fit in Personal Shopper, but that’s much of the fun of writer-director Olivier Assayas’s enigmatic tale of Maureen (Kristen Stewart, a wonderfully unfathomable presence), who may be in contact with her dead twin brother. Or maybe she’s being stalked by an unseen assailant. Or maybe it’s both. To attempt to explain the direction Personal Shopper takes is merely to regurgitate plot points that don’t sound like they belong in the same film. But Assayas is working on a deeper, more metaphorical level, abandoning strict narrative cause-and-effect logic to give us fragments of Maureen’s life refracted through conflicting experiences. Nothing happens in this film as a direct result of what came before, which explains why a sudden appearance of suggestive, potentially dangerous text messages could be interpreted as a literal threat, or as some strange cosmic manifestation of other, subtler anxieties. Personal Shopper encourages a sense of play, moving from moody ghost story to tense thriller to (out of the blue) erotic character study. But that genre-hopping (not to mention the movie’s willfully inscrutable design) is Assayas’s way of bringing a lighthearted approach to serious questions about grieving and disillusionment. The juxtaposition isn’t jarring or glib—if anything, Personal Shopper is all the more entrancing because it won’t sit still, never letting us be comfortable in its shifting narrative. —Tim Grierson
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10. Talk to Me
Year: 2023
Director: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Stars: Sophie Wilde, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio
Rating: R
Talk to Me, the feature directorial debut of RackaRacka YouTube creators Danny and Michael Philippou is fierce, fun, and steeped in youthful energy. It’s a film that’s willing to go to some truly dark places in its exploration of grief, death and what it means when we reach too far into the beyond, but it’s also never afraid to laugh along the way. Talk to Me is a séance story, specifically a séance story revolving around a severed, ceramic-encased hand with a mysterious history. These days, the hand is hanging out in the possession of some Australian teenagers, who break it out at parties for 90-second “talk to me” sessions in which partygoers can briefly commune with, and be possessed by, the dead. It’s a quick thrill, the kind of thing perfect for taking smartphone videos to share on social media, and it’s all so detached and laugh-worthy that people either think it’s fake or liken it to a more pedestrian thrill like a drug trip. But when teenage Mia (Sophie Wilde), who recently lost her mother, hears about the hand, she’s eager to see if she actually can reach the other side, where her lost Mom might be waiting. Her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) thinks it’s all fake, but she’s still willing to accompany Mia to a party, where a brief encounter with the hand will change both their lives. This is, even non-horror devotees will notice, a riff on classic séance narratives in which humans open a door that’s not to be trifled with, and let something dark and dangerous out. Talk to Me never tries to mask its roots in time-honored formulas, but approaches its tropes and recognizable story beats with an earnestness that’s both endearing and frank. And the horror, when it hits, hits with visceral intensity. Anyone who’s ever seen a RackaRacka horror short knows how well the Philippou brothers can craft a surprising scare, and those scares emerge with real ferocity in Talk to Me. At a time when we spend far too much energy trying to swing horror movies into one side or the other of a senseless binary, Talk to Me reminds us that fun and true existential terror don’t have to be mutually exclusive areas of storytelling. Talk to Me is as funny as it is frightening, as poignant as it is pulse-pounding, and the whole thing is rooted in a modern reality that feels like you could step into it tomorrow, which only adds to both the humor and the fear.—Matthew Jackson
11. Hell or High Water
Year: 2016
Director: David Mackenzie
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham
Rating: R
David Mackenzie’s film gets the balance between genre and plot so right that, after a while, I forgot I was watching a genre film and simply found myself immersed in the lives of these characters. That is a tribute to not only the performances and Mackenzie’s direction, but also to Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay, which finds seemingly boundless amounts of colorful human detail and unexpected humor in what, on the surface, stands as a clichéd narrative. Hell or High Water is essentially a cops-and-robbers tale, with grizzled soon-to-retire veteran sheriff Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his deputy, Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham), going after a brotherly duo of bank robbers: Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) Howard. Sheridan’s characters are so fully imagined that, combined with actors and a director sensitive to the nuances in the script, we ultimately respond to them as flesh-and-blood people. But Sheridan—who tackled the moral difficulties of the drug war with his script for Sicario—has even bigger thematic game in mind. Hell or High Water is also meant to be a topical anti-capitalist lament, being that it takes place in a west Texas town that looks to have been decimated by the recent economic recession, with big billboard signs of companies advertising debt relief amid stretches of desolation, and with Toby driven in large part by a desire to break out of what he sees as a cycle of poverty for his loved ones, to provide a better life for his two sons and ex-wife. —Kenji Fujishima
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12. The Mist
Year: 2007
Director: Frank Darabont
Stars: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden
Rating: R
A lot of the monsters and ghosts that terrorize a large and diverse group of protagonists in King’s work are excuses to deliver deft sociological studies on how easily members of a “civilized” society can toss out their polite and calm pretensions and let their reptilian brains, infused with fear and paranoia, take over in order to do horrific shit in the name of individual survival. From The Stand all the way to sub-par material like Trucks, there are many examples of this approach, but none are executed as efficiently and satisfyingly as Frank Darabont’s take on The Mist, King’s tale of a bunch of normal townsfolk gradually turning into a death cult when they’re trapped inside a grocery store after a mysterious mist that harbors a bunch of not-so-friendly monsters covers their town. The leader of the cult is the crazy, bible-thumping zealot played by Marcia Gay Harden, who’s mocked by others as she spews a bunch of apocalyptic bible verses but becomes a more and more credible voice, much to the chagrin of the more logic-based intellectual minority, as the creatures slither closer and closer to annihilating everyone. Thus a microcosm of our contemporary world is intricately mirrored, with a majority of weak minds ruled by fear, and the minority of levelheaded individuals powerless to stop the madness. Even if we were to take out the societal symbolism of the story, The Mist would still work as a terrific 1950s style monster flick that would have made William Castle drool. The shocking ending is a big plus or minus, depending on how much you like being traumatized by a work of fiction. —Oktay Ege Kozak
13. The Wrath of Becky
Year: 2023
Director: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Stars: Lulu Wilson, Seann William Scott, Denise Burse, Jill Larson, Michael Sirow, Matt Angel, Aaron Dalla Villa, Courtney Gains, Kate Siegel
Rating: R
Clout-chasing tankie and dimwitted conspiracy theorist Jackson Hinkle declared this past April that “Gen Z is pro gun.” He was trying to be clever, and should’ve thought twice. Gen Z is demonstrably not pro gun, the only exception being one that proves the rule: Becky, Lulu Wilson’s mononymous psychopathic anti-hero protagonist of 2020’s Becky and its new follow-up, The Wrath of Becky. Becky loves guns, but mostly because they do handy work of blowing away white supremacists. Hinkle and Becky wouldn’t get along especially well. Granted, Becky doesn’t get along with anyone other than her Cane Corso pooch, Diego, and Elena (Denise Burse), her unofficial custodian and perhaps the only human worthy of her respect. The Wrath of Becky picks up a few steps ahead of where Becky left off, skipping past the police interrogation that concludes the latter to establish her as a ward of the state in the former. We don’t have data on how Zoomers feel about mindless ultraviolence, but the wholesale slaughter of hatemongers is a victimless crime, particularly when orchestrated with a total absence of pretense. Directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, taking over for previous directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion and tagging in with previous writer Nick Morris to co-write the sequel’s script, keep the premise simple: Fascists are horrible; let’s go kill ‘em all. The Wrath of Becky is “about” meaningful themes and ideas and events as a begrudging and unavoidable consequence of basing its heavies on the Proud Boys; it isn’t actually about anything other than the sheer titillating pleasure of watching the bad guys get dead. Nothin’ wrong with that! It’s built to thrill and made for chuckles, offset by Seann William Scott’s looming menace. Scott fulfills the same function as James in Becky: The funnyman stepping into the role of the heavy, uncovering the grim, callous side tucked in that persona. Wilson’s screen presence has expanded greatly since Becky, and her physicality matches her up well against Scott’s straight-faced intimidation. They’re a classic pairing, like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, prey and predator in a reverse relationship: We know who’s supposed to be hunting who, but our expectations are continually upended with gory comedy. That The Wrath of Becky offers slapstick married with a kill tally and not much else is a feature, not a flaw.—Andy Crump
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14. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
Year: 2023
Director: William Friedkin
Stars: Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Lance Reddick, Kiefer Sutherland, Monica Raymund
Rating: TV-14
The warm yellow hues of William Friedkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial immediately transports viewers to the TV dramas of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. There is an undeniable draw that these sets–slick, contained, sparklingly clean—possess. Drawing you back to a simpler genre, where on-screen truth was something absolute and unable to cower in a dark corner. When the title flashes on screen in big, bold letters, these nostalgic impulses are being smartly manipulated. Over the course of film, Friedkin moves this story from a place of mind-numbing stability to shakier, amoral ground. Crucially, he understands that the courtroom drama, and the pictures they evoke, were never apolitical spaces. As such, he plays exclusively in the shadows cast from the court’s uneven power dynamics, making a case for every character’s complicity in the mutiny at hand. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial follows Barney Greenwald (played by a predictably steely Jason Clarke), who must defend Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy, who uses his slew of nice guy performances to smarmy effect) from charges of mutiny after seizing a naval ship from Commander Queeg (Keifer Sutherland). A small cast (including the late, great Lance Reddick as a judge who sparingly shatters the delicate proceedings with the boom of his arresting voice) is locked in the courtroom for the majority of the runtime, litigating the nuances of a story in which the facts—masked in excessive, uncompromising detail—slowly expose the ink-black rot coloring the American military. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial isn’t Friedkin’s most sophisticated directorial effort, nor is it his most advanced thematic musing on man’s capacity for evil. Yet it enshrines him as an actor’s director, one capable of coaxing out subtle responses that can, by decimals of a degree, change the temperature in the room. In the film’s final scene, where everything suddenly, horribly clarifies into absolution, we are forced to take stock of our complicity. So won over by the easy nostalgia of the courtroom, we have allowed true perpetrators to slither into the shadowy halls ensnaring the main set, exiling innocent people from this warm light in the process.—Anna McKibbin
15. Out of Darkness
Year: 2024
Director: Andrew Cumming
Stars: Safia Oakley-Green, Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Arno Lüning, Iola Evans, Luna Mwezi
Rating: R
Out of Darkness, the buzzy new horror film from director Andrew Cumming, begins with a kind of visceral allure even beyond the attractiveness of its high-concept. Lots of horror films deal with universal fears, of course, but with this film, set 45,000 years in the past, Cumming makes that subtextual universality into text. The aim is to deliver something that’s both a gripping throwback and a shockingly timeless exploration of human terror. Happily for horror fans, the film mostly hits the mark, and becomes a must-see genre film along the way. The story begins as a small band of hunter-gatherers arrive on the shores of a new land, hopeful that they’ll soon find a safe, bountiful place to call home. Headstrong Adem (Chuku Modu) leads them, convinced that he’s the only way any of them will survive, but his leadership has begun to feel a bit shaky. His pregnant partner Ave (Iola Evans) is getting weaker, his son Heron (Luna Mwezi) is worried, his brother Geirr (Kit Young) is starting to question things, and the resident group elder Odal (Arno Lüning) isn’t helping with his rising focus on superstition. At the center of it all, unsure of her role in this drama, is Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), a “stray” whom Adem has always seen as an outsider who should just be grateful to be among them. Good horror films are often works of deceptive simplicity, and Out of Darkness‘ script, written by Ruth Greenberg from a story she co-crafted with Cumming and producer Oliver Kassman, weaves that idea into its narrative. Basically, we’re just watching a group of people cross a large expanse of land to get to the mountains, where safe caves presumably await them. It’s the same opening struggle that’s been applied to Westerns and adventure films since time immemorial, but it works, and not just because it’s a timeless narrative concept. What you’ll likely notice right away is that Out of Darkness possesses a mesmeric, melancholy beauty, as Cumming and his crew deliver windswept plains, dense forests, and ink-black night sequences (some of them strikingly lit by a green-hued aurora borealis) that make the landscapes feel untouched, pristine and thick with possibilities both hopeful and dangerous. The whole film, from the acting to the writing to the production design and the sound editing, is dialed into the very particular vibe Cumming is trying to create with this story, a film that’s as much about survival horror as it is about the fears that still linger with us now, fears that our evolutionary chain will likely never shed.–Matthew Jackson
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16. Confess, Fletch
Year: 2022
Directors: Greg Mottola
Stars: Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Kyle MacLachlan
Rating: R
The decades-long path to making another Fletch movie, littered with A-list stars and directors, ended in a movie with a barely-there theatrical release, and a quiet shuffle over to Showtime a month later—seemingly a classic case of misguided franchise-building anticlimax. But maybe the tossed-off release of Confess, Fletch makes sense, because the movie itself achieves such a perfect nonchalance, without slumping into the contemptuous indifference of Fletch Lives (the Chevy Chase sequel that’s responsible for Fletch going into cinematic hibernation in the first place). It comes down to how well writer, director and underappreciated comic craftsman Greg Mottola uses Jon Hamm, an actor who previously had to confine his comic instincts to Saturday Night Live-and-adjacent guest appearances and certain Mad Men line readings. As shoe-averse reporter-turned-detective Irwin Fletcher, Hamm rarely breaks his deadpan, even when he’s suspected of multiple murders. Is he a feckless wiseass, or a deceptively smooth operator? The movie is less about answering that question than getting on Fletch’s wavelength—made all the easier by Mottola’s unfussy, Soderberghian direction. At a time when so much great comedy has migrated over to television, it’s an especially rare treat to catch a comic mystery looking like a real movie. Can we have half a dozen more of these, please?—Jesse Hassenger
17. Kokomo City
Year: 2023
Director: D. Smith
Rating: R
One of the most exciting non-fiction entries to this year’s Sundance is a radical, on-the-ground pulpit from which four Black trans sex workers talk their shit. Putting transphobia within and without Black culture on blast, Kokomo City raises a curtain to reveal four stars: Daniella Carter, Dominique Silver, Liyah Mitchell and Koko Da Doll. Actually, make that five stars. Filmmaker D. Smith, a trans musician making her feature debut, keeps the rollicking conversations and righteously indignant monologues barreling along in beautiful black-and-white as we laugh, cry and commiserate with women whose experiences and insights are only outweighed by their personalities. From the opening anecdote, about a client setting a massive pistol on the bed as he receives head, you understand that these escorts are braver than the troops. Laughing off nightmares like that, running through lists of friends that have been killed by the same men paying them, their resilience forms the sobering foundation of an overwhelmingly entertaining experience. But of course, queer storytellers have always been able to—had to—turn tragedy into exuberant art. Smith refuses to undersell this seriousness while her aesthetic refuses to bury her subjects’ pop under their oppression: If Kokomo City lacks anything, it’s certainly not pizzazz. The soundtrack, some of which was provided by Smith, offers up lyrical laughs, as do the score’s sudden shifts (dopey cartoon tunes play when a worker recounts what it’s like to be approached by a stereotypically macho would-be client) and the on-screen subtitles that chronicle its fast-talking, no-holds-barred interviewees. Carter (the undeniable breakout of the bunch, exuding charisma and eloquent thoughtfulness) compares trans women to broken-down cars that still rev like hot rods—under attack but, defiantly, all the more extravagant for it. Kokomo City follows suit: It’s got a handmade underdog feel, loose and close and raw, but every DIY frame is fierce. Kokomo City vibrates with that energy in part because Smith did…pretty much everything. In addition to directing and contributing to the soundtrack, she also shot, edited and produced the doc. With that level of auteurism comes plenty of personality and a tight tempo. Aside from magnetic subjects that would give Portrait of Jason a run for its money, there’s a kineticism of shape and setting—hopping between New York and Georgia, between apartment couches and shadowy cars, between homes filled with love and those where the loneliness reverberates, between reenacting blowjobs and blowing smoke rings—that churns your body as the political, racial, queer theories put forth by the women dance in your mind. Hilarious, scary, tragic and sometimes flat-out jaw-dropping, Kokomo City is a gripping and accessible dissection of modern life, told through a brutally specific point of view.—Jacob Oller
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18. Gangs of New York
Year: 2002
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Day Lewis, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Brendan Gleeson
Rating: R
This one split critics and audiences, but for all the times that the story about Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz’s characters drains momentum from the movie, Daniel Day Lewis’ star turn as William Cutter, also known as the meat cleaver-wielding Billy the Butcher, really ratchets everything up to 11. Every villain deserves a grand entrance. Not many get better than Bill the Butcher’s. Within the opening scene, we are treated with a bloody brawl. From there, the character’s disturbed psychosis only spreads until its reaches one of the greatest climaxes in Martin Scorsese’s career. Oh, also Daniel Day Lewis. Did we mention that? —Paste Staff
19. Extra Ordinary
Year: 2020
Directors: Michael Ahern, Enda Loughman
Stars: Maeve Higgins, Barry Ward, Will Forte
Rating: R
It can be difficult to organically thread “romance” into horror-comedy, broadening a film to equally weigh a third major genre, but it’s the quirky relationship fodder where Extra Ordinary ultimately displays its greatest strength. This Irish indie never truly takes the frightening side of paranormal investigation seriously–it’s a true comedy all the way, and probably stronger for it–but it’s the unexpectedly quiet, thoroughly human lead performances that make it memorable. Those come from Irish actors Maeve Higgins and Barry Ward as two unassuming but uniquely talented people, imbued with abilities that allow them to touch the spirit plane rather more easily than they’re able to socialize with living, breathing humans. Higgins in particular really owns the character of Rose Dooley, imbuing her with a good-natured and immediately relatable soft-spokenness on top of an aura of melancholy that belies her ability to bring closure to spirits stuck in limbo. The scenes the two have together contain a certain warmth, a feeling that two people have been brought together who complete one another nicely–if only Ward’s ex-wife wasn’t still in the picture (in poltergeist form). Nevertheless, it’s Will Forte’s charismatic performance as washed-up prog rock star/demonic cultist Christian Winter that is likely to draw more U.S. viewers to Extra Ordinary, given that he’s the film’s most recognizable star. He makes the most of the opportunity to play another deeply eccentric character in a career that has been full of them, although his performance almost feels like something from a different movie when compared to the more grounded focus on the relationship between Higgins and Ward. That central duo, and their emerging rapport, make Extra Ordinary a heartfelt, breezy entry that gets a lot of mileage from very few moving pieces. —Jim Vorel
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20. I.S.S.
Year: 2024
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) is the newest member of the I.S.S. crew, a biologist who joins NASA to develop cutting-edge organ replacement research that can save lives. She joins a team that’s a 50/50 split between American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, a seemingly friendly bunch who carry out a warm welcome celebration for the fresh recruit on her first day. However, during the merrymaking, a colleague offers a word of advice: To work in harmony, it’s essential to leave politics at the door.
Unfortunately, this tip becomes difficult to follow after the group witnesses something unbelievable. While looking down at North America, they witness a flash on the surface so big it can be viewed from orbit. And then another, and many more. High-ranking NASA astronaut Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina) and his Russian counterpart Nicholai (Costa Ronin) receive private messages from their respective governments that America and Russia have engaged in a nuclear war. They both receive orders to take the station “by any means necessary.” Delivering close-quarters anxiety, I.S.S. is unrelenting. Shortly after its early turning point, tensions exponentially escalate as these people size up if they think their former friends can do the unthinkable. Nick Remy Matthews’ intimate camerawork captures this constant proximity to potential enemies, and early scenes are rife with the captivating sense that things will go sideways at any moment. —Elijah Gonzalez
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