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 25 best movies streaming on Showtime now:
1. Beau Is Afraid
Release Date: April 21, 2023
Director: Ari Aster
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Michael Gandolfini, Zoe Lister-Jones, Richard Kind
Rating: R
Runtime: 179 minutes
I could see a lot of myself in Joaquin Phoenix’s perpetually overwrought Beau Wassermann, who finds that the world that he fears is out to get him really is. It’s the worst-case scenario for the nebbish Jew archetype. Beau Is Afraid is like if a Woody Allen protagonist was the Griffin Dunne character in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, and the plot of that movie was pumped with existentialist steroids. It’s a paranoid, sexually repressed, labyrinthine odyssey with a schlubby hero—a bit like Under the Silver Lake, another movie that distributor A24 had no idea how to market to their clamoring, hyper-online, teeny bopper audience. And like After Hours, Beau Is Afraid similarly plays out like one really long joke. For his third and most ambitious film (I’m loath to conjure Magnolia comparisons), Aster leans all the way into the funny bone he was wont to exhibit in his seemingly ultra-austere first features, Hereditary and Midsommar. In Beau Is Afraid, Aster’s got a lighter, more playful touch despite the intimidating 179-minute runtime. Aster cultivates a uniquely absurd and off-kilter world, crafted meticulously by production designer Fiona Crombie, wherein character motivations are erratic, hilarious and questionably driven. In this strange universe (in which it’s never quite clear, or necessarily important, what the time period is), there is never a sense of safety for poor Beau. Even the idyllic suburban family home—which hosts a rehabilitating Beau after he’s hit by its owner’s truck (a bizarre incident which followed another bizarre incident involving invading hobos and Beau’s bathtub)—is its own well-tended house of horrors. Beau Is Afraid is very much a black comedy that utilizes well-placed horror techniques–Aster has a solid command of tension and loves to swing his camera to and fro to create a sense of vulnerability. Even scenes which purport deadly earnestness feel intentionally silly when one steps back and sees the bigger picture, in a film that can’t help but come across like, at its core, an intricate gag about the worst possible reality for a stereotypically paranoid Jew with mommy issues. Beau Is Afraid is more exciting than Aster’s debut and sophomore features, and not just because it’s more ambitious, slightly unwieldy and three hours long. It makes sense that a director like Aster would make his third film a sprawling epic–going so far as to incorporate impressive animation sequences of shifting media–after the head rush of initial acclaim. It’s admirable that it’s disarming, strange and deeply unserious, as if to rattle the critics who have called him the opposite. It also all pretty much works. It’s hard to say whether detractors of Aster, exhausted by prestige horror schtick, will be turned to the other side by Beau Is Afraid. It’s easy to continue to accept his tone at face value. But it does make you question if that’s what we’ve been mistakenly doing all along.—Brianna Zigler
2. Talk to Me
Release Date: July 28, 2023
Director: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Stars: Sophie Wilde, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio
Rating: R
Runtime: 95 minutes
Runtime: 179 minutes
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
3. Die Hard
Year: 1988
Director: John McTiernan
Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, Bonnie Bedelia, Alexander Godunov
Rating: R
Genre: Action
Runtime: 179 minutes
Die Hard may be the “stickiest” film of its decade—how many best-laid plans have been derailed by running across John McTiernan’s masterful actioner on cable? As Officer John McClane and Hans Gruber, Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman, respectively, steal the show in career-defining roles, but even Henchman #10 (Asian man who eats candy bar, or Uli, to his friends) comes across more realized than most lead roles in today’s run-of-the-mill action flicks. Tightly plotted with cleverness to spare, Die Hard welcomes the scrutiny of multiple viewings without losing its humor or heart. Yippie ki-yay, indeed. —Michael Burgin
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley
Year: 1999
Director: Anthony Minghella
Stars: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 179 minutes
Many doubted anyone could do justice to the Ripley novels on celluloid, but Anthony Minghella proved them wrong in spectacular fashion. Lushly photographed, exquisitely art-directed and impeccably timed (not a scene is a moment too long or too short), it intrigues and bewilders like Hitchcock’s best work. Career performances from Matt Damon and Jude Law, plus wonderful turns from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett—and the last time Gwenyth Paltrow was bearable. A frightful—and frightfully overlooked—film. —Michael Dunaway
5. Heat
Year: 1995
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd
Genre: Action
Rating: R
Those first watching Michael Mann’s L.A. crime masterpiece should view it with a clean slate—and from then on dissect it in great detail, with all of its separate elements pulled apart to determine how they eventually came together to complete such an intricately constructed work of storytelling. Anything in between would seldom do this sprawling (yet taut) epic justice. Exploring the concept of the cop and the robber on opposite sides of the same coin is a premise that pretty much every crime drama has delved into in one way or another, yet Mann manages to create the dichotomy’s epitome. By implementing, with surgical precision, an impressively pure vision of a grand, boastful and larger-than-life crime story, Mann delivers a culmination of his previously tight, deliberately stylized work (namely, Thief and Manhunter). With its hauntingly cold cinematography, moody score, terrific performances by a slew of legendary stars and character actors (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer) and—let’s not forget—the mother of all cinematic shoot-outs in its center, it more than likely represents the peak of Mann’s ever-shifting career. —Oktay Ege Kozak
6. The Wrath of Becky
Release Date: May 26, 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
Genre: Action
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
7. Serpico
Year: 1973
Director: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Tony Roberts
Rating: R
Runtime: 130 minutes
You could have a great debate about who had the best acting decade between Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, and while my vote goes to Nicholson (with Hoffman a close second), Pacino has a terrific argument. In Serpico, he plays the complicated figure of a detective who went undercover to rat out corrupt cops. His decision to turn against his own is as fraught as you might imagine, and he faces death at every turn from cops who’d love to shut him up. It’s an exciting street drama with the decrepit-yet-energetic look of urban ’70s films. —Shane Ryan
8. The Fabelmans
Release Date: November 25, 2022
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch, David Lynch
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama
Embodied by Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), Spielberg’s story is one of sacrifice and selfishness—at least, that’s how he tells it as a man in his mid-70s, wistfully looking back. Structured to simultaneously track his relationship with movies and his parents’ relationship with each other, The Fabelmans’ memoir flickers and jumps. Its drama is deeply intimate and the vignettes well-remembered. Whether Sammy is played by the young Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord (perhaps the biggest- and bluest-eyed child to have ever lived) and recreating The Greatest Show on Earth with toy trains, or by LaBelle, whose snide teenage edge makes the prodigy relatable, he has the same dissociation and intimacy to the events and people around him as a filmmaker does to his subjects. Even as a child, Sammy is both the main character of his life and the orchestrator of others’. Except for his parents. Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), the pianist and the computer pioneer. Their separation would influence some of America’s biggest blockbusters, but how they approached their own callings would dig even deeper under their first child’s skin. Williams, often dressed in ethereal whites and always on the cusp of succumbing to the vapors, embodies artistry set aside for family—suppressed in a way that is slowly killing her. Mitzi’s a flashing warning light as red as her fingernails and lips. Don’t bottle up your needs, creative or romantic, or it’ll lead to heartbreak. Dano stuffs his feelings just as deeply, burying them beneath Burt’s professional achievements: Innovation and ambition dictating the life of his family, keeping the trivialities that make it worth living at arm’s length. He’s as serious as the short-sleeves and ties that NASA employees wore getting us to the Moon, but with enough geeky giddiness that it’s easy to forgive him. At least he’s doing what he loves. One of The Fabelmans’ greatest pleasures is its devotion to the filmmaking process and its playful relationship to putting that process through the paces. Sammy, running off to his room after another hard day of growing up, finds the same beauty in his snapshots of the everyday as we do when Spielberg presents them to us throughout Sammy’s life. A procession of delinquent shopping carts, blown through the intersection by a tornado. Sammy’s tipsy mom dancing in the headlights, her translucent nightgown revealing her to her children, seated around the campsite’s fire, as a woman. These are the images that make up a life, the touchstone sounds (rattling, misaligned wheels on asphalt) and shadows (the dark curves of leg beneath gauzy fabric) that linger over the decades. As Sammy discovers—-on his own and with conversations with his sister (Julia Butters), bully (Sam Rechner) and two scene-stealing old-timers of the industry (Judd Hirsch’s great-uncle Boris and David Lynch’s phenomenal John Ford)–observing your own life not just as someone living it, but as an artist intent on using it, is a lonely way to go. But sometimes you don’t have a choice. There is a terrible cost to dedicating your life to something, an understanding that everything and everyone else is inherently bumped down on your list of priorities. Even in The Fabelmans’ most meandering digressions, Spielberg is reckoning with the central contradiction of his medium. How can someone who sweats over his own memories, frame by frame, be at a remove from them? How can someone be anything but a perfectionist workaholic when they know they’re shutting out their loved ones in favor of their craft? It’d be disrespectful to those left behind if you gave your art anything but your best shot. The Fabelmans makes the bargain look painful, self-centered and utterly joyful—a genius embracing his regrets and in so doing, reminding us of how lucky we are that we all pay some version of this price, for ourselves and for one another.–Jacob Oller
9. Trading Places
Year: 1983
Director: John Landis
A biting take on the The Prince and the Pauper story as filtered through the prism of the Decade of Greed, Trading Places stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as, respectively, high class broker Louis Winthorpe III and homeless street vagrant Billy Ray Valentine. As part of a “nurture vs. nature” experiment by the Duke Brothers, two wealthy, yet unscrupulous business magnates, Louis and Billy end up abruptly, per the title, trading places on the social ladder. The Dukes frame Louis for drug dealing, resulting in him losing both his job and his girlfriend, and then bail Billy out of jail and provide him with Louis’ old job and high-class apartment. Once Billy and Louis discover this deception, they launch a plan for vengeance. Featuring both Murphy and Aykroyd at the top of their game, Trading Places represents a prime example of the kind of smart, yet decidedly un-PC comedies that could only exist at a certain point in the ’80s (Aykroyd’s blackface-heavy disguise in one scene, for example, would never fly in today’s market). A stone-cold ’80s classic if there ever was one. —Mark Rozeman
10. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
Year: 2023
Director: William Friedkin
Stars: Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Lance Reddick, Kiefer Sutherland, Monica Raymund
Rating: TV-14
Genre: Drama
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
11. Support the Girls
Year: 2018
Director: Andrew Bujalski
Stars: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shayna McHayle, Brooklyn Decker
Rating: R
Runtime: 90 minutes
As Hooters fades more and more from the American consciousness, locations closing everywhere and the urges of its typical past patrons transmogrified into more sinister, shadier proclamations online, the concept of the “breastaurant,” a bygone signifier once as prevalent off highways as a Cracker Barrel, provides for yet another sign of service industry jobs in decline—and a perfect subject for Andrew Bujalski, a filmmaker emerging as America’s great bard of the working class. Over the course of one harrowing day at Double Whammies, Manager Lisa Conroy (Regina Hall, bastion) goes about her run-of-the-mill duties—standing up to volatile customers, training new waitresses, dealing with a seemingly inept cable guy—in addition to organizing a car wash fundraiser for an employee and her shitty boyfriend, serving as whipping girl to the restaurant’s shitty owner (James LeGros, male insecurity personified) and generally navigating the exhausting reality of what her job is and what it represents. Isn’t she better than this? Bujalski, wonderfully, answers “no,” because she’s very good at her job, and her staff adores her—led by magnanimous performances from Haley Lu Richardson and rapper/artist Junglepussy—and work is work is work. And what are any of us supposed to do when increasingly the fruits of our labor are taken from us, devalued or dragged through the street, squashed or screamed into oblivion, our jobs both defining us and dooming us to a lack of any real definition? Support the Girls understands the everyday pain of those contradictions, without judgment standing by our side, patting us on the back. One has to do what one has to do anymore. —Dom Sinacola
12. Aftersun
Year: 2022
Director: Charlotte Wells
Stars: Paul Mescal, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sally Messham
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Parents and children can develop a sixth sense about each other—or, at very least, they can attune some of their five basic senses to each other’s wavelengths without even trying, and those sensitivities sometimes linger. Aftersun communicates its understanding of this connection right away. When Calum (Paul Mescal), a young father on vacation with his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Francesca Corio), pauses before leaving her alone for a moment, even though he’s out of her sight, she can hear his hesitation. She assures him it’s fine to leave her. Calum’s uncertainty makes sense. Gradually, the movie reveals the basics of their relationship: Sophie’s parents are divorced, seemingly amicably, at least by this point. Sophie lives with her mother in Scotland. Calum lives in London, and doesn’t see her as often as either of them might like. Now they are on end-of-summer holiday in Turkey, at a resort hotel, though Calum can’t afford the all-inclusive passes that would get them unlimited food, drink or whatever else. The pair of them get along—though, as with the friendliness of the divorced co-parents, you get the sense that this may not have always been the case. The time, based on Sophie’s “No Fear” baseball cap and the later-period Britpop that appears on the diegetic soundtrack (“Tender” by Blur; “Road Rage” by Catatonia), the very late ’90s. Eventually, flashes of Sophie as an adult, played by Celia Rowlson-Hall, make it clear that she is remembering this trip, with the help of some home videos we see her taking at the time, and rewatching later. I hesitate to reveal even these minor details, not because Aftersun is full of twists and turns, but because writer/director Charlotte Wells lets this memoir-like movie unfold with such impossible loveliness—and then, as it goes on, with something ineffably anxious beneath the surface. The movie is mostly Sophie’s her point of view, but sometimes Wells follows Calum away from his daughter’s eyes. Are we seeing the truth of those moments, or Sophie’s attempt to reconstruct them years later? Aftersun doesn’t fuss around too much with underlining these ambiguities, though it does use some of its pop songs to comment directly on the action in ways that are at once rapturous and goofily literal, which may be the movie’s way of keeping in touch with its inner tween. Yet Sophie can’t live in that 11-year-old’s memories forever. We see her turning them over in her head, and the movie itself pulls off a devastating flip, from low-key, observant idyll to something profoundly moving about the closeness and distance that can develop in families, sometimes at the same time. In its gentle, modest way, Aftersun might well break your heart.—Jesse Hassenger
13. Past Lives
Release Date: June 2, 2023
Director: Celine Song
Stars: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 106 minutes
Named partially for inyun—a Korean concept encompassing fate, intention and consequence, like a reincarnation-bridging butterfly effect—Past Lives’ bittersweet romance brings to mind Longfellow’s ships passing in the night. Not because the decades-spanning relationship between Greta Lee’s Nora and Teo Yoo’s Hae Sung is inconsequential, but because it is consequential in spite of its briefness and its emotional opacity. It reminds us that it is possible to encounter magic, conjured by the flow of everyday actions, when we pass people multiple times along our lives’ intertwining rivers. It reminds us that tethering your life to someone else’s to brave the current together is an act of defiant perseverance. Drawing from a long tradition of yearning romances, while showcasing debut writer/director Celine Song’s unique abilities with precise writing and delicate scene-crafting, Past Lives flows from decade to decade with ease, encompassing immigration, coming-of-age, and creative and romantic ennui—only to reach a heartrending acceptance of our exquisite inability to have it all. Nora isn’t really caught between East and West, just as she is never really caught between her childhood crush Hae Sung and her husband Arthur (John Magaro). Whenever we meet her—whether as a kid, about to leave Hae Sung and Korea behind, or as a twentysomething connecting with him on Skype, or as a married woman hosting his visit to New York—she’s made her choices, or has had them made for her. Song’s strongest thematic thrust as she navigates the film’s three acts—spanning Nora’s childhood, loneliness, reconnection, loss and re-reconnection—is that this isn’t exceptional. Drawing from her own experience and a keen sense of psychology, Song writes clever, contained, jewel box conversations. They can have the hesitant, rekindling awkwardness of Yi Yi, or—thanks to an effective use of hairstyling and wardrobe (as well as the posture and demeanor of its leads)—the ambling melancholy of Richard Linklater’s meditations on time’s passage. But they all allow Lee and Yoo (both in star-making performances) quiet depth. Past Lives is a powerful and delicate debut, a beautiful necklace strung with crystalized memories. Its ideas on love and time, and how one impacts the other, are simple and sear across your heart. It is about all the potential people we could have been, and how none of them matter as much as the person we are—and the fool’s errand of trying to figure out what we’d be if we cobbled ourselves together differently. Those possibilities are best left in the past. Besides announcing Song as a brilliant observer of dialogue, interaction, and tone, Past Lives is a strikingly romantic movie about what composes our lives. We are the decisions we make, and the decisions others make for us. But we are also the collection of connections we make, living ship’s logs, dutifully recorded. Each repeat encounter is a minor miracle, and every first encounter has that potential. And there can be love in each, however brief.—Jacob Oller
14. The Truman Show
Year: 1998
Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Jim carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Peter Weir’s delightful, hilarious The Truman Show wouldn’t get made anymore. It’s a star-studded event film centered around a simple and dystopian premise: Jim Carrey’s eponymous character has unwittingly been raised from birth as a reality TV star and only now has begun to suspect that everybody in his life is a hired actor. Carrey’s clear-eyed acting is worlds away from the zany roles that catapulted him to fame a few short years prior, though, as was typically the case with Carrey roles in the ’90s, copious amounts of special effects work go toward creating a believable simulated reality for Carrey’s endearing everyman to be trapped within. The heartfelt monologues and devastating revelations as he fights to escape his gilded cage shine all the brighter for it. The fight to break away from control, from a sanitized and curated existence dictated by a literal white father figure in the sky, rings alarmingly two decades years later, when social media has made performative brand managers of us all. Truman is an unlikely and often hapless hero in his own story, but his eventual hijacking of his own narrative—and his final defiance of his literal and figurative creator figure—form one of the most heroic cinematic arcs of the last 20 years. —Kenneth Lowe
15. Bitch Ass
Year: 2022
Director: Bill Posley
Stars: Sheaun McKinney, Teon Kelley, Tunde Laleye, Kelsey Caesar, Me’lisa Sellers, Belle Guillory, A-F-R-O, Jarvis Denman Jr., Eric Wright, Tony Todd
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Who better than Tony Todd to serve as host, Crypt Keeper style, for Bill Posley’s feature debut Bitch Ass? “The first Black serial killer to don a mask” is how Todd describes the title figure in his distinguishing voice, all rasping bass and soul-scraping dread. Think of the movie as an extended segment in a Tales From the Hood anthology, and you’ll be on Posley’s wavelength: Gang leader Spade (Sheaun McKinney) sends four initiates—Cricket (Belle Guillory), Moo (A-F-R-O), Tuck (Kelsey Caesar), and Q (Teon Kelley)—to break into a dark dusty house occupied by Cecil (Tunde Laleye), now living on his own after his grandma’s passing. They don’t know, though, that Cecil goes by a different name: Bitch Ass, his nom de meurtre as an adult and his unfortunate nickname as a lad. If John Kramer owned and operated his own board game café, it’d look like Bitch Ass’s place. Some masked maniacs kill with machetes, others with kitchen knives, others with chainsaws; Bitch Ass kills with to-scale versions of Operation and Connect 4, where the loser gets fried to a crisp or beheaded. Posley has a gas imagining how favorite childhood games can be made fatal, and how those fatalities can be made extra splattery. Posley balances Bitch Ass’ moral dilemma with clever, exuberant filmmaking, best embodied with interstitial videogame UI title cards: Q, Cricket, Moo and Tuck are each given character portraits alongside Bitch Ass, indicating their status, alive or dead, as the movie pushes forward. It’s the kind of touch Bitch Ass would appreciate, a concession to his proclivities as a horror-film heavy as well as something to help the movie stand out among the 2022 horror crop.—Andy Crump
16. Showing Up
Release Date: April 7, 2023
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Stars: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Judd Hirsch, André Benjamin, Heather Lawless, Amanda Plummer
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
Two years after her affecting First Cow hit theaters, Kelly Reichardt doesn’t stray from the Pacific Northwest setting where four of her other films take place. This time, she trades 17th century Oregon County for the present-day Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, where her exasperated lead, Lizzie (Michelle Williams), works as a day job. When she’s not working, Lizzie is crafting uncanny, rigid portraits of women in disjointed poses, whether in watercolor on paper or in tangible clay, the latter of which being the medium she’s chosen to showcase in an upcoming show. But before Lizzie can arrive at her big day, she has to navigate a whirlwind of chaos: Her dysfunctional family; the contentious relationship with her landlord, neighbor and fellow artist, Jo (Hong Chau); and a poor, injured pigeon that her cat, Ricky, tormented one night. In her fourth collaboration with Reichardt, Williams is better than ever. Possibly overdone in beleaguered, regular-woman makeup this time around, Williams still best showcases just how lived-in of an actress she can be in Reichardt’s work. Every sigh she utters feels pulled down by weights, her slouch hurts to look at; her exhaustion bounces off the screen and infects the audience like an illness. And in spite of how done-up she is in order not to look like an actress, it is primarily in the physicality of her performance and the candor of her dialogue that she is believable as Lizzie, struggling artist. There is never a moment where Michelle Williams slips through the performance. But she’s also surprisingly droll, with Reichardt and co-writer Jonathan Raymond penning a number of lines made comic in Williams’ perfect deadpan. Lizzie strikes as the new apex of Williams and Reichardt’s consistently fruitful relationship, each installment since 2008’s Wendy and Lucy another rung reached in which the two have further hewn the synchronicity between artist and muse. Like Lizzie’s patchy figures, Reichardt’s camera fixates on obscured body parts and jerky zooms as it follows Lizzie working towards her opening night amidst a near-comical string of setbacks. However, the throughline humming through all the maelstrom of Lizzie’s life is creative insecurity. It comes across in how Lizzie carries herself, how she speaks about her art and how she speaks to others. It’s the light, minimalist touch of Reichardt’s atmosphere and her nurturing of interpersonal subtleties that engenders an overwhelming emotional intensity as Lizzie finally sets up her work on display in the gallery. One single, small row of figures in the middle of a large, empty space.—Brianna Zigler
17. Pleasure
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Director: Ninja Thyberg
Stars: Sofia Kappel, Revike Reustle, Chris Cock, Evelyn Claire, Dana DeArmond, Kendra Spade, Mark Spiegler, John Strong, Lance Har, Aiden Starr, Aaron Thompson
Rating: NR
Genre: Drama
Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure isn’t afraid to delve into the behind-the-scenes reality of creating mass-marketed porn—all without pivoting into a long-winded metaphor or cautionary screed. As such, the writer/director’s observations are unvarnished and exact, detailing the nuances of one of America’s greatest cultural tenets while adhering to an admittedly familiar cinematic premise of a rising star in a tumultuous career. What’s so original about the film, though, is its assertion that performing on a porn set isn’t an idealized fantasy or a one-way ticket to self-abasement—it’s simply work. And like all workplaces under capitalism, these workers are under-paid, under-valued and under-protected. Pleasure follows Bella Cherry (an astounding breakout performance from Sofia Kappel), a 19-year-old Swede who arrives in L.A. with the sole intention of becoming a porn star. But first, she has to gradually wade into the murky waters of the industry she’s entering as a total outsider. It’s vital to note the tremendous research and personal immersion that Thyberg undertook, making Pleasure a warts-and-all depiction of porn that still retains the humanity of all the players involved. While Kappel delivers an incredible debut performance, her co-stars are all actual porn performers, agents and industry workers. Much of their inclusion in the film is predicated on the real-life rapport forged with Thyberg during her foray into the adult film world. The filmmaker resided in a “model house,” became a regular fixture on porn sets and developed genuine friendships with several actors as a result. While comparisons to Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Janicza Bravo’s Zola, and even Tsai Ming-liang’s The Wayward Cloud all hold water (particularly in regards to Verhoeven’s cult classic NC-17 satire), it’s safe to say that Pleasure has considerably more in common with Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls. Both films radically demystify separate sects of the sex industry, focusing on the everyday existence of the average worker as opposed to relishing in sensationalism. Of course, if Pleasure preaches anything, it’s that our preconceived notions of the industry aren’t as black and white as we might like to believe.—Natalia Keogan
18. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Release Date: June 24, 2022
Director: Dean Fleischer-Camp
Stars: Jenny Slate, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann, Isabella Rossellini
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Comedy
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On gives us the opportunity for a delicate, whimsical and poignant escape that will make you feel stronger, taller and better for it on the other side. Who knew that a one-inch shell with shoes on would be our existential savior this summer? If you were poking around YouTube about a decade ago, you might have been witness to the viral introduction of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. The tiny shell with insightful observations, and questions, about our everyday existence evolved into a trio of stop-motion animated shorts created by director Dean Fleischer-Camp and writer Jenny Slate (who also voices Marcel). It took more than a decade for the pair, along with co-writers Nick Paley and Elisabeth Holm, to come up with a broader story that would bring their bitty big thinker onto the big screen for a worthy continuation of his adventures. What they came up with connects loneliness, grief, hope and Lesley Stahl. No prior knowledge is necessary walking into Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, because the first act sets up the broader origin story for Marcel and their family, as well as recreates the heyday of their Internet notoriety into the film’s overall story. Taking place in a lovely Airbnb rental home in Los Angeles, Marcel is a resourceful little shell who lives in the vast home with his aging Nona Connie (Isabella Rossellini). Marcel spends most days creating Rube Goldberg contraptions, out of everything from standing mixers to turntables, to navigate challenges like climbing stairs or shaking kumquats from outside trees for food. The rest of their time is spent watching out for Connie as she gardens and makes friends with insects who assist in her garden-box tending. As Connie’s gotten more frail and forgetful in her old age, Marcel is the dutiful and gentle caretaker who cherishes her presence as his only existing family. Like the shorts, the canvas for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is our real world, so Fleischer-Camp and cinematographer Bianca Cline are tasked with turning the mundane—a nice but regular old house—into a micro-playground filled with dappled light and ordinary obstacles meant to push Marcel’s ingenuity. Coffee tables become ice rinks, plant boxes become communal gardens and washing-room window sills become contemplative nooks for self-reflection. Their macro lens reframes everything we take for granted and makes them charming spaces for Marcel to navigate—and for our eyes to discover with fresh perspective. Of course, the cynics and the naysayers may accuse Marcel the Shell with Shoes On of being too twee or not cinematic enough. That’s ok. From the jump, a huge part of the film is allowing yourself to go to the tender places this movie intends to take you. This is an introspective journey that, if you let it, shatters the tiny boundaries of Marcel and Connie’s shells, connecting us all to the wealth of shared experiences, feelings and wants that take up essential space inside every one of us. That we can learn to embrace those things, with such vulnerability and bravery, from an anthropomorphic mollusk proves the true power of cinema.—Tara Bennett
19. Arrival
Year: 2016
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 116 minutes
Your appreciation of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival will hinge on how well you like being led astray. It’s both the full embodiment of Villeneuve’s approach to cinema and a marvelous, absorptive piece of science fiction, a two hour sleight-of-hand stunt that’s best experienced with as little foreknowledge of its plot as possible. Fundamentally, it’s about the day aliens make landfall on Earth, and all the days that come after—which, to sum up the collective human response in a word, are mayhem. You can engage with Arrival for its text, which is powerful, striking, emotive and, most of all, abidingly compassionate. You can also engage with it for its subtext, should you actually look for it. This is a robust but delicate work captured in stunning, calculated detail by cinematographer Bradford Young, and guided by Amy Adams’ stellar work as Louise Banks, a brilliant linguist commissioned by the U.S. Army to figure out how the hell to communicate with our alien visitors. Adams is a chameleonic actress of immense talent, and Arrival lets her wear each of her various camouflages over the course of its duration. She sweats, she cries, she bleeds, she struggles, and so much more that can’t be said here without giving away the film’s most awesome treasures. She also represents humankind with more dignity and grace than any other modern actor possibly could. If aliens do ever land on Earth, maybe we should just send her to greet them. —Andy Crump
20. Face/Off
Year: 1997
Director: John Woo
Stars: Nicolas Cage, John Travolta
Runtime: 139 minutes
One of the best action bonanzas of the ’90s begins with the murder of a small boy, and the following 130 brilliant, dove-dunked, borderline lysergic minutes do nothing to denounce the glorious shamelessness of those very first moments. Contrary to contemporary narratives, Nicolas Cage has always been a bit much, but as swaggering sociopath Castor Troy (and then as traumatized lawman Sean Archer), the Oscar-winning actor seems to realize that everything has been building to this Face/Off, that perhaps he had been put on this earth for the sake of this film, and that director John Woo–already an action maestro by this point with The Killer, Hardboiled and Hard Target–should be his Metatron, recording and overseeing this important time in the Realm of Humans. Similarly, John Travolta leans just as hard into his half of the two-hander, saddled with the added pressure of playing a bad guy who’s playing a dad who lasciviously stares at “his” own teenage daughter, encouraging her to smoke by basically flirting with her, and like most Travolta performances from the past 20 years, fails spectacularly to not make it weird. With a plot (FBI agent undergoes experimental face surgery to pretend to be super criminal in order to trick super criminal’s less-super criminal brother into revealing the location of a bomb) that makes way less sense as a Wikipedia synopsis than it does on-screen, Face/Off should be a disaster. And hoo boy is it ever–plus a landmark in action filmmaking.—Dom Sinacola
21. Rosemary’s Baby
Year: 1968
Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Rating: R
Runtime: 136 minutes
The banality of evil isn’t a concept new to the horror genre, but in Roman Polanski’s troubled hands, that banality is an unadulterated expression of institutionalized horror, one so ingrained in our society it becomes practically organic. With Rosemary’s Baby, the body of young Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is the institution through which Satan’s malice gestates, a body over which everyone but Rosemary herself seems to have any control. At the mercy of her overbearing neighbors (played by a pitch-perfect Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), her Ur-Dudebro husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), and the doctor (Ralph Bellamy) recommended by her high society cadre of new friends, Rosemary is treated as if she’s the last person who knows what’s best for her and her fetus—a position she accepts as a matter of fact. She’s only a woman, a homemaker at that, so such is her lot. The worse she feels and the more fraught her pregnancy becomes—as well as the recurring flashes of a ghastly dream she can’t quite shake in which a ManBearPig mounts her, its glowing yellow eyes the talismans of her trauma—the clearer Rosemary begins to suspect she’s an unwilling pawn in something cosmically insidious. She is, is the absurd truth: She is the mother of Satan’s offspring, the victim of a coven’s will to worship their Dark Lord much more fruitfully. More than the director’s audacious Hollywood debut, not to mention the omen of what New Hollywood would be willing to do to tear down tradition, Rosemary’s Baby is a landmark horror film because of how ordinary, how easy, it is for everyone else in Rosemary’s life to crush a woman’s spirit and take her life. The baby has “his father’s eyes” it’s said; what of the mother’s does he have?—Dom Sinacola
22. Hit the Road
Release Date: March 22, 2022
Director: Panah Panahi
Stars: Pantea Panahiha, Hasan Majuni, Rayan Sarlak, Amin Simiar
Rating: NR
Genre: Comedy
The debut of writer/director Panah Panahi (yes, son of famed Iranian New Waver Jafar Panahi), Hit the Road is a sharp and endearing portrait of a family painted through a series of road trip conversations–often veiled, openly lying, or disguised by ballbusting humor. His ensemble includes a car karaoke queen mother (Pantea Panahiha), broken-legged father (Hasan Majuni), quiet driver son (Amin Simiar) and his scene-stealing fireball of a little brother (Rayan Sarlak). And a cute puppy, which means constant pee breaks. Together, they traverse the dry and rural roads fulfilling checkpoints for a mysterious quest that becomes clearer and clearer as they go. Panahi dwells on lived-in conversational rhythms as much as landscapes, both beautiful and affecting in their own ways. Sarlak’s manic little squirt often pays his respects to the picturesque horizon, but every long and loving sparring match between family members contains just as much reverence. It’s this adoration for closeness–and the confidence and trust in your cast to simply sit and shoot them rambling affectionate obscenities for long, long takes–that makes the film’s bittersweetness work so well. When Sarlak’s hilarious antics (he needs to get his contraband cell phone back because of all the people who constantly want to chat with him) and his parents’ deadpanned one-liners give way to fears about loss and separation, familiar modes of connective chatter become coping mechanisms and then reverse course, sometimes in seconds. Panahiha is particularly potent at this, letting it all play on her face–while singing her heart out, no less. For his part, the incredible Sarlak gets a musical moment as show-stopping as Mads Mikkelsen’s Another Round finale last year. It’s a movie where anyone can be a punchline, but nobody’s ever the butt of the joke. There’s too much love at hand, and even a child’s goofy babblings about the Batmobile can be transcendent moments of beauty. The road trip always has to have an end, but the excellent Hit the Road promises that the journey is as good as the people crammed in alongside you.–Jacob Oller
23. Confess, Fletch
Year: 2022
Directors: Greg Mottola
Stars: Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Kyle MacLachlan
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
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
24. A Love Song
Release Date: July 29, 2022
Director: Max Walker-Silverman
Stars: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, Michelle Wilson, Benja K. Thomas, John Way, Marty Grace Dennis
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance
One of my grandpas died right before the pandemic. My grandma met someone in the middle of it. Her new relationship wasn’t well-liked in my family, but it made her giddy as a schoolgirl—finding another cowboy to look at livestock with, play cards with, to make dinner with. When I was little, she used to live in a trailer, driven out into the woods and bricked into the earth. I see a lot of her in writer/director Max Walker-Silverman’s sublime debut, A Love Song, where a widow and widower find a teenage verve for each other—weathered but not beaten in the sun of the American west. Faye (Dale Dickey) lingers at one of several campsites surrounding a crawfish-filled lake, waiting for Lito (Wes Studi). She’s not sure he’ll arrive, but as we observe her daily routine—listening to birds, making coffee and catchin’ crawdads as she spins the radio dial in search of another country tune—her uneasiness is couched in a kind of contentment. Walker-Silverman situates us the same way, with ogling environmental photography that takes pleasure in a rare flowery purple on dried brown dirt and Faye’s tininess in relation to the lake, the mountains and the overwhelming dark (or starry splendor) of night. The location is spectacular but, conspicuously, never as enthralling as the actors. When they eventually meet up, top-level turns from Studi and Dickey combine for a contained masterclass, a relationship that’s been nursing a low flame for decades. They’re shy, affectionate and oh-so awkward—spurred by nervous attraction and lingering guilt surrounding their lost loved ones—with an honesty that makes the most of a sparse and quiet script. A Love Song’s a brief and pretty little thing—less than 90 minutes—with the warm melancholy of revisiting a memory or, yes, an old jukebox love song. Walker-Silverman displays a keen eye, a deep heart and a sense of humor just silly enough to sour the saccharine. Dickey takes advantage of one of the best roles she’s ever had to tap into something essential about loss, lonesomeness and resilience. Her performance is a gift, one given by someone who knows about simple pleasures and those that last—how both are important, and how they might not always be separate.—Jacob Oller
25. Kokomo City
Release Date: July 28, 2023
Director: D. Smith
Rating: R
Runtime: 73 minutes
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