8 Best Movies on Showtime But Not on Netflix

8 Best Movies on Showtime But Not on Netflix

March 17, 2024

Share:

twitter
facebook
reddit
pinterest
link

This list is for the best movies which are available on Showtime but not on Netflix.

Looking for more to watch across all streaming services? That’s why we created agoodmovietowatch.com, to solve the never-ending frustration of not knowing what to watch. It’s a human-curated, algorithm-free guide to the best in streaming. Instead of recommending titles based on your past viewing, we recommend movies based only on their quality.

1. The Station Agent (2003)

best

9.2

Country

United States of America

Director

Tom McCarthy

Actors

Bobby Cannavale, Ileen Getz, Jase Blankfort, Jayce Bartok

Moods

Character-driven, Sunday, Sweet

The Station Agent is about loneliness, change and friendship. Sounds corny right? It’s not. The characters are developed, they have their own reasons for the choices they make and nothing feels forced, neither actions or conversations. It’s a small and wonderful movie about a little man that moves out of the city and his comfort zone when his only friend dies, moves to said friend’s old train station and sets his life there. From there on it follows his social interactions with a slew of people, the relationships he forms with them. Oh, and the little man? Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), who pulls off a great performance, albeit a quiet one.

2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

best

9.0

Country

France, United States of America

Director

Julian Schnabel

Actors

Agathe de La Fontaine, Anne Alvaro, Anne Consigny, Emma de Caunes

Moods

Challenging, Emotional, True-story-based

Directed by celebrated artist-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel, who won an award in Cannes for it, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the true story of the Parisian journalist and fashion editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who suffered a devastating stroke at the age of 43. Paralyzed almost completely by what is termed locked-in syndrome, his left eye was the only part of his body that he was still able to move. In a Herculean effort, Bauby learned to blink in an alphabet code that eventually enabled him to communicate. The film alternates between Bauby’s interaction with his visitors and caretakers (including painstakingly dictating his memoir, the titular Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) and dream-like fantasies and memories of his life prior to paralysis. The title alludes to this juxtaposition: the diving bell representing his final state of isolation, akin to a deep-sea diver under a bell, and the butterfly as a symbol for his blinking eye and the freedom he has in his mind, dreams, and imagination. Shot from Bauby’s perspective, we see what he sees. Be it his divorced but loyal wife and his family visiting him, or his old father, played by Max von Sydow, which is probably the scene in this fascinating movie that will make you lose it and weep like the rest of us.

3. Enough Said (2013)

9.0

Country

United Kingdom, United States of America

Director

Female director, Nicole Holofcener

Actors

Amy Landecker, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Barry Jenner, Ben Falcone

Moods

Easy, Emotional, Feel-Good

You know you’re in for a treat when you see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini heading the cast of a sweet and slightly goofy comedy. Steadily going beyond his persona in The Sopranos, you see James Gandolfini playing a role that his fans have probably always imagined him playing: a nice, funny guy with an endearing personality. Directed by Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said almost has a sit-com feel to it: a divorced single parent and masseuse, Eva (Louis-Dreyfus), is looked up by a guy, she briefly met at a party, Albert (Gandolfini). Upon finding out they have much in common, the two start dating. At the same time, she meets Marianne (Catherine Keener), who she becomes friends with and who cannot stop talking ill of her apparently awful ex-husband. You guessed it: it’s her new, promising date, Albert. Things get muddy and very funny as she starts to doubt, whether she has made a big mistake. Hilarious, romantic, and smart, it’s very much like we expected: a real treat.

4. Aftersun (2022)

best

9.0

Country

Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America

Director

Charlotte Wells, Female director

Actors

Celia Rowlson-Hall, Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal, Sally Messham

Moods

Character-driven, Dark, Depressing

In Aftersun, Sophie recalls a holiday she took as an eleven-year-old in the ‘90s with her father. Video recordings help jog her memory, but she’s looking for more than just a blast from the past. Rather, she seems to be seeking answers to fill in the gaps between who she knew as her father and who he really was: an immensely nice but deeply troubled man.

At first, Aftersun looks like a simple but beautiful story about father and daughter bonding over the course of a summer trip. But within minutes, it’s clear that there are layers to Aftersun, emotionally and editorially, that aren’t always explained but nonetheless enrich the movie with profound meaning. Stirring, complex, and surprisingly inventive, it’s not surprising that Aftersun is one of the most beloved films of the past year. 

5. Headhunters (2012)

best

8.9

Country

Denmark, Germany, Norway

Director

Morten Tyldum

Actors

Aksel Hennie, Baard Owe, Eivind Sander, Gunnar Skramstad Johnsen

Moods

Action-packed, Original, Raw

Fasten your seatbelts because this nasty little chase film will jerk the wheel when you least expect it, featuring balls-to-the-wall action and lots of Norwegian humor – dark humor that is. Based on a novel from the country’s most famous crime writer, Jo Nesbø, Headhunters is brutal, insane, and incredibly good. This twisting, turning thriller tells the story of a corporate recruiter (Aksel Hennie), who has a secret side hustle as a nightly art thief. He ends up being pursued by the charismatic Clas Greve, a Dutch businessman played by none other than GoT-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. And this plot summary is as far as you will get without the whole thing swerving into another direction. Headhunters does not slow down unless it wants to destabilise you further with simmering suspense. Like a Lars von Trier on speed, expect all the raw colors, emotion, and slightly off-kilter characters you want from a Norwegian production – and brilliant entertainment!

6. Nothing Compares (2022)

best

8.9

Country

Ireland, United Kingdom, United States of America

Director

Female director, Kathryn Ferguson

Actors

Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley

Moods

Discussion-sparking, Thought-provoking

Nothing Compares weaves a poignant story about one of the most misunderstood artists of our time, Sinéad O’Connor. The iconoclast first made waves in the ’80s with her catchy music, but she quickly reclaimed the reins of her own fame and used her platform to champion marginalized causes, long before pop stars were expected to do so. 

The documentary zeroes in on this part of O’Connor’s life: what prompted her to music and how she used it as a tool of activism. The answers are multi-faceted and handled here with extreme grace. Like the many from her generation, O’Connor struggled with religion and abuse, such was the Catholic Church’s hold on Ireland at the time time. 

The film contextualizes her once-shocking moments and reveals how they were all grounded on things she cared about. It’s a beautiful piece of work that reassesses and redeems a wronged artist who was ahead of her time.

7. Hit the Road (2021)

best

8.4

Country

Iran

Director

Panah Panahi

Actors

Amin Simiar, Hasan Ma'juni, Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak

Moods

Gripping, Original, Thought-provoking

A road trip movie with an unknown destination, Hit the Road plays with our expectations by avoiding any obvious questions we might have, and making us focus on the real important things. Informed by the censorship and persecution faced by critics of Iran’s government—including director Panah Panahi’s own filmmaker father, Jafar—the film places more focus on the very act of escape and what that can take from a family. And most importantly, through Panahi’s skillful direction of rural Iran’s varied, beautiful landscapes, he creates a conflicted relationship between character and setting, with entire emotional crescendos playing out just through a single shot of the environment. It’s one of the most underappreciated movies of the year.

8. Bad Lieutenant (1992)

best

8.4

Country

United States of America

Director

Abel Ferrara

Actors

Bianca Hunter, Bo Dietl, Dana Dee, Darryl Strawberry

Moods

Challenging, Character-driven, Dark

Bad Lieutenant is no misnomer: Harvey Keitel’s policeman really is one of NYPD’s worst. Already corrupt, abrasive, and abusive at the film’s outset, the movie chronicles his coked-out descent into total depravity after he’s called to investigate a heinous crime amid rapidly worsening personal circumstances. The brilliance of Bad Lieutenant is therefore a counterintuitive one: as awful as the Lieutenant is, we can’t help but feel emotionally involved because, in Keitel’s bravura performance, we can see the glint of pain — and thus of a person — within.

Always one for provocation, director Abel Ferrara pushes our empathy to — and maybe even beyond — its natural limits, only to break with the film’s hitherto unrelenting grit and dangle the glinting possibility of transcendent redemption in front of us. Anyone familiar with Catholic guilt cinema (movies like Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door and Mean Streets) will instantly recognize the same undercurrent running through Bad Lieutenant — even if Ferrara takes the idea of juxtaposing the profane with the sacred to the extreme here.

Comments

Add a comment

Curated by humans, not algorithms.

agmtw

© 2024 A Good Movie to Watch. Altona Studio, LLC, all rights reserved.