10 Best Movies on Starz But Not on Netflix

10 Best Movies on Starz But Not on Netflix

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If you have just cancelled Netflix for Starz, or hold both, you might be wondering about the good movies that Starz gives you access to. This list is for the best movies which are available on Starz 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. Wild Tales (2014)

best

9.9

Country

Argentina, Spain

Director

Damián Szifron

Actors

Abián Vainstein, Alan Daicz, Andrea Garrote, César Bordón

Moods

Dark, Discussion-sparking, Funny

With ‘Wild tales’, writer-director Damían Szifrón explores exactly how thin the proverbial veneer is on the passions of the human heart. Or rather he gleefully rips it off. Visually dazzling and laced with social critique, violent revenge is the theme joining the six vignettes together. Each one starts off in a relatable everyday situation, including an airplane, a wedding, and a coffee shop, which quickly propels into complete savagery of Roald Dahlian proportions.

Like the famous author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Szifrón writes great satirical characters, which he relishes in hurting and throwing in the ditch. And much like the rage of its protagonists, featuring Ricardo Darín as a family man articulating his by way of explosives, this movie does not know peaks and valleys. It’s a dark comedy thrill ride that will have you gasping for air!

2. Capernaum (2018)

best

9.0

Country

Cyprus, France, Lebanon

Director

Female director, Nadine Labaki

Actors

Alaa Chouchnieh, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Cedra Izzam, Farah Hasno

Moods

Depressing, Discussion-sparking, Dramatic

Capernaum is both the highest-grossing Middle Eastern movie of all time and the highest-grossing movie in Arabic of all time. Lebanese director Nadine Labaki was the first female Arab director to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Capernaum is thus duly considered a masterpiece, as it follows an angry 12-year-old kid in Lebanon, who leaves his negligent parents and tries to make it in the streets on his own. It’s a tale of grinding poverty as experienced by a boy with a good heart, who meets many kindly people on the way as well as sinister characters. An acting tour de force by the fierce child actors, especially Zain Al Rafeea, Capernaum is harrowing, emotional, and, maybe, a touch melodramatic. However, it doesn’t compromise when asking some hard questions about parental failure and love, putting them into the context of the bigger regional picture. It can be a tough watch, but the furious acting and pitch-black humor, ultimately, make this an uplifting movie, likely to stir up some debate.

3. Pain and Glory (2019)

best

8.7

Country

Spain

Director

Pedro Almodóvar

Actors

Agustín Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Asier Flores

Moods

A-list actors, Emotional, Romantic

This is the latest Oscar-nominated movie by Spain’s highest-regarded director, Pedro Almodóvar. It’s his most personal work to date, being a slightly fictionalized account of his youth and then the last couple of years. He is mostly portrayed by Antonio Banderas, who was also nominated for an Oscar for this role; while another star performance comes from Penélope Cruz who plays his mother in the flashback scenes. Pain and Glory is about life in the arts: how a tormented artistic personality is formed, the days of focusing on work over relationships, and dealing with the consequences later in life. It begs the question: in Almodóvar’s life, was the glory that got him to making as great of a movie as this one worth the pain?

4. Our Little Sister (2016)

best

8.5

Country

France, Japan

Director

Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hirokazu Koreeda

Actors

Fukiko Hara, Haruka Ayase, Ichirō Ogura, Jun Fubuki

Moods

Slice-of-Life, Without plot

Hirokazu Koreeda can do no wrong. The director of Shoplifters and Still Walking is a master of dissecting complex family dynamics through a handful of events. In Our Little Sister, three close sisters who live at their grandmother’s house learn that their absent father has passed. They travel to the mountains to attend his funeral and meet their half-sister, Suzu, for the first time. Suzu is invited to live with the sisters and join their bond.

This movie is a true-to-the-form slice of life, it’s almost drama-free. This absence of plot is an absence of distractions: the sisters are all that matters to Koreeda. His only focus is on how this family becomes bigger, sees past grief, and how the group of close-knit sisters that grew up together can make room for a new addition.

5. Eve’s Bayou (1997)

best

8.5

Country

United States of America

Director

Female director, Kasi Lemmons

Actors

Allen Toussaint, Billie Neal, Branford Marsalis, Carol Sutton

Moods

Sunday

Eve’s Bayou is a Southern Gothic tale of spirituality, family, secrets, and the ties that bind them together. The story follows the awakening, both spiritual and emotional, of young Eve Baptiste. The middle sibling of the Baptiste family, 10-year-old Eve, navigates childhood while enduring the tumultuous relationship between her mother and father. 

What lurks beneath a seemingly ordinary marital conflict is an insidious betrayal that could tear her entire family apart. Eve’s Bayou should be considered one of the greatest Black American epics of the past 25 years. I adore this film because it is unflinchingly real – and honest about the sometimes rocky reality of familial bonds. 

6. The Red Turtle (2017)

best

8.5

Country

Belgium, France, Japan

Director

Michael Dudok de Wit

Actors

Barbara Beretta, Emmanuel Garijo, Tom Hudson

Moods

Gripping, Mind-blowing, Original

Co-produced by the legendary Studio Ghibli and directed by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, The Red Turtle is a tale about a man shipwrecked on a desert island whose fate is changed upon meeting a giant turtle. Beautiful images are pulled together and combined with the film’s delicate symbolism about humanity and nature, in a story told with remarkable restraint. The only sound in the movie is that of nature and the film’s beautifully relaxing score. Using only simple ingredients, The Red Turtle is an enigmatic, captivating, and highly-recommended gem that, after all, encompasses life itself.

7. The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

best

8.1

Country

United States of America

Director

Derek Cianfrance

Actors

Anthony Angelo Pizza, Anthony Angelo Pizza, Jr., Ben Mendelsohn, Bradley Cooper

Moods

A-list actors, Dramatic, Emotional

The movie starts with Luke (Ryan Gosling) as a stunt driver who learns he has a newborn child. Luke wants to properly provide for him, so he turns to robbing banks. That causes conflict with the mother (Eva Mendes) and a police officer (Bradley Cooper), which ends up spanning two generations. The Place Beyond the Pines is gritty and emotional, and at the heart of it, a good take on father-son relationships and long-term consequences.

8. The Visitor (2007)

best

8.1

Country

United States of America

Director

Eran Kolirin, Tom McCarthy

Actors

Bill McHenry, Danai Gurira, Haaz Sleiman, Hiam Abbass

Moods

Heart-warming, Sunday, Thought-provoking

This is a low-scale, intimate, almost minimalist movie that speaks volumes about the misconceptions that westerners have regarding the Middle-East. And the performance of Richard Jenkins is absolutely exceptional (earned him a nomination for the Oscars). He plays a professor who comes back to his New York apartment only to find two immigrants living in it. What a great role and what a great film.The Visitor is from the director of The Station Agent and very recently Spotlight, Tom McCarthy.

9. Still Mine (2012)

best

8.0

Country

Canada

Director

Michael McGowan

Actors

Barbara Gordon, Campbell Scott, Chris Farquhar, Chuck Shamata

Moods

Easy, Inspiring, Lovely

A slice-of-life true-story-based film on growing old and in love. When on his own land, Craig Morrison (played by James Cromwell) starts building a more convenient house for his ailing wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), he is faced with crippling bureaucracy. The state gives him the choice between stopping the construction or going to jail, while he is witnessing his wife’s health deteriorating even further. The act of going against the system brings out both how beautiful his relationship with his wife is, as well as his own resilience in this moving, insightful drama.

10. Land of Mine (2015)

7.9

Country

Denmark, Germany

Director

Martin Zandvliet

Actors

August Carter, Emil Belton, Joel Basman, Karl Alexander Seidel

Moods

Depressing, Discussion-sparking, Suspenseful

Taking place entirely on beachside farmlands in Denmark, Land of Mine takes a particularly intimate—and visually distinct—approach to war. The fighting may be over, but the film remains a tense and emotionally distressing, with all the pain and violence being carried over onto these German boys being forced to clear the beaches of live explosives with their bare hands. The relationship between these young men and their vengeful Danish commanding officer may progress a little quickly for some, but their volatile bond only emphasizes that rage isn’t meant to be felt forever, and that war is a destructive cycle that eventually needs to come to an end.

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