The 30 Best Movies on Paramount+ Right Now

Amores Perros.
Photo: Lionsgate

This post will be updated frequently as movies enter and leave the service. *New titles are indicated with an asterisk.

In 2021, CBS All Access rebranded with the name Paramount+, reflecting the history of the legendary film and TV company with that nifty little mathematical sign that all the streaming companies seem to love these days. The name Paramount brings a deep catalogue of feature films, and the streaming service also includes titles from the Miramax and MGM libraries. They have also added a more robust original selection than at launch to complement the service’s classics like Gladiator, the Mission: Impossible series and Grease.

For now, Paramount+ can’t compare to the depth of a catalogue like Max’s or the award-winning original works at other streamers, but it has a solid library with at least 30 films you should see.

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 34m
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Alejandro González Iñárritu would go on to win two directing Oscars but he first earned worldwide acclaim with this time-jumping thriller starring Gael Garcia Bernal. At the end of a wave of violent triptychs inspired by Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros somehow still felt fresh and new thanks to its director’s daring storytelling style and skill with actors.

Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

The beloved French director’s best film remains his adaptation of “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, a tale of alien invasion that’s really more about the people on Earth than the interplanetary visitors. Amy Adams gives one of the best performances of her career as a linguist tasked with communicating with the aliens.

Year: 2004
Runtime: 2h 50m
Director: Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese’s incredibly detailed and lavish period piece about one of the most infamous eccentric millionaires of all time. It feels like every other month produces a bit of social outrage about Scorsese’s place in movie history or his comments on Marvel movies. Ignore that noise and just watch one of his works that doesn’t get nearly enough praise, anchored by one of DiCaprio’s best performances and some of the most impressive aerial cinematography of all time.

Year: 2007
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Sidney Lumet

The masterful director of 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and so many more American classics ended his career with a banger in this intense thriller featuring performances from Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney that stand among their best. A chronological puzzle of a film that would impress Chris Nolan with its structure, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of the best films of the 2000s.

Year: 1984
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Martin Brest

It’s hard to explain to people too young to experience it how big a star Eddie Murphy was in 1984 when his Axel Foley ruled the world. Murphy’s wit and charm were put to perfect use in Beverly Hills Cop that produced two inferior sequels, and both happen to also be on Paramount Plus.

Year: 1997
Runtime: 2h 35m
Director: P.T. Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson is widely recognized as one of the best living American filmmakers now, but that wasn’t the case before the release of this masterpiece about life in the Los Angeles porn scene. Mark Wahlberg has never (and likely never will be) better than he is here, anchoring an ensemble that includes equally great work from Julianne Moore and Burt Reynolds.

Year: 1974
Runtime: 2h 10m
Director: Roman Polanski

Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown. One of the best movies of the ‘70s, this Best Picture nominee (and Best Screenplay winner) tells the story of Jake Gittes, played unforgettably by Jack Nicholson, as he investigates an adulterer and finds something much more insidious under the surface of Los Angeles. It’s a must-see, as important as almost any film from its era.

Year: 1995
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: Amy Heckerling

You can keep all those stuffy Jane Austen adaptations—one of the best remains Amy Heckerling’s updating of the 1815 classic Emma to mid-‘90s L.A. Is this the most ‘90s movie ever? From its fashion to its references to its beloved characters, Clueless is certainly one of the most iconic, a movie that made a small impact when it was released but feels like it grows even more popular with each generation that discovers it.

Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Michael Mann

Tom Cruise gives one of his most fascinating performances as Vincent, the passenger to Jamie Foxx’s L.A. cab driver on a very fateful night. It turns out that Vincent is hitman and he needs Foxx’s character to drive him on a killing spree in this tense, gorgeously-shot thriller from the masterful craftsman Michael Mann.

Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 19m
Director: J.D. Dillard

The proximity to another little movie about pilots called Top Gun: Maverick likely hurt the bottom line of this excellent, old-fashioned drama based on a true story. The excellent Jonathan Majors plays Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in Navy history, and Maverick star Glen Powell plays his co-pilot and friend Tom Hudner. Both young future stars are excellent in a film that viewers can now find at home.

Year: 2019
Runtime: 2h 32m
Director: Mike Flanagan

Almost four decades after Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) adapted the sequel by Stephen King with what felt like mixed results. However, in just the few years since this movie came out, it feels like the cult following has grown. It’s a stylish drama that kind of falls apart in the final act, but has enough good stuff before that to recommend a look.

Year: 1997
Runtime: 2h 18m
Director: John Woo

There are rumors that a remake of this John Woo classic is on the horizon, so you owe it to yourself to go back and see the very high standard that project will have to meet. Face/Off is one of the best action movies of the ‘90s, a wonderfully staged blockbuster by one of the genre’s best filmmakers. And John Travolta and Nicolas Cage were near the peaks of their screen charismas as an FBI agent and terrorist who end up, well, switching faces. It’s a blast.

Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Jiayan “Jenny” Shi

Jiayan Shi directed and produced this heartbreaking documentary about the disappearance and death of Yingying Zhang in 2017. Shi has unique access to the story in that she knew Yingying, and so her film has an incredible you-are-there quality as Shi captures the investigation and grief that would emerge from this horrific crime. Paramount+ deserves credit for bringing smaller projects like this to their subscribers, ones that other major streamers might ignore.

Year: 2000
Runtime: 2h 34m
Director: Ridley Scott

One of the most popular films of its era, this action epic stars Russell Crowe as the legendary Maximus, a warrior whose family is murdered by the vicious Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Forced into slavery, Maximus has to rise the gladiator arenas to get his vengeance. The film made a fortune on its way to winning the Oscar for Best Picture.

Year: 1972
Runtime: 2h 55m
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Maybe you’ve heard of it? In all seriousness, there’s a very cool opportunity right now to watch the entire Godfather trilogy on Paramount+, including the superior recent cut of the third film. You could then slide from some of the best filmmaking of all time into the streaming service’s original series The Offer, about the making of Coppola’s masterpiece.

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 49m
Director: Christopher Nolan

No one else makes movies like Christopher Nolan, a man who took his superhero success and used it to get gigantic budgets to bring his wildest dreams to the big screen. Who else could make this sprawling, emotional, complicated film about an astronaut (Matthew McConaughey) searching for a new home for humanity? It’s divisive among some Nolan fans for its deep emotions, but those who love it really love it.

Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: David Robert Mitchell

Maika Monroe stars in this indie horror breakthrough hit as a young woman who discovers that her recent sexual activity has cursed her with a supernatural force that will chase her until she passes it along to someone else. Stylish and striking, this felt like nothing else on the American horror market in 2014, really ushering in the era of what is now called “elevated horror.” Whatever you call it, It Follows is still an unforgettable genre flick.

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: Jeff Tremaine

Jackass Forever helped 2022 start with a bang. Now you can go back and watch the whole series exclusively on Paramount+ right now! (Even the “alternate” ones like Jackass 3.5). Go back to the heyday of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the rest of the dangerous idiots. These movies are often derided as being dumb but they’re a glorious, infectious kind of dumb that wants nothing more than to make you laugh.

Year: 1996
Runtime: 2h 18m
Director: Cameron Crowe

One of Cameron Crowe’s best films became something of a punchline with its heavily quoted lines (“Show me the money,” “You had me at hello,” everything that cute kid says) but it’s actually a character-driven romantic comedy that has held up incredibly well in the quarter-century since its release. Tom Cruise plays the title character, a sports agent who is pushed into starting his own agency while he falls in love with a single mother, played by Renee Zellweger. It’s sweet, smart, and funny.

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee

With echoes of beloved rom-coms like African Queen and Romancing the Stone, this film truly felt like an anomaly in 2022, and yet it turned into a pretty big hit at the theater. It’s already on streaming services, and it’s a great choice if you’re looking for some escapism tonight. Travel to the middle of nowhere with a romance novel writer (Sandra Bullock) and the cover model (Channing Tatum) who tries to save the day.

Year: 2002
Runtime: 2h 25m
Director: Steven Spielberg

One of Steven Spielberg’s best modern movies is this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story about a future in which crime can be predicted before it happens. Tom Cruise stars as a man who is convicted of a crime he has no intent of committing in a fantastic vision of a future in which the systems designed to stop crime have been corrupted. It’s timely and probably always will be.

Year: 1996-present
Runtime: Varies
Director: Various

The whole series is finally here! For some reason, parts 1 to 3 and parts 4 to 6 have alternated residence on a lot of streaming services, but Paramount+ currently hosts the entire thing from De Palma’s first movie to Fallout. While we wait for Mission: Impossible 7, revisit the whole arc of the saga of Ethan Hunt to date.

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Celine Song

A current Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominee, this phenomenal film isn’t on any of the other streamers. It stars the excellent Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as a couple who were close as children but reunite years later after she immigrated to the United States. It’s as much a story of what people leave behind when they change their entire lives as it is a traditional story of unrequited love. It’s beautiful and unforgettable.

Year: 2008
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: David Gordon Green

Seth Rogen gives one of his best performances as Dale Denton, an average guy who just wants to get high. He visits his dealer (played perfectly by James Franco) on the wrong night as the pair cross paths with hitmen and a police officer on the wrong side of the law. This is an incredibly funny movie, and you don’t need to be high to love it.

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 30m
Director: John Krasinski

Who could have possibly guessed that Jim from The Office would be behind one of the most successful horror films of the ‘10s? You’ve probably already seen this story of a world in which silence is the only way to survive, but it’s worth another look to marvel at its tight, taut filmmaking and a stellar performance from Emily Blunt. Plus, Paramount+ recently added the sequel, so: double feature time!

Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director: Rose Glass

Rose Glass’s terrifying horror film is one of the best movies of 2021 and it’s already on Paramount+. Reminiscent of psychological nightmares of the ‘70s like Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, this is the tale of a hospice nurse named Maud (a fearless performance from Morfydd Clark) who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of one of her patients (Jennifer Ehle). It’s unforgettable.

Year: 1996
Runtime: 1h 51m
Director: Wes Craven

The Ghostface killer came back in January 2022 with the release of Scream, the fifth film in this franchise and the first since the death of Wes Craven, and the fun continued with another sequel in 2023 (although the troubles around the production of the seventh film have been, well, notable). Paramount+ is the best place for a marathon with the original trilogy and the fifth and sixth films (but, bizarrely, not Scream 4.) The first movie is still a flat-out genre masterpiece.

Year: 2010
Runtime: 2h
Director: David Fincher

One of the best movies of the 2010s has returned to Paramount after a brief hiatus to remind people how wildly far ahead of its time this movie was when it was released. With a razor-sharp screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and some of the best direction of David Fincher’s career, this is a flawless movie, one that resonates even more now in the era of constant internet than it did thirteen years ago.

Year: 1986
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme was a master of tonal balancing, finding a way to perfectly blend the comedy and the dread in this story of an average man caught up in a criminal’s web. Charlie (Jeff Daniels) is a milquetoast banker who goes on a wild ride with a girl named Lulu (Melanie Griffith), but everything changes when Lulu’s ex (an unforgettable Ray Liotta) enters the picture.

Year: 2007
Runtime: 2h 38m
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

One of the best films of the ‘00s, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s Oil! won Daniel Day-Lewis his second Oscar as the unforgettable Daniel Plainview. As detailed and epic as great fiction, Anderson’s movie is one of the most acclaimed of its era, a film in which it’s hard to find a single flaw. Even if you think you’ve seen it enough, watch it again. You’ll find a new reason to admire it.

Year: 1997
Runtime: 3h 14m
Director: James Cameron

More than just a blockbuster, this Best Picture winner was a legitimate cultural phenomenon, staying at the top of the box office charts for months. There was a point when it felt like not only had everyone seen the story of Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet), but most people had seen it twice. History has kind of reduced this epic to its quotable scenes and earworm theme song, but it’s a better movie than you remember, a great example of James Cameron’s truly robust filmmaking style.

Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 10m
Director: Joseph Kosinski

It’s the movie that saved movies last year! The truth is that Paramount wanted to drop this long-awaited sequel on a streamer during the pandemic, but Tom Cruise knew it was the kind of thing that should be appreciated in a theater. He bet on himself and the result is arguably the biggest hit of his career, a movie that made a fortune and seems primed to win Oscars in a couple months.

Year: 2000
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with this adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s beloved novel about a group of sisters who captivated the entire neighborhood in which they lived. Kirsten Dunst anchors a dreamy, captivating movie about the myth of perfection that exists in the world of picket fences in middle America. It’s got a great Air soundtrack too.

Year: 2013
Runtime: 3h
Director: Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio should have won the Oscar for his amazing performance as Jordan Belfort, the financial criminal that rocked Wall Street and shocked audiences in one of Scorsese’s best late films. Arguments over whether or not this film glorifies a “bad guy” have become prominent—and could only really be made by people who haven’t actually watched it. Most of all, it’s a shockingly robust film, filmed with more energy in a few minutes than most flicks have in their entire runtime.

Year: 2007
Runtime: 2h 37m
Director: David Fincher

David Fincher’s masterpiece is more about the impact of crime than crime itself. The fact that he made a sprawling epic about an unsolved murder is daring enough, but what’s most remarkable is how much this movie becomes less and less about figuring out the identity of the Zodiac Killer and more about the impact of obsession. It’s one of the best films of the ‘00s.

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