The 30 Best Movies on Paramount Plus Right Now: July 2023

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 Top Gun, 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: 1986
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Martin Scorsese

Paul Newman finally got his Oscar for this 1986 Martin Scorsese film based on the novel by Walter Tevis (who has been back in the press lately for writing the book on which The Queen’s Gambit was based). The sequel to The Hustler tells the story of how ‘Fast Eddie’ Felson mentors a younger version of himself, played by the charming Tom Cruise.

Year: 2000
Runtime: 2h 3m
Director: Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe wrote and directed this 2000 masterpiece about a young man (Patrick Fugit) who ends up on tour with a rock band known as Stillwater. With incredible supporting performances from Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, this is one of the richest and most timeless films of its era, a rare movie that gets better every time you see it.

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: 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: 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: 1999
Runtime: 2h 38m
Director: Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s final film was a controversial one when it was released in 1999 but has been recognized in the quarter-century since as one of the master’s best. Tom Cruise does some of the best work of his career as a man who spirals into a seedy underworld of sex and betrayal in this mesmerizing drama.

Year: 1993
Runtime: 2h 34m
Director: Sydney Pollack

Sydney Pollack directed this adaptation of the hit 1991 novel by John Grisham and delivered one of the most beloved legal dramas of all time. Tom Cruise plays Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law School grad who gets offered a job at an exclusive law firm, discovering the toxic culture of evil that it not only protects but engages in. This has held up much better than most mid-‘90s blockbusters, in part because of the way it confronts a corruption that has only flourished in the time since its release.

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

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. Marathon!

Year: 2008
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck’s adaptation of a great Dennis Lehane thriller stars the actor/director’s brother as a Boston detective investigating the disappearance of a little girl. Affleck’s greatest gift as a filmmaker is with ensemble and this is arguably his best with Casey, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Michelle Monaghan and the Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan filling out an amazing cast in a riveting thriller. It’s great.

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: 1994
Runtime: 2h 2m
Director: Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan directed this adaptation of the smash hit 1976 novel by Anne Rice about a legendary bloodsucker named Lestat. Controversially played by Tom Cruise, Lestat’s partnership with another vamp named Louis (Brad Pitt) and their turning of a girl named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) serve as the narrative focus for a film that’s all about sexy style.

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: 1990
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: Adrian Lyne

Adrian Lyne’s 1990 horror film has developed an increasingly vocal fan base in the three decades since its release (helped in part by a horrible remake in 2020 that reminded everyone how much better the original was.) Tim Robbins stars as Jacob, a man who starts having increasingly terrifying visions and hallucinations, many of them related to his time in Vietnam. A stunning journey into Hell, it’s also an anti-war film that’s given weight by Robbins’s genuine, in-the-moment performance.

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: 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: 2013
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Alexander Payne

Alexander Payne directed Bob Nelson’s ace screenplay in this 2013 comedy about an elderly man (Bruce Dern) who travels the country with his son (Will Forte) to claim a prize in a sweepstakes. A sharp study of life in the heartland of America, it was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

Year: 2007
Runtime: 2h 2m
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s crime novel is one of their best movies, a flick that won them three Oscars – Directing, Writing, and Best Picture of arguably the best year of the ‘00s. If you haven’t seen it since 2007, you may be surprised at how well it’s held up. The exact same film could be released today and it would have the same cultural impact. It feels like that will be the case for decades to come.

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: 2005
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: Wes Craven

With one of his last great movies, the master of horror Wes Craven proved he could also do thrills without supernatural monsters. This is a film that Alfred Hitchcock would have loved, the story of an average woman (Rachel McAdams) terrorized by the guy in the seat next to her on a red-eye flight to Miami. Cillian Murphy is chilling in this memorable, tight little genre movie.

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Gore Verbinski

Gore Verbinski broke the pattern in which remakes of Asian horror films are usually a total waste of time with this update of the incredible Ringu. Instead of just repeating the beats of a story of a VHS tape that kills people after seven days, Verbinski made his own film and grounded it with a great central performance by Naomi Watts.

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 57m
Director: Sam Mendes

Tom Hanks doesn’t always play the nice guy. In Sam Mendes’ adaptation of the Max Allan Collins graphic novel, America’s dad plays a mob enforcer seeking revenge. What’s most memorable about this 2002 film is Mendes’ remarkable attention to period detail. It’s a gorgeous film just to live in for a couple hours. Don’t do this one on your phone.

Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: Paul Michael Hauser

One of Ah-nuld’s best ’80s action movies is this loose adaptation of a novel by Stephen King (under the name Richard Bachman). The action star plays a contestant on a game show that uses convicts as victims of professional killers. Ahead of its time in the way it would address growing bloodlust on television and our national obsession with reality TV, this one holds up.

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: 2010
Runtime: 2h 18m
Director: Martin Scorsese

In 2010, Martin Scorsese released his adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s best novel, the story of a U.S. Marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) who investigates a missing patient at a legendary mental hospital. Scorsese is in full command of his skill as a craftsman in this riveting thriller that also co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, and Michelle Williams. It’s one of the most underrated films of the century.

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve has become one of the biggest directors in the world on the back of beloved films like Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, but this was really his breakthrough, a 2015 thriller about an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) who gets drawn into the war between the U.S. government and the Mexican drug cartels. Benicio Del Toro gives one of the best performances of his career here.

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: Parker Finn

Paramount has been regularly funneling some of their biggest theatrical hits to their streaming service, including this film that was in theaters less than three months ago, and made a fortune worldwide (over $200 million). One of the biggest commercial and critical horror hits of the year, Smile is about a therapist who discovers something supernatural stalking her patients. It will get under your skin.

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: 1986
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Tony Scott

Audiences were reminded how much they love Tom Cruise’s Maverick with the blockbuster sequel to this film that dominated the entirety of Summer 2022. Why not go back to revisit the movie that started it all on Paramount Plus? Tom Cruise’s career changed forever with the massive success of this movie about a hotshot pilot, his romantic partner, and his rival. It’s SO very ‘80s but that’s kind of its charm now.

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: 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.

If you subscribe to a service through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission.