31 Best Movies On Starz

Alongside HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax in the pantheon of classic premium cable networks — the ones that were highly sought after and attractive on a package deal because they cost a little bit extra each month — was Starz. Arriving in the 1990s, Starz offered an alternative to the increasingly original-series driven competition, programming a slate consisting almost entirely of movies, be they recent hits, all-time blockbusters, or enduring cult classics across all genres. In recent years, Starz has adapted to the changing climate of content delivery by supplementing its availability on cable company line-ups with a standalone service deliverable to smart TVs and other enabled devices.

At any given time, Starz has tons of movies up for instant streaming, from comedies to dramas to family films to little-known hidden gems. And in order to help Starz viewers and subscribers figure out what to watch next, here are all the best and most compelling choices currently available for your viewing pleasure.

Updated on April 3, 2023: From sci-fi gems to hilarious comedies, these are the best movies that you can watch on Starz.

"Alien" revitalized the science-fiction-horror genre after it had fallen out of favor in previous decades. After years of obvious symbols, laughable special effects, and significant dry spells, here came a high-minded creature feature that can be counted as one of the best films in both the science fiction and horror genres without any controversy. The film follows the crew of a mining ship who investigate a distress signal that leads them to a horrific and deadly creature. "Alien" is a master class in tension, as director Ridley Scott eases the audience into the world of the film and takes his time revealing the horrors of deep space — which go far beyond the creature itself.

• Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright
• Director: Ridley Scott
• Year: 1979
• Runtime: 117 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 98%

This empathetic, cautionary drama focuses on good teens who go bad after a taste of the wayward life. It's also one of the few films of this subgenre to focus on a group of predominantly Asian-American characters. Ben, a high-achieving high schooler, is bristling under intense parental pressure. After he becomes obsessed with a young woman who has little interest in him and starts hanging out with a petty criminal, he starts to drift from his studies and resume-building extracurriculars. Soon enough, Ben's bad decisions and small crimes ramp up. A little bit of danger and fun soon turns into a gigantic problem that could undo everything Ben has built.

• Starring: Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, John Cho
• Director: Justin Lin
• Year: 2002
• Runtime: 101 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

Prestigious and predominantly white Winchester University is about to erupt in this audacious satire. Aspiring narrative artist and provocateur Sam, a Black woman, hosts a radio show where she calls out white people for offensively appropriating Black culture. This broadcasts to a student body where frat culture and a less-than-nuanced humor magazine allow things like a "blackface party" to happen. Underlying the movie's brilliant humor is a deep character study, which delves into different students' struggles to stay true to themselves and their backgrounds in a changing culture.

• Starring: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Teyonah Parris
• Director: Justin Simien
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

"Dirty Pretty Things" explores the unseen London, from the criminal underground to the day-to-day grind of undocumented migrant workers. Okwe struggles to make a living as a hotel clerk, but also uses his medical background to perform quasi-legal procedures. When he discovers a human heart in a hotel room's toilet, he gets involved with an organ harvesting scheme. Therein lies his dilemma: Does he help out with illegal surgeries to enrich himself financially and secure a better future, or does he blow up the whole unethical situation?

• Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sergi Lopez
• Director: Stephen Frears
• Year: 2002
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

"Foxcatcher" depicts a shockingly tragic real-life story from the world of wrestling. John du Pont (played to the ominous and creepy hilt by Steve Carell) is the heir to the vast du Pont chemical fortune. He's built a huge estate outfitted with a world-class facility to train elite wrestlers. Du Pont reaches out to Olympian Mark Schultz to offer his services, which the wrestler accepts. He thinks this will help him come into his own in a sport dominated by his more talented and popular brother, Mark. But things take a dark and deadly turn when Du Pont reveals he wants to train Dave Schultz, too. Therein lies this movie's explosive and fascinating tension.

• Starring: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo
• Director: Bennett Miller
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 134 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

A departure from the usual superhero-centric Marvel movies, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is an antihero movie, as well as a rollicking science fiction action-comedy. Peter Quill — or Star-Lord, as he would love people to call him — is a crafty space criminal who swipes an orb of enormous power coveted by supervillain Ronan. Things quickly go awry, and Star-Lord ends up rolling with a band of misfits. This unforgettable group includes skilled warrior Gamora, sarcastic raccoon Rocket, sentient tree Groot, and vengeance-minded Drax the Destroyer. "Guardians of the Galaxy" is pleasantly aware of its own absurdity, and blossoms into a genuinely stirring tale of unlikely friends.

• Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista
• Director: James Gunn
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

A seething satire and commentary from "Silicon Valley" and "King of the Hill" creator Mike Judge, "Idiocracy" takes aim at the perceived dumbing-down of every aspect of modern American life, an existence saturated in corporate and media messaging. The plot finds Joe Bowers, statistically the most average guy in the entire U.S. Army, picked for a top-secret hibernation experiment. The project loses funding, and Joe is forgotten for 500 years. When he unfreezes, the world has changed for the worse. Humanity has devolved into a race of slack-jawed dummies, with Joe now the smartest man on Earth, and he's tasked by the failing U.S. government to save the dying crops and economy.

• Starring: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews
• Director: Mike Judge
• Year: 2006
• Runtime: 84 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

Louisa May Alcott's classic 19th-century novel about four tight-knit siblings is refreshed with a 21st-century point of view from writer-director Greta Gerwig, who applies the same frankness and energy she used in "Lady Bird" to great effect, giving the women of the title far more agency and developed inner lives than even Alcott could. The film uses two parallel timelines — a rosy, nostalgic past and a darker, greyer future — to explore the relationships between the March sisters as they deal with love, illness, the Civil War, and the steady passage of time. Featuring standout performances from the likes of Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Timothee Chalamet, "Little Women" just might be the definitive adaptation of Alcott's classic novel.

• Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh
• Director: Greta Gerwig
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 135 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Timothy Spall picked up a slew of awards and nominations for his complex performance as 19th century British artist J. M. W. Turner in this fantastic film. Focusing on the final two decades of Turner's life, "Mr. Turner" depicts his professional triumphs, especially his development from a respected landscape painter into a truly progressive and groundbreaking one. It also exposes his complicated personal life, as he continually mourns the death of his father and moves in and out of a torrid love triangle.

• Starring: Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson
• Director: Mike Leigh
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 149 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

California is the subject of much mythology and nostalgia, and writer-director Quentin Tarantino unabashedly embraces it all in his cinematic love letter to Los Angeles in the 1960s and the old Hollywood system, before the Manson Family murders would forever change the former and the gritty auteur era would permanently undo the latter. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" unfolds via intertwining storylines. First, there's washed-up Western star Rick Dalton who, in lieu of working, spends his days goofing off with laid back stuntman Cliff Booth (a role that won Brad Pitt an Oscar). Then there's his next door neighbor, Sharon Tate, ultimately doomed but enjoying the magic that Hollywood seems to present her with constantly.

• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
• Director: Quentin Tarantino
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 159 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

"Raising Arizona" is a strange, surreal, and complicated crime comedy that sympathizes with the lawbreakers. Like "The Big Lebowski" and "Fargo," the characters in "Raising Arizona" are strange and none too bright. This is particularly true of repeat offender H.I. McDunnough who marries the booking officer he so frequently encounters. Their unlikely bliss is threatened by the couple's inability to conceive a child, so H.I. resorts to his usual problem-solving method: He steals one. An odious furniture tycoon has been getting a lot of publicity for his newborn quintuplets, so H.I. figures he won't miss just one. But soon there's a price on his head, and every hero and villain in Arizona is after the kind-hearted, poor-decision-making H.I.

• Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson
• Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Year: 1987
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

In the latest epic solo outing about Peter Parker, mild-mannered teenage nerd turned web-slinging, high-swinging, villain-fighting Spider-Man faces the biggest challenges of his burgeoning superhero life. "No Way Home," the biggest Marvel movie in years, finds Peter dealing with the fallout after his secret identity is exposed, leaving him unable to keep up a double life any longer. In his ambitious quest to correct the world and get his privacy back — a process that involves him enlisting the help of fellow hero Doctor Strange — Peter unlocks the Multiverse, forcing him into direct contact with numerous villains and heroes of Spider-Man's past, a la Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin. The result is an epic adventure that pays homage to three different "Spider-Man" trilogies and will leave you laughing, cheering, and crying in equal measure.

• Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch
• Director: Jon Watts
• Year: 2021
• Runtime: 148 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

War movies aren't usually as emotionally intimate as "The Thin Red Line." Capturing how combat haunts people after the fighting is done, the lushly shot, Oscar-nominated film takes place in the Pacific Theater of World War II. An officer discovers a deserting soldier living happily on an island and forces him back into service in the ominous days leading up to the Battle of Guadalcanal. The American troops prepare and execute a seemingly unwinnable attack on Japanese territory. But the film's true meaning is found in its exploration of the men's deeply conflicted and fearful state of mind.

• Starring: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel
• Director: Terrence Malick
• Year: 1998
• Runtime: 170 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

With his idiosyncratic acting style, sometimes bizarre choices of film, and colorful personal life, Nicolas Cage has become a bigger character than any he could ever play in a movie — up until "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," that is. Cage performs with ironic, self-aware relish, trotting out all the Cage tropes and tricks to play the role he was born to play: a heightened version of himself. On the verge of bankruptcy, Cage accepts a $1 million check to attend a stranger's birthday party, only for the CIA to recruit him on a strange and twist-filled mission that seems unbelievable to both Cage and the audience at times, but it's one in which he'll have to rely on his prodigious, if latent, acting skills if he wants to survive.

• Starring: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish
• Director: Tom Gormican
• Year: 2022
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

"Year of the Dog" is a low-key, animal-celebrating character study from Mike White, creator of "The White Lotus." Peggy is a middle-aged woman whose life moves from lackluster to chaotic after her beloved dog dies. She tries to be a champion for goodness, throwing herself into adopting dogs and working for animal rights organizations. Before she knows it, Peggy's whole life revolves around her passion for animals. But her do-gooding may come at the expense of her relationships — and her grip on reality.

• Starring: Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, Regina King
• Director: Mike White
• Year: 2007
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 69%