The 11 best movies to watch when you launch on Paramount Plus

The start of Paramount Plus comes with a heavy focus on television, with the new service combining the archives of CBS, Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Smithsonian Channel. The service is also based on Paramount Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood. Unlike Netflix or Amazon, Paramount Plus doesn’t have to rely so much on licensing great movies to fill out the service – the studio has been making them since 1912.

But what good films are there when you launch on Paramount Plus? Like anything in the streaming wars, it’s never as easy as “every movie Paramount has ever made”. Users get the studio’s franchise staples like Indiana Jones and Impossible missionBut anyone expecting the gluttony of the Paramount vault classics might be surprised to find only a handful of John Wayne images among the pre-1970s offerings. Thanks to its own collection and the films licensed from the Miramax library, Paramount Plus has a good selection for anyone looking for a world beyond Netflix Originals. Here are some of the best things you can see on the service right now:

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AI artificial intelligence

During sci-fi drama AI artificial intelligence was received with a split reception when it was released in 2000. The dark science fiction story has become one of Steven Spielberg’s most beloved films of the 21st century. Based on the incomplete production of Brian Aldiss’ 1969 short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” by Stanley Kubrick. AI is a speculative fiction in Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story The adventures of Pinocchio, takes place in a future world populated by synthetic humanoid robots and plagued by the devastating effects of global climate change. The story of David played by The sixth SenseHaley Joel Osment and his quest to become a “real” boy is a moving modern fable about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. – –Toussaint Egan

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Baran

One of the biggest successes of Paramount Plus is not the studio’s own safe, but the catalog of Miramax, the first indie and foreign film distributor of the 2000s. The film of the studio Baran is a moving story of young love and hardship that follows Lateef, a young Iranian boy who loses a servant job to the “son” of a construction worker and is illegally sent to work to haul cement on the construction site. But the boy who replaced him, the target of Lateef’s wrath, is actually a young girl, and one he will fight to protect as the status quo is constantly being turned upside down. Shot with a neorealistic eye and careful to avoid melodrama, Baran, published by Miramax in 2002, played a small but crucial role in the humanization of the Iranian people and the Afghan refugees after the tragic events of September 11th. The film works just as well 20 years later. – –Matt patches

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The great boss

The great boss is a fun clock. Bruce Lee had a lot of ideas on how action films should be done right, and this film was made before it was important enough for people to listen to. It’s a chance to see Bruce do things he would never do again. Hit a man through a wall, leave a man-shaped hole, fly through the air in cartoon trampoline jumps, and stick his fingers into an opponent’s chest in the mola ram style. Paramount Plus has a couple of Bruce Lee movies thanks to the Miramax deal, but this is the one to watch. – –Patrick Gill

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Eagle versus shark

Fans of Taika Waititi’s Marvel output will want to immerse themselves in his filmography again and discover this indie rom-com starring Jemaine Clement and Loren Horsley as Jarrod and Lily, a geeky couple falling head over heels … and then continues to fall. Wrongly because of his bizarre sensitivity in the wake of defamed Napoleon Dynamite, Eagle versus shark has that intangible wacky sensibility that defines everything from They Might Be Giants to the corners of Tumblr, and Clement and Horsley are more than ready to play the game. They are awkward, colorful, and full of their own fears. Jarrod’s family is somehow deeper in their own bubble. Seeing them all as people, Waititi makes a thoughtful comedy about the voices in our heads through the experiences of characters who almost always say and express what they are feeling. – –MP

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Existence

David Cronenberg’s 1999 science fiction horror thriller about virtual reality video games is a perfect keystone for the director’s decade-long line of body horror classics. Running with the torch from films like 1981 scanner and 1983 Videodrome, Existence Follows Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a game designer who must step into her creation, the simulated world of “EXistenZ” contained in a biotechnological fetus-like device known as a “Game Pod” to be repaired afterwards a failed attempt in her life. Allegra is lost in the psychological layers of her own invention and has to rely on the help of Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee who has installed a new game pod in himself. The boundary between what is real and what the game is blurred as grotesque horror and reality-distorting subtleties in an ingenious game of cunning merge into a disturbing odyssey of radical stakes and proportions. – –TO

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Hell matters

If you’ve heard but never seen Matters of hell, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s 2002 Hong Kong crime drama starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung will most likely recognize you as the basis for Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-winning crime drama The departed. Lau and Leung play undercover police inspector Lau Kin-ming and undercover triad member Chan Wing-yan, who are embroiled in an elaborate game of cat and mouse to complete their respective missions while maintaining their own sense of identity. Lines are crossed and blurred as the concepts of right and wrong, legal or unlawful, explode in the film’s iconic climatic showdown. – –TO

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The Italian Job (1969)

Before there was Mark Wahlberg, there was Michael Caine. This British caper was brought to a smooth conclusion by none other than Quincy Jones Ocean’s 11thplus car chases. Yes, the remake you probably knew was better saved the original from Mini Cooper action director Peter Collinson. But this film has Caine in its prime: hardworking, dangerous, and open to a good B-movie twist. – –MP

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Winch

Written by The devil Wears Prada and Crazy ex girlfriend Co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna and produced by JJ Abrams, this old-fashioned romantic comedy plays Rachel McAdams as Becky, a would-be producer whose bustle is the one to land today Show always keeps her too busy to keep up to date. She is content with the fighting festival of the morning news breaking Dawn

just as ratings are starting to decline. Her plan: pair up the spiraling presenter Colleen (Diane Keaton) with a seasoned news man (Harrison Ford) and hope they don’t strangle each other on-screen. Maybe she’ll find love along the way – you know how these things work! Winch is the best scenario of a formula, McKenna breathes dimension and character into the characters, and director Roger Michell carefully throws Natasha Bedingfield’s “Strip Me” onto the soundtrack. Banger. – –MP

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Minority report

Spielberg spent a lot of time making films for Paramount so we have to recommend a second. His adaptation of the short story by Philip K. Dick introduced the audience to the idea of ​​hand gesture augmented reality and wall-scaling cars. Minority report plays Tom Cruise as PreCrime Cpt. John Anderton, head of a police organization dedicated to arresting criminals before they even commit a crime, with a trio of clairvoyants who go on to think invasively about the unconscious of every unfortunate American. If Anderton himself is preemptively accused of having committed murder, he must flee the system he used in his life to keep and hide the dark secret behind his origins. -TO

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The ring

Gore Verbinski’s American remake of the supernatural horror classic by Hideo Nakata in 1998 The ring was a runaway pop culture phenomenon when it was first released in 2002. It introduced the western audience to the wonderful world of J-horror cinema and has been parodied in everything Horror movie 3 to family Guy. Naomi Watts plays Rachel Keller, a journalist who goes undercover to uncover the strange connection between the inexplicable death of her niece and three friends and a mysterious videotape they watched a week earlier. But when Rachel looks at the tape herself, she is in a race against time to solve the riddle and calm the vengeful mind that is now fixated on the lives of her and everyone else who sees it , to promote. – –TO

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Top secret!

If you saw Plane! Get your attention a million times immediately Top secret!, an often overlooked gem of the David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker cohorts. Part Elvis Musical, part Cold War spy thriller and 1000% stupid. The ZAZ script gives Val Kilmer an action comedy that is encouraged by production value – war-torn set pieces and a score of Lawrence of Arabia Composer Maurice Jarre has come a long way to sell a gag. The film contains everything from a western-style bar fight staged underwater to a scene played entirely backwards and then played back in forward motion. Why? Laughs. So many laughs. – –MP

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