Desperately need movie recommendations

Cafe Society
1

Cable is out, and the guy said that it may be a couple days until it’s back up. Fuck!

So I’m heading out to rent some DVDs in about an hour, and probably again tomorrow night. I need recommendations for movies that only air on Showtime.

I get HBO and Starz, so I don’t want anything that will be one of their “Saturday Premieres,” because I really like getting two new movies to check out each week. I rented Batman Begins and Exorcism of Emily Rose last year, and was seriously bummed when they showed up on HBO premieres and I’d already seen them.

Some movies, however, are Showtime-only. Showtime is owned by Paramount, but not all Paramount movies are Showtime exclusives. War of the Worlds, for example, is premiering this Saturday on HBO.

Anyway, I know of a list of movies that are Showtime exclusives, but would really appreciate it if you guys could help me out with any you know of. The list I am aware of is:

**Changing Lanes ** (already saw it)
**We Were Soldiers ** (saw last half on network tv, so I might get it)
**Mean Girls ** (Is this any good?)
**Saw ** / Saw 2 (#1 on my list.)

Now, there are also some independant movies that are sort of exclusive to Showtime in that they never appear on Starz or HBO, but because they’re independent they show up on IFC or Sundance. As such, I’ve already seen them. These include, to my knowledge:

Heathers
Supersize Me
Fahrenheit 911

What else should I get? Note that I like pretty much all types of movies. The only requirement is that they be fairly recent; say the last couple decades. I like gangster movies, romantic comedies, dramas, suspense, mystery, horror, action, science fiction, fantasy, swords and sandals, western, slapstick comedies, romance, tragedy, documentaries, family movies, feel-good claptrap, teen flicks, old geezer flicks; you name it, there’s at least one movie in the genre I really like. Anything too new, though, runs the risk of being an HBO or Starz premiere next summer, so nothing more recent than 2004. Basically, I’m looking for movies from 1990-2004 that are Showtime exclusives.

Whatcha got?

2

Oddly, my interactive channel guide still works; just no signal. So in looking at the dozen some-odd Showtime and TMC channel lineups for the next full week, and also remembering a couple more, I see the following titles that sppear to be Showtime exclusives:

3-way*
Bound*
Changing Lanes*
Crash
Disclosure*
Donnie Darko
Hard Rain*
I Love You to Death*
Interview with the Vampire*
Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Longest Yard
Mean Creek
Notting Hill*
Open Water
Passion of the Christ
Pelican Brief*
Pride & Prejudice
Primer
Saw
Shawshank Redemption*
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sleepover
Soul Plane
Stepford Wives
Team America: World Police
The Faculty*
Twisted
Van Wilder*
Walking Tall
We Were Soldiers
Whore*
Wicker Park
Without a Paddle

  • means I’ve already seen it.

So, additions are still desired, but feedback on whether any of these not marked with an asterisk are worth watching would also be appreciated.

3

If you like South Park you’ll like Team America.

4

I see on the imdb listing for Paramount the following additional options:

200 Cigarettes*
Crossroads
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star*
Election*
General’s Daughter*
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days*
Italian Job*
Manchurian Candidate
Paycheck
Rat Race*
School of Rock
Serving Sara
Star Trek: All of them
Sum of All Fears*
The Core
The Score
Twilight*
Vanilla Sky*

Note that a lot of these show up edited on channels like TNT and USA, whch is how I saw many of them.

5

Crash- Opinions are really divided on it. I liked it a lot. There are plenty of people here who disliked it a lot. I found it to be very emotionally powerful.

Donnie Darko- It takes place in the late 80’s and the main characters are high school students. It’s kind of creepy and it’s about time travel. It’s also hard to completely figure out, but you don’t have to understand it to like it. If those things appeal to you, go for it.

Mean Creek- I want to see this one. It looks like a good movie.

Primer- I just saw it last week. It’s a very dialogue heavy movie. Understanding it is pretty much entirely relies upon reading between the lines. I saw it twice and didn’t understand it, so I looked at the wikipedia article for an explanation. The arcicle mentioned lots of things that totally went past me. It’s like Donnie Darko only about a million times more confusing. I still liked it.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow- There are some people who really like this movie. I think you have to be a certain kind of person to really enjoy it. I thought it was okay, but I don’t think I’d see it again.