Like the looming mountain peak in Paramount+’s legendary logo, navigating its steep pile of movies and TV shows can indeed feel like you’re scaling an insurmountable rock face looking for something to watch. And things could get even bigger as Warner Bros. Discovery’s shareholders recently signed off on Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion takeover bid, marking a major step that could lead to P+ and HBO Max becoming one mega-platform.
For right now, however, you just want to put on a good movie, so I’ve pulled three streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S. that’ll get the job done. The first is Martin Scorsese’s sweeping biopic about an obsessed aviation magnate, the second is a newer title to the service about a group of friends fighting for their lives on the open ocean, and the third is the war epic to end all war epics from Steven Spielberg that recently showed up on the streamer.
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The Aviator
DiCaprio soars as tormented billionaire Howard Hughes
If you haven’t already seen Martin Scorsese’s 2004 masterpiece biography of aviator and eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes, The Aviator, you’ve probably at least seen a clip or two from its most epic scene, in which Hughes test pilots his silver-bullet recon plane, the XF-11, at breakneck speeds over Beverly Hills before crashing in a residential neighborhood. The scene, which many consider to be the most intense of Scorsese’s career, is worth watching the movie for alone.
The five-time Oscar winning film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the brilliant billionaire filmmaker, and tracks his life from his early 1920s Hollywood directing debut with the overly ambitious war epic, Hell’s Angels, through his development and flight of the behemoth military plane the Spruce Goose, to his love affairs with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett who won an Oscar for the role) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). It also delves into his well-publicized descent into debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder and germophobia, in which he would lock himself away in darkened hotel rooms and wear tissue boxes as shoes.
Operating System
tvOS
Resolution
4K
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It’s one of Scorsese’s best films, and features additional stunning performances from the likes of John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, and Jude Law. At nearly three hours long, it may require a bathroom break or two, but the 86% Rotten Tomatoes score is an indication that it’s totally worth it.
The Aviator
Release Date
December 25, 2004
Runtime
170 minutes
Director
Martin Scorsese
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Not Without Hope
A real-life survival nightmare 70 miles offshore
I haven’t seen a sea-based survival epic like this since 2000’s The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney and Marky Mark. Director Joe Carnahan’s nail-biter of a survival thriller, Not Without Hope, is up there with that film, bringing to life the true, high-profile story that gripped a nation in 2009.
When four friends—personal trainer Nick Schuyler (Shazam!’s Zachary Levi), former football player and financial advisor Will Bleakley (Marshall Cook), and NFL football stars Marquis Cooper (Quentin Plair) and Corey Smith (Terrence Terrell)—set out from Clearwater, Florida, on a deep-sea fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico, disaster strikes and their boat capsizes as a severe storm bears down on them. The four friends clung to the hull of the boat in freezing water for a reported 43 to 46 hours while their families at home worried for their lives, and the Coast Guard, led by Captain Timothy Close (Josh Duhamel), spearheaded the search.
Schuyler, tragically, was the only one to survive the ordeal, and it’s his 2010 nonfiction book that this harrowing adaptation is based on. Shoe almost entirely out in open water in Malta, Not Without Hope has earned a 73% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
Not Without Hope
Release Date
December 4, 2025
Runtime
119 Minutes
Director
Joe Carnahan
1
Saving Private Ryan
Spielberg’s epic WWII masterpiece is streaming on Paramount+
There’s a moment in the brutal opening sequence in Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic Saving Private Ryan that always gets me. As U.S. Army Ranger Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) lands on France’s Omaha Beach during the Allies’ Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, the assault on them is nothing short of savage, and soon a shell explodes mere feet from Miller. The impact rocks the Captain, deafening him and the audience momentarily, as we watch, in eerie silence, the carnage happening around him. It’s a hell of a way to start a hell of a film, but it’s only the beginning.
Somehow, Miller and his company manage to make it off the beach alive, but before they can regroup and continue on their way, Miller is given a new mission—he must lead a small detachment of soldiers into German-occupied France to retrieve one Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), who has recently become the sole-surviving Ryan brother in his family and is to be sent home—he is all that is left. As can be expected, finding Ryan is easier said than done, as the squad (which includes actors Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, and Jeremy Davies) encounters one intense obstacle after another to reach him.
Saving Private Ryan earned 11 Oscar nominations and five wins, and has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a brilliant piece of war cinema to watch any time of year. If you’re a Paramount+ subscriber, you should watch it before it’s gone.
With streaming prices always on the rise, you should most certainly be getting your money’s worth out of your Paramount+ subscription. If, however, you’re hungry for more curated picks, we also have roundups across Netflix, HBO Max, and more on How-To Geek.
Subscription with ads
Yes, $8/month
Simultaneous streams
3
If you enjoy CBS offerings, you’ll want to subscribe to Paramount+. You get access to hit shows like Star Trek and Yellowstone, as well as a variety of SHOWTIME content.
