The 10 best movies on Showtime to watch right now

Letting Steven Spielberg make a movie about his own childhood may seem like putting a hat on a hat, but one of the shocking things about The Fabelmans is how unsentimental it proves to be. The movie follows a young Sammy Fabelman as he falls in love with making movies and simultaneously watches his parents’ marriage crumble around him. The theme of divorce is everywhere in Spielberg’s filmography, and The Fabelmans retroactively reads like something of a codex for his entire filmography. On top of everything else that makes it great, though, The Fabelmans is a moving story about the way movie-making can isolate you from everyone around you.

A seminal indie film that has only grown in stature in the years since its release, The Watermelon Woman tells the story of a Black, lesbian filmmaker who begins researching an actress from a 1940s film who is credited only as “The Watermelon Woman.” After she decides to start making a documentary about the woman, we see the way the story of this mysterious woman mixes and mingles with that of the protagonist, and how the legacy of Black representation on screen still shapes the experience of Black people, particularly Black women, to this day.

Alex Garland’s second directorial effort may be his best, in part because it’s so willing to be indulgently strange. Annihilation tells the story of a woman who joins a team of explorers tasked with investigating a singular ecological phenomenon known as “The Shimmer.” Once the crew enters this region, which has been utterly transformed, they discover that their understanding of reality has to change. Where the movie goes from there is almost impossible to explain, but Annihilation is mind-bending in the best way. It’s also a thoughtful rumination on guilt and love, and the way those two are sometimes inextricably linked.