Photo: Courtesy of SHOWTIME

Each month, Showtime adds new movies to its library. Below, you’ll find our March 2017 recommendations. For more comprehensive coverage of the best titles available on Showtime and elsewhere, check out Vulture’s What to Stream Now hub, which is updated throughout the month.

Write it in your diary: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

If in Twin Peaks David Lynch’s initial goal was to use Laura Palmer’s murder as the hook to explore the weird and wonderful world he’d created, then his polarizing 1992 movie prequel torched that desire. By lasering in on Laura’s final days before her death and the horrific events that led up to it, Lynch dives deep into the darkest fears of a town and a nation, personified by one hopelessly lost high-school girl. Will the new Twin Peaks take after the quirky, coffee-loving spirit of the original series? Or will we be doomed to peer ever deeper into the Black Lodge, where our own worst natures lie, like Laura’s, waiting to invade our dreams and damn our souls? Available March 1.



Well-done Baker: Born to Be Blue

Ethan Hawke makes a marvelous Chet Baker in this free-form experimental biopic of the jazz legend. Set as Baker attempts to mount a musical comeback following an embouchure-destroying run-in with his drug dealer, Born to Be Blue is audacious enough to invent a movie within a movie, in which Hawke plays Baker playing himself. The actor is rarely more heartbreaking than when he warbles “My Funny Valentine” in a recording studio, leaning hard on his voice because playing the trumpet causes Baker too much pain. He’s desperate to find any way possible back into music, even as his own body seems to be rejecting his legacy. Available March 24.

Diving into radicalism: American Jihad

Investigative documentarian Alex Gibney, known for shining a light on our country’s detainee torture policies in Taxi to the Dark Side, and Peter Berg, a macho-man director of jingoistic popcorn fare who once swore at an Israeli interviewer for not serving in the army, may make for odd bedfellows, but that only heightens the intrigue of this original nonfiction film about self-radicalized terrorists living in the United States. Produced by Berg’s Film 45 company and executive produced by Gibney, American Jihad explores the path of Al Qaeda leader and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by an Obama-administration drone strike and whose daughter was recently killed in Yemen by a U.S. special forces raid authorized by President Trump. Any way you look at it, the film raises questions with far-reaching implications. Available March 11.



Noteworthy titles in bold.

Available March 1

Enemy at the Gates

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Available March 3

Pele: Birth of a Legend

Available March 4

Out of the Furnace

Available March 10

Perfect in ’76

Available March 11

American Jihad

Available March 17

A Bronx Tale

SXSW Comedy With Natasha Leggero

Available March 24

Born to be Blue

Available March 31

Disgraced