What’s Leaving Showtime: March 2018

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

Each month, several films and TV shows leave Showtime’s library. We provide a list of departing titles and recommend a few standouts so you can watch them before they’re gone forever (or are just available on a different site). For more 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.

This Month’s Highlights

Leaving March 12

Because it’s David Lynch’s most overlooked film: The Straight Story

The Straight Story feels like an outlier in David Lynch’s filmography. It’s a G-rated, downright pastoral work inspired by a true story and not written by Lynch himself. Yet, it’s unquestionably Lynchian in its dreamlike depiction of Americana and its winding narrative along a highway. It’s based on the real-life story of Alvin Straight (played by the late Richard Farnsworth, who suffered from metastatic prostate cancer during filming and ended his own life a year later), a man who traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin on a tractor to see his ill brother — because his eyesight was too poor for a driver’s license. Inspiring and humane, The Straight Story is a singular film in a corpus full of singular films, and you should see it before it leaves Showtime. Leaving March 12.

Leaving March 19

Because it’ll never get old: Carol

Carol, and its wholehearted embrace by everyone who sees it, is one of the more life-affirming things to happen in cinema in the last couple of years. In the words of Jezebel writer Bobby Finger, it is “the rare LGBTQ film that’s good, has a happy ending, and stars Cate Blanchett as a well-dressed lesbian with an insatiable lust for life and a sultry voice that would make anyone cry on the bus from New Jersey to Manhattan,” which sums up its appeal nicely. There’s also Kyle Chandler and Rooney Mara and such wonderful cinematography and beautiful costumes. It’s a drag that Carol is leaving Showtime, but hey, it’s also an excuse to watch it once more. Leaving March 19.

Leaving March 31

If you want a bit of rock-and-roll history: All Things Must Pass

Directed by Colin Hanks, All Things Must Pass is a portrait of the rise and fall of Tower Records and its founder Russ Solomon, revered here as the same sort of rock star whose records he sold. This isn’t the sort of documentary to check out if you think rock and roll is disproportionately represented and over-examined in pop culture, but it is a good look at the rise and fall of an institution that was gutted by the same forces that rock itself never really recovered from. Leaving March 31.

Full List

Noteworthy selections in bold.

Leaving March 3

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans

Leaving March 4

• Tale of Tales

Leaving March 6

Con Air

Leaving March 7

• Music Within

Leaving March 12

• The Nutty Professor
• Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
The Straight Story

Leaving March 13

Mother’s Day

Leaving March 17

Steve-O: Guilty As Charged

Leaving March 18

Pele: Birth of a Legend

Leaving March 19

Carol
• Arthur & Merlin
The Hulk

Leaving March 20

The Hunting Party (2007)

Leaving March 24

Casper
• U-571

Leaving March 25

What About Bob?

Leaving March 27

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Leaving March 28

Operation Condor

Leaving March 31

All Things Must Pass
• Another Day in Paradise
• Battlefield Earth
• The Bear
• Bloodsucking Bastards
• Cas & Dylan
• The Claim
• Detention (2004)
• Dirty Weekend
• Downfall
• Gravy
• Hardball
• The Legend of Bagger Vance
• Lost in the Sun
Rocky
Rocky II
Rocky III
Rocky IV
• Rocky V
• Sniper
• Sniper 2
• Sniper 3
• Sniper: Legacy
• Sniper: Reloaded
Starman
• Walking on Sunshine

What’s Leaving Showtime: March 2018