The best movies right now on Amazon Prime Video
The Silence Of The Lambs, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and Road House are among the titles available in Prime Video's library
Film Lists Tyler Durden
Amazon Prime Video has a wide selection of terrific films, from classic dramas and comedies to a new wave of declarative originals. But amid today’s hypercompetitive streaming wars, the platform has been hindered perhaps more than any other by ongoing shuffling of titles. So, what’s a movie-hungry subscriber to do? Read The A.V. Club’s recommendations for the best available films on Prime Video, that’s what.
Currently, the platform plays host to the Road House remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Oscar nominations abound for films distributed by Amazon Studios, like Manchester By The Sea, Cold War, and The Big Sick. And if a rewatchable comedy like The Big Lebowski or The Devil Wears Prada is what you’re in the mood for, you’re in luck. Check out our roundup of Prime Video’s best viewing options and The A.V. Club’s thoughts on each.
This list was updated on December 30, 2023.
109 Comments
Lots of good recommendations there. It’s pretty light on comedies, though; I would have made room for Logan Lucky.Also, your description of Félicité is so abstract I wasn’t sure it was the same film I watched at PIFF last year. (It is)
Excellent list, lots of good stuff to get through.For what it’s worth, Long Strange Trip is superb. I’m 40 and only started seriously listening to GD about 6 or 7 years ago, and this was a great catch-up and overall great few hours.
Yes, it’s very good. FWIW, tonight again there will be a stream of a Dead & Company show on youtube. Setlist looks sick. They’ve been doing it every Saturday since lockdown. Also, if you go to the Jambase webpage, they have a running list of bands doing free streams.
I like this list, it reminded me about several films I missed in theaters.Incidentally, this thing where the comments aren’t visible until the last slide is insane. Slideshows for content like this on the A.V. Club is moronic from a UX perspective. I know exactly why they do it (trying to increase ad impressions) but it fucking sucks.
The might get 36 clicks from 5% of the viewers and the other 95% just go elsewhere. Maybe for good. When the owners just don’t GAF about their audience, the audience disappears. Its magic!
https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/pd6guGdeslided for convenience.(I know you guys need clicks but this is a really onerous format)
Can’t stand the format myself. So much so that if my favs (Kotaku, io9, A.V. Club) start universally adopting this slideshow format like all of their sisters sites in the ad blocks do, I promise I will be jumping ship.Also, it took 6 tries to reload this page before the comments would finally appear (vanilla browser no adblock, etc)… including finally clicking on “pending” only to have the page loading that looked done, suddenly jump as I click and load more ads and I clicked on some other ad and got sent to some other site.
The backend code for this place is just stupidly bloated and functionally works as a roadblock to readers. It’s like they don’t want us to have a smooth experience… our suffering feeds them in some way I guess? /shrug /sigh
It’s like they don’t want us to have a smooth experience… our suffering feeds them in some way I guess?Congrats, you’ve just discovered this site to be run by energy vampires.
That would also explain all the updog going on around here…
Whats updog?
That he summoned his own grandma just to get her to set up the rest of that joke, only to banish her immediately… *chef’s kiss*
This site, however, is responsive, so if you’re browsing on desktop you can resize your browser window down to something mobile-shaped and it will list everything on one page.
I have also suffered the same loading issues recently although it seems slightly better this week (maybe).Jumping to a comment from your notifications would really screw it up.
All Kinja sites have this annoying feature of constantly updating content such that the pages shifts for at least a solid minute after loading. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked a link on my phone or Fire tablet only to have a completely different article appear because apparently in the time between me clicking and the web page catching it, Kinja decided to drop in an ad or something and register the click on the wrong link. Exhibit A for the Broken Web.
Thanks, as usual I put 36/number of last slide to jump ahead to the comments knowing someone would come through and let me see this list without clicking 36 fookin’ slides!!
another way is to shrink the width of the browser to maybe 1/2 to 1/3 of your screen and the kinja slideshow will then all display on one page.
Click once then edit the end of the URL for the last page to skip to the comments. Proceed to blast the authors for using this godforsaken format.
You are a saint. Fuck slideshows.
Consider my uBlock Origin’s running hot, straight, and normal on this site, my clicks don’t do squat for them.
There’s literally a button at the top that does that.
Thank you so much! I want to punch my computer screen when a site uses slide shows.
No mention of Stop Making Sense, which is only the greatest concert film of all time? Better run, run, run away.
Can we please get rid of this slide show? I really like reading this site but it makes it pretty unbearable and I close almost every article I open like that.
Is Canadian Amazon different? Cuz I’m surprised Midsommar, Booksmart and The Lighthouse aren’t on this list…good recommendations overall, though.
There are some regional differences. U.S. Prime has Midsommar and The Lighthouse right now, but not Booksmart.
Hulu has Booksmart btw.
great, i wanted to see it!
Ah, got ya…so, they voluntarily left off Midsommar and the Lighthouse? For shame…
They were on last month’s list
Lighthouse should be on there. I thought Midsommer was overrated.
Chaçon son gôut!
Yes, there are differences. For instance, I just checked if I could watch Creepy, but it’s not there.
This looks like a fun selection of zany romps and capers to chase away those pandemic blues!
This click-thru format sucks, I just put “36″ at the end of the string.“We Need to Talk About Kevin” miscast John C. Reilly horribly, to me the film didn’t recover from it. “Ratcatcher” and “Morvern Callar” are much better than this and “You Were Never Really Here.” If you want a similar but better Tilda Swinton performance watch “The Deep End.”This list skews heavily to the last decade. One good thing about Amazon Prime is how much awful trash it has from the late 70s through the 80s like “Saturn 3″
It doesn’t just skew, it’s entirely the past decade. They specifically say on the first page though, going back to 2010. They should probably have had a qualifier in the title because I was expecting a much more comprehensive list as well.
Please stop with the slideshows. PLEASE. AV Club used to be nice to read. Now it looks like the 10 million other sites on the web I immediately close the browser window on if I ever accidentally end up on them. You know the ones. The ones that say they’re gonna show you One Weird Trick.Seriously, STOP. Who is doing this? Whose idea was this? Just stop. For god’s sake…. stop.
It’s clearly Jim Spanfeller’s idea to try and artificially raise the number of “clicks” that these articles are generating. Fucking Herb, ruining everything he touches.
Which just shows how out of touch he is. I know a digital marketing agency that stopped using slideshows a couple of years ago because 1. people avoid them like the plague, and 2. they don’t spend enough time on any one slide to make the advertising spend worth anything. Anyone advertising online knows the metrics to look for, and an average of 10 seconds per click is not going to cut it.
Well, that and the shifting content that causes clicks to register on the wrong link, leading you to have to go back (click) and reselect the link you wanted (click).
…or at the very least, provide a “one page view”, simple to implement, a few folks may still prefer the page-at-a-time slideshow type mode, but the sane among us can get a quick view of the content at one time.
One word: mobile.It’s much more tolerable on my iPhone in Safari with content blocking ON. Single page, no slides.
shrinking the desktop browser width works too.
The sad thing is they keep doing it because we click on it…
Not only that but this is what, 52 pages? IS that EVERY move in Amazon Prime? I mean seriously, if you what to list the best on XXXXXXX, keep it to the best 5 or 10.
Someone posted this one weird trick (forgive me) that turns it from a shitty awful slideshow into a regular one-page format: just shrink your browser window’s width so that it’s no more than about two-thirds of the page. Then the slides go away and it puts everything on one page.
Or view it on mobile. Same effect. Kills the slides for some reason.
“Lengthy 132-minute runtime”Since when is 2 hours and 12 minutes a lengthy movie? I’d prefer to have a movie be at least that if not 2.5-2.75 hours. Even the occasional 3 hour movie isn’t bad. If I’m going to watch a movie, I devote the time. I didn’t realize barely over 2 hours was significant, especially today when it seems like I have nothing but time on my hands.
I agree, the format is frustrating. Also, why is there an image of A Most Wanted Man (with Philip Seymour Hoffman) under the blurb for Manchester by the Sea?
I watched It’s a Disaster based upon this recommendation, and it is terrible. One joke throughout about how self-absorbed these people stay throughout the crisis, and it was delivered very poorly throughout. Not worth your time.
Never mind, found my answer in the greys after publishing my question!!What film is the Phillip Seymour Hoffman image from? Is there a film missing from the list?
Lady Bird is overrated and terrible, that is all.
It didn’t really click with me either. But I’m old. I could see how it could resonate with people who were teenagers in the early 2000s, much as how movies like Dazed and Confused did for earlier generations.
Thank you for being reasonable. It wasn’t terrible to a lot of people and it was based on a true story. And I thought Laurie Metcalf was wonderful.
It had good reviews and was based on a true story. Maybe it wasn’t your type of film, and not meant for you at all, but it wasn’t terrible.
I’ve never seen it, but your plaintive defense of it makes me want to say that it’s terrible.
I’ve seen a lot of terrible films in my life. Terrible in concept, production, acting, directing, pacing and other related aspects. This film may not be one which speaks to you as a viewer, but has an involving plot, some very good performances, is based on true accounts and is generally well-regarded, never mind my two cents. See it or don’t—who gives a crap?
Sir, this is the internet. How dare you assume that no one gives a crap about someone else’s opinion on the internet.
On a related outrage, how dare you assume I am a SIR?! Cuz…. Not.
A WOMAN…on the Internet? On the AV Club web site?My monocle literally fell out into my champagne glass!
Much like Bigfoot, a Repub with a MAGA hat wearing a facemask, and a one-eyed Episcopalian Camel jockey, we have been spotted on occasion out in the wild. Rare, but there.
This type of fanboyism makes me 100% certain that it is, in fact, terrible.
Well don’t watch it. No one is twisting your arm.
“Person thoughtfully describes the reasons they believe a movie to be good, name checking actual objective standards of quality.”Ah yes, RAMPANT fanboyism! Yeah, you deeefinitely know what that term means. Suuuure.
If LaBoeuf’s dad really was like the character, it explains a whole lot. Good flick.
I recently watched the 2019 Emma, then re-watched both 1996 Emma, and the 1997 BBC Emma to see how different they all are (I could not manage the 2009 BBC Emma). Even though they are basically the same, they are worlds apart. It is truly amazing what casting choices, and script differences can do to change the feeling and narrative, again, even though they all end up in the same place.
This is a good list with the exception of The Big Sick. KN is funny, but in a leading role he quickly gets cloying and then a bit stalkery. BIt of a Passengers things going on, I found it creepy. Stuber was ok.
Just a quick note: the caption on the first photo of your article has two movie titles switched. The picture in the upper right is Tilda Swinton in “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, and below that is Oscar Isaac in “Inside Llewn Davis”, not the other way around.It should read: “Clockwise from top left: The Big Sick (Amazon/Lionsgate); It’s A Disaster (Oscilloscope Laboratories); We Need To Talk About Kevin (Oscilloscope Laboratories); Inside Llewyn Davis (CBS Films); Lady Bird (A24)“,
Savageland is one of the best movies of the decade, and is available on Prime. It should have been on this list, IMO. It can also be watched here:
https://filmfreeway.com/397919
Half these films have been on Netflix already.Anyway, just came to warn people to stay away from The Love Witch. It is a seriously dire piece of shite. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.
I also truly, truly hated it. Seems like it should have hit all my buttons (campy, pretty to look at, woman led, WITCH STUFF), but I think there’s a point where subversiveness crawls up its own ass so far it comes back around to embodying the thing it’s supposed to be undermining. (Patti Smith and her use of the “n” word is a good example of that.) I found the gender stuff in this movie to be icky and the weird anachronistic nature of it to be offputting. Maybe it got better, idk, I didn’t even make it half way. I was mostly just bored.
Remember when the A.V. Club used to be legitimate art criticism? This list would be more Appropriately titled “Movies on Amazon Prime”
Just saw Bone Tomahawk on the recommendation here. What a weird but fun horror Western with Kurt Russell as the sheriff. And Lili Simmons as a woman clearly born before her time who is exasperated with her would-be rescuers: “This is why frontier life is so difficult. Not because of the Indians or the elements but because of the idiots!”
THAT death scene in the end fucking shook me. Like I’ve watched some graphic stuff in my time but that scene was too much, I felt physically ill and shocked by it. I was actually jittery and emotionally upset for a couple of hours afterwards.
It is a LOT. I felt the same way after, but what might feel gratuitous in a worse film works well in this one, imo. I found it a strange but excellent movie, one that would still feel brutal without the graphic violence it has in it.
It’s the ONE thing keeping me from recommending to everyone. I feel like I have to be selective/protective of potential viewers, which is a shame because the dialogue in BT is killer. Just amazing.
Deragh Campbell (I Used To Be Darker) is actually Canadian. Sorry. If you ever come across her latest film, Anne at 13,000 Ft, its terrific.
Forty three sodding slides?
Forty three?!Honestly, is someone forcing you to do this?
You can tell us, it’s fine. At least if someone is holding a gun to your head, we will understand.
Otherwise this is utterly incomprehensible.
I mean, yeah. Almost assuredly they are being forced. Doesn’t make it less shitty tho.
If anyone’s interested, one of the all-time great CB/trucker exploitation movies just popped up on Prime: White Line Fever (1975), starring a young Jan-Michael Vincent as an independent owner-operator taking on corruption in the trucking industry. The criminally unsung truck stunt at the climax of the movie must be seen to be believed. Also a beautiful looking film, set and filmed in Tucson and full of vast southwestern vistas.
Your formatting for lists sucks ass.
Also, you guys really picked a ton of depressing movies. Lighten up a little.
Knives Out? Really? Too many good actors wasted, plus the 007 guy pretending he can act.
Oh man, Panic Room. Such an underrated movie. I remember being surprised by how freaking good Dwight Yoakam was as one of the villains in the movie.
Anna and the Apocalypse A Scottish Christmas zombie musical.
I actually saw this in the theater when it came to the US around Christmas 2018 a year or so after it came out in the UK. I wasn’t enthusiastic about going as I had sort of gotten sick of zombies, but it won me over with the charm of its cast.
Not even a mention of Butt Boy; this list sucks.
If a documentary makes a clearly solved case look like an unsolved mystery; that doesn’t mean viewers failed the test; that means it’s a bad documentary.
Approaching the Elephant is NOT available to stream on Amazon.
Just so you guys know, I used to click on every AV club list you had on your cross-promoting section on Kotaku. Now I look at the article names, see one I like, see that it is AV club, and I move on.
Interesting list, at least somewhat. Lots of standard dude fare though. Wow, The Departed! Bold choice! But some things I haven’t heard of as well.Last night I watched Birds of Prey through my Amazon HBO thingy and actually REALLY enjoyed it. More relevantly though, I followed that up with Orlando, from 1993. A role Tilda Swinton was possibly made for. It was on prime I believe. Also woman written and directed, it’s a weird little movie (based on the Woolf novel), but very funny in a low key arty way and GORGEOUS to look at. I think it would be a better Swinton choice than We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is total butchering of the pulpy, mysterious novel it is adapted from. Ditching the letter format, while a clear need in switchomg from page to screen, also threw out most of what made the book so compelling and fascinating. It’s really as much a mystery novel as anything else. The movie abandons all that for sad wallowing. And John C Reilly is truly one of the worst casting choices I have ever witnessed in my entire life. Just SHOCKINGLY bad, though not his fault. Midsommar is also pretty bleh. I felt like it was a collection of individually interesting scenes that added up to less than the sum of its parts. Probably a must watch if you are consider yourself a horror fan though, because no one will still stfu about it, lol.
I’ve put this into the void before, but I feel compelled to do it again: I do not know why Knives Out is so beloved.I can easily admit that Craig’s and Evans’s performances were fun. Every other main character was paper thin. We only really know that the alt-right boy is alt-right because his sister (or cousin?) tells us he is. Marta is just purity incarnate. Curtis was the child who’s trying to out do her father, and Shannon was the bad businessman with big dreams archetype. Even with the actors giving solid performances, there was just no meat to any of their characters, imo. Maybe that’s the point—these well-to-do folks are just shallow husks of humans. If that’s the case, I feel like that was laid on a bit too thick.Watching Marta evade Craig’s detective work was sometimes charming, but not consistently enough for me. Craig’s detective missed (“ignored” is the better word, as the end reveals) too many obvious signs of Marta’s guilt to get me to take him seriously as a competent detective. I’m glad people enjoyed it, because clearly a lot of work went into the movie, and it has it positives. But people who love it confuse me. (Tastes vary, I get it, I just don’t see what Knives Out is offering that people are so excited about.)
as someone who usually enjoys Craig, the role and especially the attempted accent was nails on chalkboard.
I think the budget for marketing and PR was much higher than the actual film.
I don’t know how Bone Tomahawk ended. I got to the body splitting scene and nope-nope-nope’d right out of there.
“Wait a minute! You didn’t learn how World War II ended! We won!”
That was the most brutal part, but the surprises kept coming.
For the life of me I’ll never understand why people fall all over themselves about “Knives Out”.She throws up if she lies? Holy shit what a stupid plot device. Empire in decline.
I’d have included “Dredd”, which seems to have just showed up in my Prime feed. Love that film, hotshot.
Catherine Zeta-Jones as Elena Montero was exceptional.
People really need to stop telling me The Big Sick was a good movie. As a story someone tells at a party it’s heartwarming and sweet, as a movie it was just boring and slightly creepy
Movies to Watch
Seems like a good list. Have to check some of these out.
St. Maud is not and was never available on Prime. It popped up on the “what’s coming to Prime” (for April, I think) but that was apparently a false alarm.
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Any such list that includes the pathetically flat-footed “Burn After Reading” is highly suspect…
It’s almost that time again.
I keep hearing that Fight Club has been “misunderstood”… by whom exactly? A few morons? The meme that somehow people missed the point of this movie is a trope that needs to die.
Ashley-tervort Amazon prime video is such a nice platform to watch movies and seasons. Thanks for sharing this blog to inform me that upcoming movies.
“[Elijah] Wood and his motley militia hack through foes like zombies at the business end of a lawnmower.”What the hell?I’m in the minority who thinks “Fellowship” is the best movie of the three. It comes the closest to telling a complete story with a fully realized character arc (Frodo’s final acceptance that the Ring is his burden to carry alone – and Sam’s refusal to let him go alone) and has plenty of beauty and spectacle and splendor without feeling overcluttered and overwhelmed in effects.
I love Paul Thomas Anderson on the whole, but I feel like every other one of his films just isn’t for me. Licorice Pizza is the latest of those. I just don’t get the appeal of this film. Alana Haim and Cooper Valentine are… not good…