20 best Amazon Prime Video movies to watch now (May 2021)

We’ve all been there: Flipping via Amazon Prime Video’s film choices, however caught questioning uh, what’s good. The business large’s streaming service has quietly collected a large archive of movies, and since 2006, has launched a variety of acclaimed movies like Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, and Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake underneath the Amazon Studios banner.

Prime Video is a superb service, however there’s a ton of content material to sift via. Don’t fear, we’re right here to assist. We’ve regarded via the service and cherry-picked 10 of our favourite movies at present on the platform to check out. From David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological thriller Useless Ringers, Jonathan Demme’s traditional live performance movie Cease Making Sense, and William Peter Blatty’s bonkers existential darkish comedy The Ninth Configuration— we’ve obtained you coated with the good things.

With out additional ado, listed below are the highest 10 greatest movies to stream on Prime Video proper now.

Aliens

Photograph: twentieth Century Fox

Whenever you resolve to stream Aliens — and you need to, this night, even in case you’ve seen it a number of instances — do it on the largest display accessible to you. That means, you may marvel yet again at how James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel nonetheless appears to be like so good, almost 30 years later. Higher, even, than lots of trendy sci-fi cinema. However appears to be like aren’t every part, and Aliens is such a top-to-bottom rock strong movie, the definitive sequel that takes the primary film and runs in a completely completely different route with out disrespecting what got here earlier than. What’s extra, Aliens nonetheless has one of the best setup/title one-two punch in cinema: Bear in mind how the primary film was named after one scary creature? Effectively, what if there have been extra? And whereas Cameron’s movie trades the horror of the primary movie for white knuckle motion, the film stays squarely targeted on hero Ellen Ripley, who, by the point the finale comes round, will as soon as once more face off in opposition to a single Xenomorph. Plus, it’s executed a lot for the tradition. Recreation over man, recreation over. —Joshua Rivera

Clue

Photograph: Paramount Footage

As we wrote again in 2020, “Jonathan Lynn’s darkish comedy Clue, impressed by the mystery-solving board recreation, is definitely probably the greatest whodunits of the twentieth century. Lynn and co-writer John Landis (director of The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London) idiot the viewers with delicate methods and twists, as six friends are invited to a New England mansion to resolve a nasty blackmail conspiracy.” Full of terrific comedic performances courtesy of a forged together with Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Lesley Ann Warren and 4 hilarious alternate endings, Clue is among the nice comedic cult classics of the ’80s. —TE

Useless Ringers

Photograph: twentieth Century Fox

Director David Cronenberg earned a fame all through the mid-’80s and ’90s for his physique horror sci-fi thrillers and dramas rife with psychosexual allegory, over-the-top violence, and existential paranoia. His 1988 psychological thriller Useless Ringers is a staple of this period, a movie as important in understanding his work as both 1981’s Scanners or 1983’s Videodrome. Jeremy Irons stars as Beverly and Elliot Mantle, equivalent twins who run a profitable gynecology apply in Toronto treating rich ladies for fertility issues … as nicely often sleeping with them. The pair lead a charmed lifetime of success till the arrival of Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold), an actress with a substance abuse drawback whose love affair with the gentle-hearted Beverly drives an irreconocible wedge between him and the extra cynical Elliot. Irons is phenomenal right here, creating an on-screen dynamic between the twins that feels each convincing and nuanced via delicate variances of their speech, posture, and even philosophical outlook on life and love. What begins as a thriller steadily morphs right into a horrific, enthralling, and tragic portrait of the risks of codependency, as each Beverly and Elliot resort to acts of emotional (and bodily) self-destruction when confronted with the prospect of a life with out the opposite. If that isn’t sufficient to get you to pop this one on, it’s Oldboy and The Handmaiden director Park Chan-wook’s favourite of Cronenberg’s movies. —TE

Downfall

Photograph: Sony Footage Residence Leisure

When you’ve spent an inordinate period of time on-line and also you’ve by no means seen Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Oscar-nominated 2004 historic conflict drama of the ultimate days of Adolf Hitler’s life amid the Battle of Berlin, that is the movie that spawned the notorious “Hitler finds out…” meme. As memorably (and hilarious) as these memes may be, they don’t maintain a candle to the magnitude of the scene throughout the context of the movie itself. The late nice Bruno Gaz, famend for a lifetime of exceptional performances in such movies as Nosferatu the Vampyre and Wings of Want, delivers considered one of his most affecting via his portrait of Adolf Hitler as a simpering, paranoid, and vainglorious demagogue clinging to the final waning vestiges of energy as his empire crumbles and the world descends upon him. —TE

Dredd

Photograph: Lionsgate

When you love Gareth Evans’ 2011 Idonesian action-thriller The Raid and in some way haven’t seen 2012’s Dredd … holy shit, are you in for a good time. Starring Karl City (The Boys) because the gravel-voiced authoritarian super-cop, the movie follows Dredd and his apprentice associate, Decide Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), as they’re pressured to carry legislation and order to a 200-story high-rise block ensnared within the vice grip of resident drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey). Penned by screenwriter-turned-cerebral-sci-fi-director Alex Garland (and who in keeping with Karl City might need had extra of a hand within the movie’s manufacturing than was beforehand recognized), Dredd is an explosive motion expertise filled with dazzling slo-mo motion sequences and charged with a biting satirical undercurrent of darkish humor. —TE

Excessive-Rise

Photograph: Magnolia Footage

Ben Wheatley’s 2015 adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel Excessive-Rise takes purpose on the legacy of austerity politics and the historical past of sophistication warfare all through Nice Britain. The Avengers and Thor: Ragnarok’s Tom Hiddleston performs Robert Laing, a health care provider who strikes into a brand new high-rise residence constructing constructed for the rich and elite. The tower is a universe unto itself, full with any amenity or need one may ask for. Tensions throughout the fault traces of sophistication and way of life quickly turn out to be pressured nonetheless, as medication, drink, and debauchery devolve into sectarian tribalism, wanton misogyny, and a literal class conflict waged by rich upper-floor residents. It’s a morosely fascinating watch, even in case you’re not up in your Seventies British historical past. —TE

Let The Proper One In

Photograph: Magnet Releasing

A 12-year-old Swedish boy finds a pal in a vampire who appears to be like roughly his age, however is definitely an previous vampire completely trapped within the physique of a younger baby. The movie is kaleidoscopic, every viewing revealing one thing completely different than the final. The primary time I noticed the movie, I used to be a pessimistic school scholar, and I learn the central relationship as a warning in regards to the parasitic nature of affection. After school, the youngsters’s bond jogged my memory of the impermanence of youth, and why rising up is a blended blessing. This previous 12 months, I used to be much more targeted on the woman’s relationship along with her caretaker, an older man who sacrifices every part for her existence.

The movie was tailored from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel of the identical title, which impressed not simply this Swedish movie, however a 2010 American adaptation, a comic-book prequel, and two stage performs. The latter has its personal legacy — it was tailored by the magnificent Nationwide Theater of Scotland, and it will definitely had a run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2015. Few books encourage a lot extra nice artwork. So I suppose I’m recommending the ebook simply as a lot because the movie. —Chris Plante

The Lighthouse

Photograph: A24

Director Robert Eggers and his brother Max conceived of The Lighthouse as a ghost film, however for me, it performs like an summary vampire movie. Within the two-hander, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe play the attendants of a lighthouse on a diminutive island off the coast of New England within the Eighteen Nineties. The 2 males — each named Thomas — haven’t any companionship however one another and the sunshine of the lighthouse. The Fresnel lens that casts mild throughout the ocean turns into some extent of fixation, an immortal beacon that saps the lads of their very will.

Eggers and his movie are a part of the latest push of critically lauded horror movies. When you get pleasure from The Lighthouse, you also needs to strive Eggers’ debut, The Witch. You may additionally like every of A24’s “excessive” horror movies, like Midsommar, Beneath the Pores and skin, Enemy, Hereditary, Saint Maud, It Comes at Night time, Inexperienced Room, and Climax. And no assortment of award-worthy horror can be full with out Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us. —CP

Grasp And Commander: The Far Aspect Of The World

Picture: twentieth Century Studios

Peter Weir’s 2003 epic nautical war-drama Grasp And Commander: The Far Aspect of the World is, because the movie’s star Russel Crowe mentioned earlier this 12 months in what some may describe as “the world’s loudest subtweet,” an grownup’s film. The movie follows Captain John “Jack” Aubrey, the brash and fearless captain of H.M.S. Shock and Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) are ordered to search out and seize the rogue French privateer ship Acheron. An odyssey spanning over two 12 months and set amidst the peak of the Napoleonic Conflict, Weir delivers a welcome various to Pirates of the Caribbean and extra fantastical seafaring adventures. —TE

Millennium Actress

Photograph: Madhouse

Millennium Actress is the second of 4 options produced by late Japanese director Satoshi Kon, and arguably his biggest work. A love letter to cinema, the movie is a magical realist odyssey skilled from the angle of Chiyoko Fujiwara, an actress reflecting on profession on the behest of a passionate documentarian working to create a tribute to her life. From references to 1954’s Godzilla to Kurosawa’s 1957 traditional Throne of Blood, to achingly lovely and surreal sequences of Chiyoko and co. leaping forwards and backwards via as she recollects over her previous, Millennium Actress is an anime traditional and one of the crucial lovely and distinctive animated movies ever produced. —TE

The Ninth Configuration

Photograph: Warner Bros. / Warner Residence Video

After successful the Academy Award for Greatest Tailored Screenplay in 1973 for William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty channeled that momentum into his directorial debut The Ninth Configuration. Primarily based on Blatty’s personal novel, the 1980 psychological darkish comedy drama stars Stacy Keach as Col. Kane, a psychologist who arrives at a distant asylum positioned in a big fortress within the Pacific Northwest.

The asylum’s sufferers are an eclectic bunch: All very smart former navy personnel, together with Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), an astronaut who was dragged from an aborted moon launch after struggling an obvious psychotic break. Cutshaw suspects that one thing is off about Kane, and the 2 have interaction in a heated contest of wills that spans not solely the confines of the fortress however the expanse of human existence itself. To explain it via comparability, The Ninth Configuration is like if Mel Brooks went on to direct a mash-up of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Altered States after engaged on Blazing Saddles. It’s a movie that poses huge questions: What use is sanity in a world of insanity? What goal does religion serve in a world (seemingly) bereft of any hope for salvation? I assure that it’ll be the strangest movie you’ll watch from this listing. Additionally, content material warning: there’s blackface right here, but it surely doesn’t intervene with the standard of the movie as a complete. — TE

Mission Unimaginable: Ghost Protocol

Photograph: Paramount Footage

Is Mission Unimaginable: Ghost Protocol one of the best Mission Unimaginable film? That’s debatable. However is it the funniest Mission Unimaginable film? No query. The 2011 entry from director Brad Chicken (The Iron Large, The Incredibles) finds Tom Cruise’s tremendous spy Ethan Hunt and his IMF colleagues disavowed within the wake of a horrific assault on the Kremlin. Tasked with clearing their names and bringing the true culprits to justice, Hunt and IMF technician-turned-field operative Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) are joined by intelligence analyst William Brandt (Avengers star Jeremy Renner) and handler Jane Carter (Paula Patton) as they globetrot from Moscow to Dubai and Mumbai on the path of a rogue nuclear terrorist recognized solely as “Cobalt.” The massive set-piece scene of Ethan scaling the aspect of a skyscraper is an exquisitely nail-biting efficiency of mounting pressure and hilarious comedic timing. —TE

Paterson

Photograph: Bleecker Avenue Media/ Amazon Studios

Academy-Award nominee Adam Driver shines in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, a magical realist ode to the quotidian pleasure and defeats of extraordinary life and a stirring drama in regards to the animating powers of written poetry. The movie chronicles every week within the lifetime of the eponymous protagonist, a modest and gentle spoken bus driver dwelling in Paterson, New Jersey who moonlights as a poet. Paterson is a small-scale, meditative film; a beautiful pocket-sized tone poem of a movie that relishes within the easy joys, frustrations, and necessity of relationships, routine, and openness to vary. —TE

Pulse

Photograph: Miramax

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 Japanese horror traditional Pulse is among the most terrifying movies I’ve ever watched. Set close to the flip of the century, Kurosawa’s follows a bunch of Japanese youngsters who, within the wake of their pal’s inexplicable suicide, start to expertise unusual visions and unsettling encounters linked to a mysterious floppy disk their pal was investigating previous to his dying. Pulse is broadly championed as one of many definitive works within the canon of Japanese horror, with a number of critics and followers citing it because the definitive web horror movie of the twenty first century. You should definitely have all of the lights off for this one … and one thing to cowl your eyes if you get too freaked out (belief me— you’ll). —TE

So I Married An Axe Assassin

Photograph: TriStar Footage

Mike Myers stars in Thomas Schlamme’s 1993 black comedy as Charlie MacKenzie, a preferred San Francisco beat poet with dedication points who nonetheless falls in love with with an area meat butcher with a coronary heart of gold named Harriet (Harriet! Candy Harriet!). After the 2 wed, Charlie’s paranoia rapidly begins to settle in when, you guessed it, begins to suspect that he’s new beau is a vicious serial killer with a penchant for marrying her victims earlier than brutally murdering them once they least suspect it. Chock stuffed with hilarious performances, together with Mike Myers enjoying Charlie’s personal father Stuart, So I Married An Axe Assassin is a terrific comedy that’s as charmingly tacky as it’s completely entertaining to look at. —TE

Cease Making Sense

Photograph: Vivendi Leisure

Sadly for all different motion pictures, however they don’t get higher than Cease Making Sense. Take it from me, a person who has by no means listened to a single Speaking Heads album from entrance to again, once I say that Jonathan Demme’s 1984 live performance movie is among the most electrifying, distinctive, and important cinematic experiences of the late twentieth century. The place else are you going to see David Byrne noodle-dancing in a big outsized go well with earlier than belting out infectiously euphoric rock anthems assured to get you out of your seat? Eat your coronary heart out, James Murphy. —TE

Ran

Photograph: The Criterion Assortment

Akira Kurosawa’s motion drama Ran (the Japanese phrase for “chaos”) is taken into account by many to be one of many biggest movies ever produced by inarguably probably the most iconic and critically acclaimed Japanese director within the historical past of cinema. Impressed by William Shakespeare’s King Lear and the apocryphal legends of the Sixteenth-century daimyo Mōri Motonari, the 1985 epic stars the legendary Tatsuya Nakadai (Harakiri, The Sword of Doom) as an aged warlord in Medieval Japan who, upon his retirement, bequeaths his kingdom to the care of his three sons. Order quickly subsumes chaos nonetheless, as Nakadai’s Lord Ichimonji is pressured to look at helplessly because the harmonious accomplishments of his reign rapidly spiral right into a cacophonous din of horror and bloodshed. Heralded as Kurosawa’s final nice masterpiece, Ran is a must-watch traditional. —TE

Skyfall

Photograph: twentieth Century Fox Residence Leisure

Sam Mendes’ 2012 flip on the venerable spy motion franchise is a scintillating and melancholic flip for the collection, probing on the interiority of James Bond’s historical past and allegiances in a means that no earlier installment (save for perhaps On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) has executed earlier than. Skyfall follows Daniel Craig as he reprises his function as everybody’s favourite MI6 operative as he goes toe-to-toe with former agent Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) as he mounts a globe-spanning plot to carry the group to its knees and enact vengeance on Bond’s handler M (Judi Dench) for abandoning him years in the past. —TE

Unbreakable

Photograph: Buena Vista Footage

M. Night time Shyamalan adopted trendy tendencies by turning Unbreakable into the premise for a cinematic superhero universe with the addition of Break up and Glass, but additionally like trendy tendencies, the primary one is one of the best. Unbreakable is a gradual drip of a thriller, and a what-if-superheroes-were-real thought experiment constructed on the backs of 30 years of post-modern comedian historical past. The motion is minimal — Bruce Willis’ ultimate struggle is principally a wrestling match in a bed room — however the temper is palpable. Portuguese cinematographer Eduardo Serra’s stark imagery mixed with a haunting rating by James Newton Howard make David Dunn’s intimate discoveries and Elijah Worth’s diabolical plot as epic as any Marvel plot. —MP

The Huge of Night time

Photograph: Amazon Studios

Set within the Nineteen Fifties, The Huge of Night time focuses on two youngsters investigating a mysterious radio frequency. Over the course of 1 night time, switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) go on a supernatural scavenger hunt, investigating every part from reels of tape to nameless cellphone calls as they try to uncover the frequency’s supply. From our evaluate,

It’s an intimate film, interrupted solely by an impressively showy one-shot that sends a digital camera hurtling via the city, establishing the distinction between its open, silent areas and the busy huddle of the large high-school basketball recreation. And whereas cinephiles make this level so typically that it’s turn out to be tedious even when it’s true, it’s a movie designed for a darkish room with no interruptions. It’s designed to forged a fragile spell over the viewers, however the viewers has to take part to make the trick work.