In Recent years, Netflix and Apple TV+ have been duking it out to have the most prestigious film offerings, but some of the best movies are on Amazon Prime Video. The streamer was one of the first to go around picking up film festival darlings and other lovable favorites, and those movies are all still there in the library, so if they flew under your radar the first time, now is the perfect time to catch up.
Our picks for the best movies on Amazon Prime are below. All the films in our guide are included in your Prime subscription—no renting here. Once you’ve watched your fill, check out our lists for the best shows on Netflix and best movies on Disney+ if you’re looking for something else to watch. We also have a guide to the best shows on Amazon, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.
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Nosferatu
More than a century after F. W. Murnau brought vampires to the silent screen with Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors—liberally and infamously “inspired” by Bram Stoker’s Dracula—Robert Eggers reimagines cinema’s first blood-sucker. The story will be familiar to anyone acquainted with Murnau’s or Stoker’s works: Ambitious young estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is sent to Transylvania to finalize a property deal with the enigmatic Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), who becomes obsessed with Hutter’s new bride, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). But Eggers presents the trail of blood, plague, and terror that follows in a morbidly fascinating new light. Every frame is gorgeously shot, and Skarsgård brings the rapacious Orlok to demonic un-life with an utterly heart-stopping performance.
Knives Out
The debut outing of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) finds the master detective investigating the suspicious death of famed crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). It's a case complicated by the deceased’s expansive, dysfunctional family, all of whom appear to have a motive for killing their supposedly-beloved patriarch. Boasting a murderers' row of acting talent, including Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, and Ana de Armas as Thrombey’s attentive nurse Marta—director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out remains a masterful modern updating of the classic whodunit, packed full of meta twists that almost single-handedly reenergized the genre.
Air
Sure, nowadays Michael Jordan is a bona fide sports god, and Nike Air Jordans are still arguably the cool sneaker—but that wasn’t the case back in 1984. Jordan was a rookie, and Nike was about to close down its basketball shoe division. Enter Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a talent scout for the footwear maker who’s spotted a rising star in North Carolina who could turn everything around—he just needs to convince everyone else that Jordan is worth betting the company on. We all know how that panned out, so thankfully Air is more than a two-hour advert for gym shoes. Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, and director Ben Affleck all deliver strong performances—only to be utterly eclipsed by Viola Davis in a magnetic and powerful, if somewhat under-utilized, turn as matriarch Deloris Jordan—while Alex Convery’s script keeps the drama on the people and personalities involved, rather than the boardroom. In an age of franchises and endless blockbusters, Air is the sort of character-focused film that rarely gets made anymore, and is all the more enjoyable for it.
Heads of State
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