The Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now

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As Netflix pours more of its resources into original content, Amazon Prime Video is picking up the slack, adding new movies for its subscribers each month. Its catalog has grown so impressive, in fact, that it’s a bit overwhelming — and at the same time, movies that are included with a Prime subscription regularly change status, becoming available only for rental or purchase. It’s a lot to sift through, so we’ve plucked out 100 of the absolute best movies included with a Prime subscription right now, to be updated as new information is made available.

Here are our lists of the best TV shows and movies on Netflix, and the best of both on Hulu and Disney+.

‘Man on Wire’ (2008)

James Marsh’s “thorough, understated and altogether enthralling documentary” tells the exhilarating story of French daredevil Philippe Petit, whose team of friends and accomplices sneaked into the World Trade Center one night in 1974 and spent the night running a high-wire between the Twin Towers, so Petit could dazzle downtown New York with an early morning tightrope walk. Marsh ingeniously meshes archival footage and contemporary interviews with stylish re-enactments, framing Petit’s daring feat as a heist movie where the payoff is the possibility of death. Winner of the Academy Award for best documentary, it’s a thrilling and fascinating film, and a quiet valentine to the vanished skyscrapers.

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‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)

Few fictional characters have embedded themselves in the pop culture consciousness as firmly as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant monster brought to bone-chilling life by an Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 adaptation of the Thomas Harris best seller. The film also won awards for best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best actress. Jodie Foster’s indelible portrayal of the rookie F.B.I. investigator Clarice Starling sharply combines small-town naïveté with quick-witted strength. Our critic called it pop filmmaking “of a high order.”

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‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (1993)

Tom Hanks is a sensitive widower who pours out his heart in a searching monologue on a radio call-in show; Meg Ryan, listening in, is so smitten that she travels across the country to track him down. That’s the premise of this “feather-light romantic comedy” from the writer and director Nora Ephron, who infuses her tale of love lost and found with plentiful homages to the classic tear-jerker “An Affair to Remember,” including a climactic meet-up atop the Empire State Building. This was Hanks and Ryan’s second onscreen collaboration (after “Joe Versus the Volcano”), though they spend most of it apart — amusingly so, as their near-misses prove both funny and poignant. (For more romantic comedy, try “His Girl Friday.”)

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‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (2001)

The writer and director Wes Anderson helms this lovingly eccentric familial comedy-drama, featuring Gene Hackman (in one of his final screen roles) as the estranged patriarch of a brood of famous child geniuses. But the passage to adulthood has not been kind to the Tenenbaum offspring (played as adults by Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Stiller), and they all find themselves back under the same roof with their father, who is faking a terminal illness. “Tenenbaums” is one of Anderson’s most earnest and emotional films, and the grace notes of its closing scenes are genuinely moving. (“Little Man Tate” is a similarly thoughtful look at the complications of parenting a prodigy.)

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‘Stories We Tell’ (2013)

The actor-turned-director Sarah Polley makes her documentary debut with this intensely personal story unraveling the truths and white lies of her family’s past. A former child actor, Polley documents a yearslong investigation, weaving together family photos, interviews with family and friends, narrated extracts from her father’s memoir and eerily convincing home movie recreations. It’s not a conventional documentary, and that’s a case of form following function: Her film is about the blurry lines between perception and reality, and this “affecting documentary tale” walks that line with intrigue and grace.

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‘Little Women’ (1994)

Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women” isn’t a stranger to film adaptation — earlier movie versions date clear back to the silent era — but this 1994 take from the director Gillian Armstrong (“My Brilliant Career”) adroitly pitches the film to modern audiences without condescending to its old-fashioned sentimentality. Handsomely staged and marvelously acted, this is a first-rate introduction to one of the great works of young adult literature. Our critic called it “the loveliest ‘Little Women’ ever on screen.”

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‘Pineapple Express’ (2008)

The “Freaks and Geeks” co-stars Seth Rogen and James Franco reunited for this uproariously funny stoner action comedy, penned by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and directed by David Gordon Green, then best known for modest indie dramas like “George Washington.” That odd combination of backgrounds and specialties could’ve made for a real mess, but Rogen and Goldberg’s script is wry and witty, Green’s direction is sure-handed, and Rogen and Franco are a pitch-perfect team, their opposites-attract chemistry recalling ’80s buddy movies like “48 HRS” and “Midnight Run.” Manohla Dargis praised the film’s “waves of playful nonsense.” (For more wild comedy, add “Raising Arizona,” “Talladega Nights,” and “The Bad News Bears” to your watchlist.)

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‘The Thin Red Line’ (1998)

Terrence Malick’s “hauntingly majestic” adaptation of the novel by James Jones (sprinkled with bits from another of his novels, “From Here to Eternity”), was his first film in two decades, extending his shift away from the straightforward narrative inclinations of his debut feature, “Badlands.” Malick had become more interested in cinematic poetry than prose, and set about crafting images and voice-overs that captured mood more than story points. That sounds like anathema to a war story, but Malick pulls it off: With the help of an illustrious cast (including Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto and many others), he crafts a film that is intoxicated by the possibility that beauty and bloodshed may exist side-by-side.

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‘Beginners’ (2011)

A young man sorts through his complicated memories of his father — and his own, tricky present — in this heartfelt serio-comic drama from the writer and director Mike Mills. Ewan McGregor stars as Oliver, whose recently deceased father Hal (an Oscar-winning Christopher Plummer) came out as gay late in life. That change is framed as a joyful journey of self-acceptance, and Mills shows how that shift allows Oliver to open himself up to the possibilities of a romance with Anna (Mélanie Laurent), a French actress. Mills’ style is quirky but not precious, and heartfelt but not saccharine; Manohla Dargis praised the film’s “wistful tone and mood.”

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‘A Single Man’ (2009)

Tom Ford, the fashion designer turned filmmaker, made his feature directorial debut with this moving, melancholy (and, unsurprisingly, aesthetically stunning) adaptation of the novel by Christopher Isherwood. An Oscar-nominated Colin Firth stars as George, a college professor and “bachelor,” as gay men in his era were so often euphemistically known. Accompanying George through one long, difficult day — the anniversary of the death of his boyfriend — Ford burrows deep into the tortured psyche of his protagonist, and Firth is up to the challenge, playing the role with what Manohla Dargis called “a magnificent depth of feeling.” (For more indie drama, try “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Hard Eight.”)

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‘Alien’ (1979)

The director Ridley Scott and the actress Sigourney Weaver made their mainstream breakthroughs with this hit, which ingeniously fused two of the most durable genre standbys: the lost-in-space sci-fi thriller, and the haunted house horror chiller. Weaver is among the crew members of the commercial spaceship “Nostromo,” headed back home when a creature starts killing her colleagues. Jolting scares and skin-crawling moments ensue, to great effect. Our critic called it “an old-fashioned scare movie” and praised Scott’s “very stylish” direction. (For more throwback thrills, try “The Blair Witch Project.”)

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‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988)

One of Disney’s biggest hits of the 1980s was this “deliriously funny” and “crazily unexpected” story about cartoon animals and cynical humans who exist together in 1940s Los Angeles, where the movie star Roger Rabbit is accused of murdering a local tycoon. He hires Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a hard-boiled private eye, to clear his name, and they embark on an investigation of the animated movie industry. It’s a treat for movie buffs and cartoon aficionados, but also an entertaining potboiler, dipping into the juicy, “Chinatown”-like mysteries and scandals of postwar Hollywood.

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‘Train to Busan’ (2016)

This zombie-apocalypse thriller from the South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho, set onboard a train hurtling toward possible safety, is a fantastic entry in the “relentless action in a confined space” subgenre (recalling “Snowpiercer,” “The Raid,” “Dredd” and the granddaddy of them all, “Die Hard”). The pacing is energetic, the makeup effects are convincing and the storytelling is ruthless. (Don’t get too attached to anyone.) But it’s not all blood and bluster; there’s a patient, deliberate setup before the orgy of gore and mayhem, leading to a surprising outpouring of emotion at the story’s conclusion. Our critic deemed it “often chaotic but never disorienting,” and praised its “spirited set pieces.” (If you like smart action movies, try “The Hunt for Red October” or “JCVD.”)

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‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ (2009)

Wes Anderson tried his hand at family entertainment with this adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl, in which the midlife crisis of a literal sly fox (voiced with panache by George Clooney) ends up endangering his family and neighbors. Though engaging for kids and true to the source material, it’s also indisputably a Wes Anderson movie; he fills the voice cast with his usual ensemble players (including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe) and uses its carefully constructed sets and characters to build, from scratch, the kind of universe he usually has to bend the real world into. A.O. Scott called it “in some ways his most fully realized and satisfying film.”

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‘Pieces of April’ (2003)

Those dreading holidays with the family may find some comfort in this “intelligent and touching farce” from the writer and director Peter Hedges — which details how much worse such events could be. Katie Holmes stars as a free spirit who invites her estranged family (including Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Alison Pill and John Gallagher Jr.) to her rundown New York City walk-up for Thanksgiving dinner. The result is one of the few films in cinematic history to offer valuable advice on both dealing with a family member’s terminal illness and cooking a turkey without a proper oven.

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‘The Host’ (2006)

Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) gleefully picks up where “Godzilla” left off with this delightfully subversive riff on urban monster-movie conventions: His mutant sea creature is created by the carelessness of the local government and the American military. Bong also takes a keen interest in the human dynamics at play, and how the dysfunctional family at the story’s center comes together for a common cause.

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‘Platoon’ (1986)

Oliver Stone graduated from a respected screenwriter to a top-flight filmmaker with this harrowing Vietnam War drama. He based the film on his own experiences in Vietnam, with Charlie Sheen as his avatar, a clean-cut kid from a privileged background whose eyes are opened to the horrors of combat. Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger singe the screen as his sergeants, one free-spirited and open, the other hard-edged and cruel. Our critic called it a “vivid, terse, exceptionally moving” film. (Stone returned to Vietnam, with similarly devastating results, in “Born on the Fourth of July.”)

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‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (1969)

In this freewheeling, high-spirited Western from the director George Roy Hill, Paul Newman and Robert Redford have charisma and chemistry to burn as the title characters, a pair of grinning outlaws always on the lookout for the next score and the next thrill. But the film achieves its immortality thanks to William Goldman’s wily and witty screenplay, which both sends up and embraces the conventions of the Western as well as supplies the stars with uproariously funny, fast-talking dialogue. (For a buddy comedy with a more contemporary setting, try “The Odd Couple”; for more Redford, stream “All Is Lost.”)

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‘The Graduate’ (1967)

This wryly funny drama from Mike Nichols, adapted from the novel by Charles Webb, has become such an entrenched piece of popular culture that it is easy to miss that it is also great entertainment. Using Dustin Hoffman as his marvelously dry-witted vessel, Nichols dramatizes youthful ennui with a skill rarely seen in American cinema. Our critic called it “funny, outrageous, and touching.” (Nichols’ later “Carnal Knowledge” is also on Prime.)

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‘I’m Not There’ (2007)

Bob Dylan evolved his music, approach, and appearance throughout his career, so the director Todd Haynes (“Carol,” “Far From Heaven”) took perhaps the only sensible approach to his life: casting six different actors to encapsulate the singer’s contradictory personas and enact the conflicts in his music. “I’m Not There” doesn’t always make logical or narrative sense, but it has an emotional resonance and lyricism too often absent from musical biopics. The result is a boldly experimental journey through the mythology of a legend, an “incandescent rebus of a movie,” per our critic A.O. Scott. (For a more conventional but no less thrilling musical biopic, check out “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”)

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‘The Squid and the Whale’ (2005)

Two young men in Park Slope, Brooklyn, weather their parents’ nasty divorce in this ruthlessly intelligent and evenhanded coming-of-age story from the writer and director Noah Baumbach, who drew upon his own teenage memories and put himself, not altogether complimentarily, into the character of the 16-year-old Walt (a spot-on Jesse Eisenberg). Laura Linney is passive-aggressive perfection as his mother, while Jeff Daniels, as the father, masterfully captures a specific type of sneeringly dissatisfied intellectual. The film is “both sharply comical and piercingly sad,” A.O. Scott wrote; Baumbach dissects this family’s woes and drama with knowing precision.

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‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (1974)

When people say, “They don’t make’ em like they used to,” Sidney Lumet’s Oscar winner is the kind of movie they’re usually talking about: a sparkling literary adaptation, handsomely mounted and elegantly acted by an all-star cast (including Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Ingrid Bergman, who won an Oscar for her role). Albert Finney stars as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, who is called upon to figure out which passenger on the title train killed a man whom, it seems, they all had a motive to murder. Our critic called it “superb fun.” (For more ’70s action, try “The Parallax View.”)

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‘The Social Network’ (2010)

The unlikely marriage of the screwball-inspired screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and the chilly visual stylist David Fincher birthed one of the finest works of both their careers, a “fleet, weirdly funny, exhilarating, alarming and fictionalized” account of the early days of Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg (brought to sneering life by Jesse Eisenberg). Sorkin’s ingenious, Oscar-winning script spins the Facebook origin story as a Silicon Valley “Citizen Kane,” dazzlingly hopscotching through flashbacks and framing devices. But the ruthlessness of Fincher’s cleareyed direction is what brings the picture together, presciently framing Zuckerberg as the media mogul of the future — and hinting at the trouble that entails.

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‘Something Wild’ (1986)

This thrillingly unpredictable rom-com/crime movie mash-up from the director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) begins as a boy-meets-girl movie with a slightly psychosexual edge, seeming to tell the story of how a wild girl (Melanie Griffith) and a straight guy (Jeff Daniels) meet in the middle. Then Ray (a sensational Ray Liotta) turns up and hijacks the entire movie, turning into something much darker and more dangerous. Throughout, Demme keeps the focus on his colorful characters and sharp dialogue. (If you like this film’s livewire vibe, try “Freeway.”)

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‘The Report’ (2019)

Across six years in the mid-2000s, an analyst named Daniel Jones (portrayed by an excellent Adam Driver) pored through millions of pages of documents to write the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program. This taut, angry film from Scott Z. Burns dramatizes that investigative process and what Jones discovered — and the steady growth of his righteous indignation. Burns, in what our critic deemed a “smart, layered screenplay,” deftly translates the story’s intellectual urgency into emotional agency, making the political into something decidedly personal. (Driver is also first-rate in Leos Carax’s “Annette.”)

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‘The Vast of Night’ (2020)

This debut film from the director Andrew Patterson wears its “Twilight Zone” influence right on its sleeve, opening (on a vintage television, no less) with the spooky intro to an anthology series called “Paradox Theater,” and presenting this story as “tonight’s episode.” The throwback framework is key; this is a film that bursts with affection for analog, with the look, feel and sound of black-and-white TVs, reel-to-reel tape recorders, telephone switchboards and the distant voices of a radio disc jockey and his mysterious callers. Patterson orchestrates it all with the grinning giddiness of a campfire storyteller — he’s having a great time freaking us out. Manohla Dargis called it “a small-scale movie that flexes plenty of filmmaking muscle.”

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‘Manchester by the Sea’ (2016)

Kenneth Lonergan makes films about people in turmoil, roiled by bottomless sadness, dysfunction and guilt. Casey Affleck won an Oscar for his nuanced portrayal of Lee Chandler, a Boston janitor who, for all practical purposes, is broken; Lucas Hedges is prickly and funny as the nephew who needs him to put himself together again. It’s a tear-jerker in the best sense, never stooping to cheap manipulation. Our critic called it “a finely shaded portrait.” (For more heart-wrenching drama, stream “Atonement” on Prime.)

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‘Love and Friendship’ (2016)

It was only a matter of time before Whit Stillman, the writer and director of such literate comedies as “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona,” adapted Jane Austen, whose dissections of upper-class relationships had always been an influence. This “howlingly funny” expansion on Austen’s novella “Lady Susan” merges their voices seamlessly, with Kate Beckinsale’s sly, scheming heroine, the Lady Susan Vernon, enforcing a tone of cheerful irreverence. After decades of relatively benign adaptations of Austen’s novels, “Love and Friendship” is a reminder that her work is part of the tradition of lacerating British comedy, and this whip-smart adaptation favors slashing wit and ruthless gamesmanship over swooning romance.

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‘The Italian Job’ (1969)

Michael Caine is a Cockney crook leading a gang of thieves through an elegant plot to steal $4 million in gold from Northern Italy and high-tail it to Switzerland. In sharp contrast to most caper movies, in which the focus is on the mechanics of the theft, the key to “The Italian Job” is the escape, exuberantly executed by a pack of Mini Coopers in one of the most famous car chases in all of cinema. But there’s more to this than just fancy driving: Noël Coward supplies elegance as a dapper crime boss; Benny Hill is on hand for low comedy; and Caine brings to it his inimitable style, adding a timeless admonishment to the cinema canon: “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” (For a contemporary riff on the heist movie, try “Ronin.”)

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‘Young Frankenstein’ (1974)

‘Searching for Bobby Fischer’ (1993)

Years before Netflix’s series adaptation of “The Queen’s Gambit” prompted a nationwide chess craze, the writer and director Steven Zaillian proved that the game could indeed be a thrilling and emotional spectator sport. He also tells the “absorbing story” of a prodigy: Joshua Waitzkin, who moves with ease from matches in Washington Square Park to national tournaments as his parents (Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen) try to keep his little feet on the ground. Based on the memoir by Waitzkin’s father, this powerful drama provides the surprises of an underdog sports movie, but it also tackles universal questions about parenting a talented child. (“Paper Moon,” another story of a precocious child, is also on Prime.)

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‘Heathers’ (1989)

This unapologetically dark comedy changed the high-school movie forever, from the heartfelt and ultimately sunny chronicles of John Hughes to something with a bit more bite. Winona Ryder is tart and charming as Veronica, a popular teen who has come to hate the clique she runs with. Then she meets J.D. (Christian Slater), a Jack Nicholson clone who suggests bumping off their less tolerable classmates. Nearly 30 years on, the sheer riskiness and take-no-prisoners attitude of this delightfully demented picture still shocks; our critic called it “as snappy and assured as it is mean-spirited.” (If you like this confrontational dark comedy, try “Fight Club”; Ryder fans can also stream “Edward Scissorhands.”)

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‘High Noon’ (1952)

This classic Western from the director Fred Zinnemann is best remembered for its innovative construction, in which a small-town marshal’s looming standoff with a revenge-seeking outlaw is dramatized in real time. The film was widely read as an allegory for the film industry blacklists of the era — the screenwriter Carl Foreman was deemed an “uncooperative witness” by the House Un-American Activities Committee. But “High Noon” also cleared an important path for the future of the Western, replacing the usual genre high jinks with thoughtful explorations of masculinity and violence; our critic called it “a Western of rare achievement.”

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‘Hud’ (1963)

Winner of three Academy Awards — for best actress (Patricia Neal), best supporting actor (Melvyn Douglas) and for its black-and-white cinematography (by James Wong Howe) — this wide-screen tale of the contemporary West seems, in its opening scenes, like yet another story of a wild cowboy who cannot be tamed. But as played by Paul Newman (himself an Oscar nominee), Hud Bannon isn’t a hero; he’s a brutish, irresponsible lout, and “Hud” refuses to romanticize him. Instead, the director, Martin Ritt, sees Hud for what he is: a dinosaur who is just beginning to realize he’s on his way to extinction. (For more Oscar-winning acting, stream “The Constant Gardener” and “On Golden Pond.”)

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‘The Limey’ (1999)

Steven Soderbergh followed up the career revival of “Out of Sight” with another fusion of art-house experimentation and genre storytelling. He combines fractured timelines, stream-of-consciousness editing and even clips from an earlier, unrelated film to tell the tale of a revenge-seeking ex-con (Terence Stamp, in a career-best performance). In doing so, Soderbergh turns what could’ve been a “Death Wish” remake into a thoughtful, mournful, elegiac meditation — on family, on forgiveness, on the past in general and the ’60s in particular. (Further scratch your itch for smart thrillers with “The Firm.”)

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‘Ace in the Hole’ (1951)

The director Billy Wilder followed up the triumph of “Sunset Boulevard” with this similarly “sordid and cynical drama,” starring Kirk Douglas as a ruthless and amoral newspaper man who turns a minor story of a man trapped in a collapse into a nationwide media circus, all to bolster his own profile. “Ace in the Hole” was a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release, a reception that now seems an indication that Wilder was ahead of his time; the picture’s unflinching portrait of mass media (and of humanity in general) seems much more in tune with our contemporary mood. (For more ’50s drama, add “The Man with the Golden Arm” to your watch list.)

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‘One Night in Miami’ (2020)

The “one night” of the title of Regina King’s feature directorial debut is Feb. 25, 1964 — the night Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) took down Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. But the fight footage is brief, because King isn’t making a boxing movie; she’s making a film about Black identity, filled with conversations that are still being had, and questions that are still being asked. The four participants — Ali (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) — are giants in their fields and are friends celebrating a victory. It’s a moving, powerful film, confrontational and thought-provoking. A.O. Scott called it “one of the most exciting movies I’ve seen in quite some time.”

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‘Sound of Metal’ (2020)

Riz Ahmed is devastatingly good as Ruben, a hard rock drummer whose entire life — his music, his relationship, his self-image — is upended by a sudden case of extreme hearing loss, in this wrenching drama from the writer and director Darius Marder. A former addict in danger of relapse, Ruben enters a school for the deaf, where he must confront not only his new condition, but the jitteriness that predates it. His sense of solitude, even with others, quickly transforms to self-consciousness, then self-doubt, then self-destruction, and “Sound of Metal” is ultimately less about finding a silver bullet cure than finding the stillness within oneself. Marder works in a quiet, observational style, skillfully avoiding every cliché he approaches, taking turns both satisfying and moving. Our critic praised the film’s “distinctive style.”

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‘Little Big Man’ (1970)

Three years after reinventing the crime movie with “Bonnie and Clyde,” the director Arthur Penn worked similar magic on the Western, adapting Thomas Berger’s novel about a very old man (Dustin Hoffman) who tells the tale of his exploits in the Old West, where he was raised by Native Americans. The film’s attitudes toward Indigenous people were boldly progressive at the time of its release, in 1970, coming as it did during a period when most westerns still teemed with racist images of “merciless Indian savages,” in the words of the Declaration of Independence. Our critic called it a “tough testament to the contrariness of the American experience.” (For more ’70s drama, try “The King of Marvin Gardens” and “Fat City” on Prime.)

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‘The Lady From Shanghai’ (1948)

Orson Welles attempted to repair his flailing film career (and his marriage to Rita Hayworth, whom he cast as a femme fatale) in this moody and visually striking film noir. Welles portrays a crewman hired to sail Hayworth and her husband’s yacht, and finds himself drawn into a wicked web of deception, sex and murder. As was often the case with his later works, “Shanghai” suffered from extensive studio interference and reshoots. But even in its expurgated form, this is an expert potboiler, and its oft-imitated house-of-mirrors climax is as gripping as ever. Our critic called it “at once fluid and discordant,” and “filled with virtuoso set pieces.” (For more classic noir, stream “The Naked Kiss” or “In a Lonely Place.”)

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‘Stop Making Sense’ (1984)

When Jonathan Demme’s performance film of the Talking Heads opened in 1984, our critic wrote, “’Stop Making Sense’ owes very little to the rock filmmaking formulas of the past. It may well help inspire those of the future.” She couldn’t have been more right. Demme was rewriting the rules with this innovative hybrid of documentary and concert movie, taking his cues from the group’s kinetic energy and cross-pollination of styles. The filmmaker creates an immersive experience that captures both the thrill of being in that crowd, and the high of playing for them. (If you like your movies loaded with music, try the beloved biopic “La Bamba” or the classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”)

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‘Chi-Raq’ (2015)

Spike Lee adapts and updates Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” to the streets of contemporary Chicago in this wildly funny, vividly theatrical mash-up of gangland drama, musical comedy and surrealist fantasy. Teyonah Parris shines as the determined young woman who leads a sex strike to stop the city’s violence, while Samuel L. Jackson struts and rhymes as “Dolmedes,” the picture’s one-man Greek chorus. His Dolemite-style interludes push the premise to its bawdy extremes, but Lee isn’t just playing for laughs. He’s swinging for the fences, and the result, according to Manohla Dargis, “entertains, engages and, at times, enrages.” (Lee’s “The Original Kings of Comedy” is also on Prime.)

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‘Afternoon Delight’ (2013)

This “meticulously acted” serio-comic drama was the feature filmmaking debut of Joey Soloway (credited as Jill Soloway), the creator of “Transparent” and “I Love Dick.” Kathryn Hahn is astonishing in the leading role, clearly conveying her dissatisfied housewife’s longings and nerves but keeping her intentions enigmatic, and Juno Temple is electrifying as a young woman who’s learned how to use her sexuality as a weapon without fully considering the carnage left in its wake. Their byplay is vibrant, and it gets messy in fascinating ways; this is a sly, smart sex comedy that plumbs unexpected depths of sadness and despair.

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‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946)

The director Frank Capra and the actor Jimmy Stewart took a marvelously simple premise — a suicidal man is given the opportunity to see what his world would have been like without him — and turned it into a holiday perennial. But “It’s a Wonderful Life” is too rich and complex to brand with a label as simple as “Christmas movie”; it is ultimately a story about overcoming darkness and finding light around you, a tricky transition achieved primarily through the peerless work of Stewart as a good man with big dreams who can’t walk away from the place where he’s needed most. Our critic said it was a “quaint and engaging modern parable.” (Classic movie lovers can also stream “A Place in the Sun” and “Hamlet” on Prime.)

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‘Time’ (2020)

Early in Garrett Bradley’s extraordinary documentary (a coproduction of The New York Times), someone asks Fox Rich about her husband, and she replies, “He’s, uh, out of town now.” Technically, it’s true; he’s in Angola prison, for a 1997 bank robbery, serving a 60-year sentence without the possibility of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. Fox Rich has spent years fighting for her husband’s release — and against mass incarceration — and Bradley interweaves her crusade with years of grainy home video footage, moving back and forth from past to present, contrasting the possibilities of those early videos and the acceptance, even resignation, of today. But Fox Rich never gives up hope, and this “substantive and stunning” film suggests that even in the grimmest of circumstances, that never-say-die spirit can pay dividends. (Documentary lovers will also want to check out “Jesus Camp” on Prime.)

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‘The Farewell’ (2019)

Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese immigrant who grew up to be a starving artist in New York City, returns to her homeland to help perpetrate a family hoax in this charming and beguiling comedy/drama from the writer-director Lulu Wang. The reason for the homecoming is her grandmother, known as Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), who has only months to live, but doesn’t know it. The family hastily arranges a premature wedding as a chance to say goodbye, resulting in misunderstandings, realizations and reconciliations. A.O. Scott praised the film’s “loose, anecdotal structure” and “tone that balances candor and tact.” (Fans of character-driven indie fare should also check out “Raising Victor Vargas” and “Passion Fish.”)


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‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)

The South Korean master Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) takes the stylistic trappings of a period romance and gooses them with scorching eroticism and one of the most ingenious con-artist plots this side of “The Sting.” Working from the Sarah Waters novel “Fingersmith,” Park begins with the story of a young woman who, as part of a seemingly straightforward swindle, goes to work as a Japanese heiress’s handmaiden, occasionally pausing the plot to slyly reveal new information, reframing what we’ve seen and where we think he might go next. Manohla Dargis saw it as an “amusingly slippery entertainment.” (If you like your period movies with a bit of fire, you may also enjoy “The Portrait of a Lady.”)


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‘The Salesman’ (2017)

Asghar Farhadi writes and directs this lucid and contemplative morality play, in which a married couple must grapple with the fallout of an assault on the wife in their home, particularly when the husband’s desire for vengeance surpasses her own. Farhadi’s brilliance at capturing the complexities of his native Iran’s culture is as astonishing as ever — particularly when coupled with insights into victimhood, justice, poverty and intimacy that know no borders. A.O. Scott praised the picture’s “rich and resonant ideas.” (Cinephiles may also enjoy “Cold War” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.”)

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‘You Were Never Really Here’ (2018)

The broad plot outlines — a traumatized vet, working as a killer-for-hire, gets in over his head in the criminal underworld — make this adaptation of Jonathan Ames’s novella sound like a million throwaway B-movies. But the director and screenwriter is Lynne Ramsay, and she’s not interested in making a conventional thriller; hers is more like a commentary on them, less interested in visceral action beats than their preparation and aftermath. She abstracts the violence, skipping the visual clichés and focusing on the details another filmmaker wouldn’t even see. Joaquin Phoenix is mesmerizing in the leading role (“there is something powerful in his agony,” A.O. Scott noted), internalizing his rage and pain until control is no longer an option. (For more mind-bending drama, queue up “Midsommar,” “Peeping Tom” or “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”)

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‘The Big Sick’ (2017)

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani based their first screenplay on their own, unconventional love story — a courtship that was paused, then oddly amplified by an unexpected illness and a medically induced coma. This isn’t typical rom-com fodder, but it’s written and played with such honesty and heart that it somehow lands. Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan (standing in for Gordon) generate easy, lived-in chemistry and a rooting interest in the relationship, while a second-act appearance by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as her parents creates a prickly tension that gives way to hard-won affection. Our critic deemed it “a joyous, generous-hearted romantic comedy.” (If you like indie comedy-dramas, we also recommend “Living in Oblivion.”)

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‘To Catch a Thief’ (1955)

This sun-drenched romp reunited the director Alfred Hitchcock with one of his favorite leading men, Cary Grant, and with Grace Kelly, the ultimate “Hitchcock Blonde.” The sparks are nuclear-grade as the two fall in love, and they trade witticisms, jabs and flirtations with aplomb against the beautiful backdrop of the South of France. Our critic wrote, “the script and the actors keep things popping, in a fast, slick, sophisticated vein.” (Hitchcock admirers may also enjoy “No Way Out.”)

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‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950)

Billy Wilder’s poison-penned love letter to Hollywood is often remembered more as a series of moments (particularly its closing line) than for its overwhelming whole: a sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, always riveting story about a faded silent movie queen (an unforgettable Gloria Swanson) and the opportunistic young man who tries to take advantage of her (a prickly William Holden). Our critic wrote that it “quickly casts a spell over an audience and holds it enthralled to a shattering climax.” (If you love classics, add “Funny Girl” and “Roman Holiday” to your watch list.)

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