Spring is in the air! But when you come in from the great weather to settle into a movie, scroll our curated list of the best movies on Amazon Prime.
Just because the weather’s getting better doesn’t mean it’s time for the movie buff in you to start slacking off — you have a reputation to uphold after all. Access to Amazon’s massive library of movie and TV titles is a pretty great part of the Prime membership, but with so many movies to sift through, it can be time-consuming to find something to watch. Luckily, we’re on top of the movies hitting the streaming service every month and have put together this expertly curated roundup of the best and most critically acclaimed movies Amazon Prime Video has to offer, with a focus on films that are free with your Prime membership. We update this list weekly, removing the expired titles and adding new ones as they’re released, so check back often. We’ve also put together guides to the best shows on Amazon Prime, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Netflix, and the best movies on Disney+. Trolls are real! At least that what a group of Volda University student filmmakers (Thomas, Johanna, and cameraman Kalle) discover when they venture into the wilds of Norway to investigate some recent bear poachings. There, they meet the mysterious Hans (Otto Jespersen), who turns out to have a very specific set of skills — he’s a troll hunter, employed by a clandestine Norwegian government agency to hunt down the very real mythical giants and three-headed monsters. Cleverly presented as a Blair Witch -style found footage documentary, the English-subtitled Trollhunter is “pieced together” in a “rough cut” of a film that documents the three filmmakers’ journey. It’s a delightfully scary, and oftentimes funny, horror full of jumpy camera footage, terrifying night vision scenes, and some amazing digitally created creatures. Rotten Tomatoes: 81% Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror Stars: Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum Director: André Øvredal Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 103 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Prolific American sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick penned countless tales of dystopic futures that have been turned into iconic films and TV shows, most famously Blade Runner ( Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall ( We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), and this action gem starring Tom Cruise, adapted from Dick’s 1956 novella The Minority Report. Steven Spielberg brings to life Dick’s tale of a future where a specialized police force of “PreCrime” detectives uses clairvoyant humans known as “precogs” to predict murders and other future crimes in the hopes of apprehending those about to commit them. Cruise plays PreCrime captain John Anderton, who goes on the run when he himself is predicted to kill a man he doesn’t know less than 36 hours in the future. Leading the hunt is Justice Department agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), who’s trying to nab Anderton before he locates the titular “minority report,” which outlines a conflicting alternate future predicted by other precogs, the existence of which could undermine the validity of the entire PreCrime unit. Oh, and of course there’s tons of cool tech, including the famous gesture-controlled holographic screen, autonomous cars, and more. Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Genre: Action, Crime, Mystery Stars: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow Director: Steven Spielberg Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 145 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime If you find yourself in need of a light, fun, and hilarious way to spend an evening in front of the TV, then stop scrolling now and just watch this. Joe Pesci takes all the gangster clout he earned from his turn as a badass mafioso in Goodfellas two years prior and turns it on its head here as ambulance-chasing small claims lawyer Vinny Gambini (not Gambino), who finds himself in backwater Alabama to defend his cousin Bill (Ralph Macchio) and his friend Stanley (Mitchell Whitfield) on murder charges. They didn’t do it, of course, but Vinny isn’t a trial attorney. He’s never actually won a case, and the cantankerous old judge (Fred Gwynne) keeps finding him in contempt of court. Luckily for Bill and Stan, though, Vinny’s got gusto and a secret weapon — his smoldering hot and whip-smart fiancee, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei, who won a Best Actress Oscar for the role). My Cousin Vinny is as good a fish-out-of-water story as you’ll ever find, and it’s full of earworm lines you’ll be reciting for weeks. Rotten Tomatoes: 86% Genre: Comedy, Crime Stars: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Ralph Macchio, Fred Gwynne Director: Jonathan Lynn Rating: R Runtime: 120 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Paul Rudd’s flaky surfer dude Chuck has the best advice for heartbroken Peter (Jason Segel): “When life gives you lemons, just say f*** the lemons and bail.” And in this Segel-penned comedy, that’s exactly what Peter tries to do as he escapes to beautiful Hawaii to attempt to get over his recent breakup with his TV personality ex, Sarah (Kristen Bell), who’s decided that she’s too good for Pete. Only problem is, it turns out that Sarah is at the same resort, shacked up with her pervy rockstar boyfriend, Aldous (Russell Brand). Peter tries to make the best of the awkward situation (while unsuccessfully, and hilariously, trying to avoid Sarah and Aldous), and in the process meets Rachel (Mila Kunis), a concierge at the resort who tries to help Peter get out of his funk. Sparks inevitably fly between Pete and Rachel, and Pete starts to get his mojo and self-respect back. With some funny-as-hell supporting performances from Rudd, Bill Hader, and Jonah Hill, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is not to be missed if you’re a fan of that Judd Apatow (a producer on the film) comedy style. Rotten Tomatoes: 83% Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama Stars: Kristen Bell, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Russell Brand, Mila Kunis, Bill Hader Director: Nicholas Stoller Rating: R Runtime: 111 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Before the film’s release in 2012, writer-director Wes Anderson told the New York Times that with creating Moonrise Kingdom, it was “the only time I’ve been consciously trying to capture a sensation, which is that emotion of when you’re a 12-year-old and you fall in love… I remember that being such a powerful feeling, it was almost like going into a fantasy world.” It’s the love story within its fantasy world that makes Moonrise Kingdom so endearing. It follows Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), two lonely young pen-pals, alienated from their families, who fall in love and decide to run away together, albeit on the remote 12-mile-long New England island where they live. Sam’s a seasoned Boy Scout, and the couple navigates their way to their perfect retreat. But with a hurricane on its way, the entire town mobilizes to find them — including Sam’s bickering lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand); his entire Boy Scout troop and Scout Leader (Edward Norton); and sad-sack local cop (Bruce Willis). Set in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom is full of the brilliant whimsy and quirkiness that Anderson is known for and feels very much like the same universe as The Darjeeling Limited and The Royal Tenenbaums. Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance Stars: Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton Director: Wes Anderson Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 94 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Not every DreamWorks animated film is an instant classic, but How to Train Your Dragon lives up to the hype and exceeds it. Based on a book with the same name, How to Train Your Dragon follows a young Viking boy named Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) as he realizes that dragons can be partners to humanity instead of their deadly enemies. By a process of experimentation, and several leaps of trust, Hiccup trains and bonds with a small, black dragon named Toothless, which ultimately changes his world forever. The stunning animation still takes our collective breath away a decade after this film came out. It spawned a franchise, but this is still the best movie in the trilogy. Rotten Tomatoes: 99% Genre: Action, Fantasy Stars: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler Director: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois Rating: PG Runtime: 99 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Christopher Nolan wrote and directed this mind-bending sci-fi thriller that casts Leonardo DiCaprio as a high-tech thief who steals information from the subconscious minds of his targets. When he’s hired for a different sort of job — to inject a thought into someone’s mind instead of stealing from it — it raises the stakes and traps him in an even more dangerous mission. Along with an endless array of groundbreaking visual effects, the film also features an ensemble cast that includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. Rotten Tomatoes: 87% Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy Director: Christopher Nolan Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 148 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Let’s get this out of the way now, ’cause you know it’s coming: “Alright, alright, alright.” Yes, this beauty of a stoner period piece is where a 25-year-old Matthew McConaughey birthed the iconic catchphrase that still dogs the actor to this day. And we’re all better for it. Director/writer Richard Linklater’s weed- and beer-soaked account of a group of Austin teenagers’ last day of school in 1976 became a cult classic years after its release and launched the careers of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, and McConaughey. While Dazed and Confused is light on plot, it doesn’t need it. It meanders through interconnected lives of a handful of junior, senior, and too-senior-to-be-hanging-with-high-school-kids high school kids, on their first night of freedom from school, as they cruise around town, hit the local pool hall, drink, get high, make out, and wax philosophical about the adolescent condition. It’s a coming-of-age masterpiece. Rotten Tomatoes: 92% Genre: Comedy, Stoner, Coming-of-age Stars: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg Director: Richard Linklater Rating: R Runtime: 102 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime The sixth installment in the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, Fallout shows that the old series can still outpace younger ones when it comes to frenetic action and jaw-dropping spectacle. The film opens with secret agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), part of the Impossible Missions Force, attempting to secure some stolen plutonium cores. When the mission goes sideways, the cores fall into the hands of a terrorist group, forcing the IMF to hunt its members down. Their failure draws the ire of CIA Director Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett), who deploys the assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) to follow Hunt’s trail. With a gripping plot and some awe-inspiring stunts, Fallout is top-notch espionage action. Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Genre: Action & Adventure Stars: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhymes, Simon Pegg Director: Christopher McQuarrie Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 147 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Barry Levinson and Dustin Hoffman each took home Oscars for Best Director and Best Actor, respectively, for this touching drama that will have you crying in your popcorn by the time it’s over. Hoffman is Raymond, an autistic man with savant syndrome who lives by a simple routine but could recite every baseball stat in existence, every name in the phone book, or count a pile of spilled toothpicks in an instant. And he’s an excellent driver. Charlie (Tom Cruise) is Ray’s younger brother, which surprises Charlie because he doesn’t have a brother. See, Charlie learns of this fact when his estranged father dies and leaves his fortune to Raymond instead. In an act of desperation, Charlie takes Ray from the assisted living institution he’s been living in with the selfish idea that bringing him home to Los Angeles will grant Charlie access to his dad’s fortune and bail him out of his financial problems. As the brothers travel by car across the country, Charlie gets more than he bargained for when he starts to realize how special his brother really is. Rotten Tomatoes: 89% Genre: Drama Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino Director: Barry Levinson Rating: R Runtime: 133 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime The buddy cop genre owes much to 48 Hrs., the 1980s action-comedy that paved the way for everything from Lethal Weapon to Miami Vice to Bad Boys to Hobbs & Shaw and beyond. The formula was there from the beginning, with tough-guy cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) and convicted bank robber on parole Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy in his film debut) teaming up to take down Hammond’s old partner, who’s escaped from prison and has been on a cop-killing rampage. Hammond gets a 48-hour pass under the watchful eye of Cates to help bring the bad guy to justice. You know the drill: As the reluctant partners work together, they go from hating everything about each other to being slightly less annoyed to finding that they’re alike in many ways to being besties by the end of the film. Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Genre: Comedy, Action, Crime Stars: Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, Director: Walter Hill Rating: R Runtime: 96 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime In the Northern England town of Sheffield, several of the town’s steel mills have been shut down, leaving many of their workers unemployed. This includes Gaz ( Trainspotting ‘s Robert Carlyle) and his best friend Dave (Mark Addy, who would go on to play Robert Baratheon in Game of Thrones), who have resorted to petty scrap-metal theft to make ends meet. The situation starts getting desperate when Gaz can’t make his child support payments and his ex threatens to file for sole custody of their 12-year-old son, so he does what any man would (in a cheeky British comedy, anyway): He gathers together a group of other men on the dole to put on a Chippendales-like male strip show for the town’s ladies. As the troupe hilariously rehearses and works its way through the awkwardness and skimpy G-strings, they begin to rediscover their confidence and self-respect lost to hard times (no pun intended). The Full Monty is a funny and enduring light comedy well worth its hour-and-a-half runtime. Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Genre: Comedy, Drama Stars: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy Director: Peter Cataneo Rating: R Runtime: 91 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Good news for fans of this, the time-travel movie mold that would spark an entire genre — Back to the Future movies one through three are streaming now on Amazon Prime, so buckle up. The famed trilogy starts, of course, with the O.G.1995 installment, in which Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is accidentally sent racing back to 1955 in a time-machine DeLorean invented by the wily Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Stuck 40 years in the past, Marty enlists the help of the younger Doc (who has yet to invent time travel) to retrofit the DeLorean and get him back to 1985. But Marty has a few more problems to solve — mainly that his mom (Lea Thompson) has fallen for him instead of his dad (Crispin Glover), a time paradox situation that threatens Marty’s own existence. Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Genre: Comedy, Sci-fi, Adventure, Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson Director: Robert Zemeckis Rating: PG Runtime: 106 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime While it was nominated for nine Academy Awards in the year of its release (including Best Picture and Best Director for Steven Spielberg), this tear-jerker of a classic alien flick would have to settle for only four wins (boo-hoo), mainly for its visual effects, where its achievements were groundbreaking and still hold up today. When a team of extraterrestrial explorers to Earth is forced to leave behind one of its own, the young Elliott (Henry Thomas) and his little sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), befriend the scared alien and try to help it contact its people for rescue. Naming the intelligent being E.T., Elliott and Gertie must keep it a secret from the government entity searching for it. But Earth proves to be an inhospitable environment, and as E.T. falls ill, it’s a race against time to get the otherworldly creature home. Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Genre: Sci-fi, Adventure Stars: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote Director: Steven Spielberg Rating: PG Runtime: 115 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime As a feature filmmaker, Jonathan Demme is more widely known for his huge blockbuster hits, such as Philadelphia and The Silence of the Lambs (for which he won a Best Director Oscar). But Demme’s career is also full of short films and documentaries about a wide range of bands and musicians, ranging from Tom Club and Talking Heads to UB40, New Order, and Bruce Springsteen. In 2006, Demme went at it again, this time documenting legendary Canadian-American musician Neil Young during a two-night stint at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Largely a beautifully-shot concert film in which Young performs some of his greatest hits, like Harvest Moon, Far From Home, and Heart of Gold, the film also mixes in some fascinating interview footage with Young and his band as well as some rare performances. Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Genre: Music, Documentary Stars: Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Pegi Young Director: Jonathan Demme Rating: PG Runtime: 103 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime If you’re looking for a much-needed respite from heavy dramas and sappy rom-coms, look no further. Even if you never played the popular Sega video games that this fun, animated action-comedy is based on, you’ll find yourself easily enamored by Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz). He’s a literal ball of lightning-fast energy who finds himself on earth being hunted by the villainous Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey), who wants to harness that energy to power his evil robots. With a little help from the local sheriff (James Marsden) and his wife, Maddie (Tika Sumpter), the group works to take down Dr. Robotnik and save the world. Rotten Tomatoes: 63% Genre: Comedy, Kids, Action, Video Game Stars: Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey Director: Jeff Fowler Rating: PG Runtime: 198 minutes Watch on Amazon Prime Heavily in line with the time-loop movies that this cute coming-of-age romantic comedy itself references, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is like Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow (without all the death and aliens) for a new generation.
