The best movies on Amazon Prime Video include The Idea of You, The Holdovers, Polite Society, How to Date Billy Walsh, The Notebook, Wrath of Man, and more.
Amazon Prime Video is starting off strong in May with several new additions to its library of movies, including the premiere of the original romantic drama The Idea of You. Last year’s underrated Christmas drama The Holdovers is also now streaming on Prime Video. And as far as we’re concerned, a good drama is never out of season.
Prime Video lost a handful of movies at the end of April, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is only sticking around through the end of the weekend. But everything else on our list of the best movies on Amazon Prime Video right now is still available. Just keep reading, and you can make plans to watch any of the films that you want to see this month.
We’ve also put together guides to the best shows on Prime Video, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Netflix, the best new movies to stream, and the best movies on Disney+.Editor’s Pick
The irony of the premise of The Idea of You is that the romantic entanglement of Solène Marchand (Eileen‘s Anne Hathaway) with boy band lead singer Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) would probably be more of a fantasy for Solène’s daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), than for Solène herself. But one unplanned encounter between Solène and Hayes soon leads to several others.
There is an age gap between Solène and Hayes that does come up in the film, but the bigger issue between them is the celebrity gap. As long as Hayes is a world-famous musician, he and Solène may never be able to enjoy a normal romance without being hounded by the press.
It’s a little early for Christmas movies, but The Holdovers may become a holiday tradition. Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham, an unpopular and curmudgeonly teacher at Barton Academy boarding school in 1970. Hunham is forced to spend his Christmas vacation as a chaperone for the students who don’t have anywhere to go for the holidays.
Despite himself, Hunham starts empathizing and bonding with one of his students, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), as well as Barton cafeteria manager, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is grieving over the loss of her son. Through them, Hunham rediscovers his compassion, even though it may cost him what’s left of his teaching career.
Polite Society had a very under-the-radar release in 2023, but it has a chance to break out on Prime Video in 2024. The film stars Priya Kansara as Ria Khan, a British-Pakistani teenager who has grand dreams of becoming a martial artist and a stunt woman. No one is a bigger supporter of Ria’s dreams than her older sister, Lena Khan (Ritu Arya), at least until Lena falls for Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna) and agrees to move away to Singapore and marry him.
Salim instantly rubs Ria the wrong way, and so does Salim’s mother, Raheela Shah (Nimra Bucha). Against all evidence, Ria is convinced that the Shah family has sinister intentions toward her sister. Is Ria delusional? Or will she really have to go full action heroine and save her sister from the evil in-laws?
You’re going to recognize a lot of familiar elements in How To Date Billy Walsh. That’s especially true when it comes to the two best friends, Archie (Heartstopper‘s Sebastian Croft) and Amelia (Charithra Chandran), who never became a couple growing up because the former is too timid to tell the latter that he loves her. Enter Billy Walsh (Tanner Buchanan), the cool new American transfer student whom all of the girls pine for, including Amelia.
To keep Amelia from dating Billy, Archie uses a fake dating app to give her intentionally bad advice. Unfortunately for Archie, his attempts to sabotage the relationship only bring Billy and Amelia together. And if Archie can’t be honest with his crush, then he’s going to lose her forever.
The adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024, and it remains a popular choice among romance lovers. It’s not as if we haven’t seen star-crossed lover stories before, but the tale of Noah Calhoun (The Fall Guy‘s Ryan Gosling) and Allison Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) resonates in part because the movie shows how their love began and how it endured before ending decades later.
In the early 1940s, Noah and Allison’s bond is challenged by both her family and the onset of World War II. Regardless, Noah and Allison choose love above everything else, even if it means Allison has to go against the wishes of her family. Screen legends James Garner and Gena Rowlands also have supporting roles in the film that may draw a few tears from your eyes before the credits roll.
Be honest: If you were a bad guy in an action movie and you saw Jason Statham (The Beekeeper) walking in your direction, wouldn’t you run the other way? Something like this actually happens in Wrath of Man, which reunites Statham with director Guy Ritchie. Statham plays Patrick Hill, a new hire for Fortico, an armored car security company.
Patrick’s new co-workers initially think that he’s a joke until he ruthlessly dispatches a gang of armored robbers. During another attempted robbery, the crooks literally run away when they see Patrick. While this draws suspicion about Patrick’s identity, his co-workers should be less concerned about who he is and more worried about what his real agenda is. Especially if Patrick finds what he’s looking for …
Fifty years after the events of the original Exorcist, demons strike again in The Exorcist: Believer. Two young girls, Angela Fielding (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine West (Olivia O’Neill), have fallen prey to evil, and their parents are at a loss as how to handle their possession.
Angela’s father, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), eventually finds help in the form of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), a woman who has made herself an expert in the field of demonic possession since her daughter, Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), suffered the same ordeal decades earlier. But no amount of preparation is sufficient in the face of the unrelenting evil that has the two children in its grasp.
Minions: The Rise of Gru is the origin story of Despicable Me’s main character, Gru (Steve Carell), but probably not in the way that you expect. In the 1970s, Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and the rest of the Minions (Pierre Coffin) have all latched on to Gru as their new master. Gru himself has ambitions of being the biggest supervillain in the world so he can join the Vicious 6.
Unfortunately for Gru, his attempts to join the most notorious gang of bad guys spectacularly backfires, which turns his idols in the Vicious 6 into his deadliest enemies. To defeat them, Gru and the Minions will have to turn to the Vicious 6’s former leader, Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin).
Almost everyone can hear a song in their head, but the lead character of Música, Rudy (Rudy Mancuso), can’t stop hearing it. Rudy suffers from synesthesia, which means music is an ever-present part of his life, even when he would probably prefer silence.
Mancuso is a YouTube star who co-wrote and directed this coming-of-age romance, which finds Rudy torn between two women: Isabella (Camila Mendes) and Haley (Francesca Reale). Luckily — or perhaps unluckily — Rudy has a friend, Anwar (J.B. Smoove), who can give him some advice and guidance. But ultimately, Rudy has to make his own choices in life, including whom he really wants to be with.
If you thought that Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain was a Peacock original movie, then you’re not wrong. But everything on Peacock tends to end up on Prime Video. The comedy group Please Don’t Destroy — Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy — stars in The Treasure of Foggy Mountain as fictionalized versions of themselves.
After the trio discovers they may have the lead on a priceless treasure hidden away in Foggy Mountain, they inadvertently create rivals for their quest when they tell Lisa (Megan Stalter) and Taylor (X Mayo) what they’re looking for. Additionally, other treasure seekers have already descended upon the mountain. Even if the trio can find the treasure, bringing it home will be a lot harder.
At the peak of his stardom, Harrison Ford was more than just Indiana Jones or Han Solo. Witness is a thriller that cast Ford as John Book, a detective in the Philadelphia police department who is given an unusual case to investigate. A young Amish boy, Samuel Lapp (Lukas Haas), has accidentally witnessed the murder of an undercover cop.
Much to his alarm, Book realizes that the killer was another cop, and that the corruption in his department may threaten both Samuel and his widowed mother, Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis). Book’s suspicions are confirmed when he’s nearly taken out by one of his fellow officers, which forces him to hide with Rachel and Samuel among the Amish. And even though Book and Rachel are from very different worlds, they can’t hide their obvious attraction to each other.
Long before every Liam Neeson movie was some variation of Taken, he took on the role of a legendary Scottish outlaw in Rob Roy. In the 18th century, Rob Roy MacGregor (Neeson) is the chief of Clan MacGregor and deeply devoted to his people. Rob Roy won’t even bear false witness against someone he doesn’t know when the Marquess of Montrose, James Graham (John Hurt), attempts to blackmail MacGregor over an unpaid debt.
The Marquess’ friend, Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth), is responsible for the theft of the money that Rob Roy needed to pay his debt, and for terrorizing his family at Graham’s request. In response, Rob Roy and his followers wage a systematic campaign against the Marquess that turns MacGregor into a folk hero to his people.
In this remake of the popular 1989 movie starring Patrick Swayze, Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Elwood Dalton as a former UFC fighter who has fallen on some hard times. Road House gives Elwood a chance for redemption when Frankie (Jessica Williams) recruits him to be the bouncer at her bar, which shares its name with the title of the film.
Elwood’s fighting skills go a long way towards keeping order at The Road House, much to the anger of a local mobster, Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen). Elwood took care of Brandt’s regular goons with ease, but he’ll have a much harder time handling Knox, an enforcer for Brandt who is played by an actual UFC fighter, Conor McGregor.
It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that there is another wedding in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 — it’s just not between the main characters, Fotoula “Toula” Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) and Ian Miller (Sex and the City‘s John Corbett). Through two sequels and one non-canon sitcom spinoff, Toula and Ian are still together. But they don’t know that their daughter, Paris Miller (Elena Kampouris), is struggling with both her love life and her academic pursuits in college.
Michael Constantine, who played Toula’s father, Gus Portokalos, in the previous films, passed away in 2021. That’s why a lot of this film deals with the family struggling with their grief over the loss of Gus as the extended clan travels to Greece to fulfill his last wishes. This turns out to be more difficult than they imagined, as his childhood friends have scattered, and some unrelated relationship dramas are coming to the surface.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter who didn’t find fame or accolades until two decades after she died. The new documentary Frida takes an extensive look back at Kahlo’s well-documented life and adds some modern flourishes, including animation on a few of the artist’s self-portraits.
More importantly, the film shares the words of Kahlo herself to shape the narrative and give her a voice in her own story. Frida Kahlo was one of the most distinctive voices in art in the 20th century, and the life she lived was just as important and interesting as her creations. Through this film, a new generation may come to appreciate that.
The first thing that you need to know about the movie called Ricky Stanicky is that there is no Ricky. He’s just someone who was made up by three friends — Dean (The Iron Claw‘s Zac Efron), Wes (Jermaine Fowler), and JT as a convenient scapegoat for the last two decades. But when “Ricky” causes Dean to miss the birth of his child, the trio’s significant others demand to finally meet him.
That’s why Dean hires a washed-up actor, Rod (John Cena), to pretend to be Ricky just long enough to fool their friends and family. The problem is that Rod not only loves playing Ricky, but he does it too well and he even lands a job that may keep him permanently in their lives. If the truth about Ricky gets out, then Dean, Wes, and JT are going to pay the price for everything they’ve done.
The hit video game series Five Nights At Freddy’s was also a big success with moviegoers last fall. For this adaptation, Josh Hutcherson steps into the role of Mike Schmidt, a man who can barely hold down a job or provide a home for his younger sister, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail). Out of desperation, Mike takes a job as the night shift guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a restaurant that’s been abandoned for decades.
With no one else that he can trust to watch over Vanessa, Josh brings her to work with him. That turns out to be a terrible mistake, because at night, the animatronics come to life. And while Freddy and his mechanical friends like Vanessa, they’re somewhat murderous toward Mike and anyone else who stumbles upon their secret.
About two decades before he starred in The CW’s Superman & Lois series, Tyler Hoechlin appeared in a much darker comic book adaptation, Road To Perdition. Tom Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a mob hitman during the Great Depression who is forced to go on the run shortly after his son, Michael Sullivan Jr.
