55 Best Movies On Amazon Prime

Engrossing and visually stunning, "1917" immerses its audiences in the chaos and grimness of World War I. Young soldiers William Schofield and Tom Blake are tasked with carrying a key message — one calling off a doomed attack that would result in a horrifying loss of life — through dangerous territory. Blake is especially motivated to get through since his own brother could be a casualty if the attack goes forward. The "single take" cinematic technique showcases impressive technique, making this one of the most stylish war films ever made.

• Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong

• Director: Sam Mendes

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 119 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

"The Big Sick" starts out like a cute romantic comedy, but unexpected turns along the way give it additional richness and complexity as well as laughs. Stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani's adorable relationship with his girlfriend, Emily, comes to a messy and abrupt end when he admits that different cultural expectations might always keep them apart: His parents still expect him to marry a Pakistani girl. But when Emily winds up hospitalized and comatose due to a mysterious illness, Kumail realizes he can't stand to lose her. He even starts developing an unusual relationship with her parents as the three of them wait for any sign that Emily's condition is improving.

• Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter

• Director: Michael Showalter

• Year: 2017

• Runtime:

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

This charming, low-key documentary immerses you in the world of rare books until you can practically smell the musty paper. The film takes a look at a handful of small shops specializing in rare and antiquarian books (and vintage advertisements, indie magazines from the early days of hip-hop, maps, kitsch, and more), exploring why the sellers and their customers are so drawn to this business, how you can make a living at it, and how the rare books world has changed over the years. Partly a tour of bookshops you'll long to visit and partly a look at cultural tradition and cultural evolution, "The Booksellers" is both informative and irresistibly likable.

• Director: D.W. Young

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 98 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" manages to be both sprightly and bittersweet. While it's marred by the ugly inclusion of Mickey Rooney in yellowface, the core of the film — the complex and emotionally tentative relationship between fashionable but poor Holly Golightly and her neighbor, struggling writer Paul Varjak, who compromise themselves and their romance to keep their heads above water — remains magnetic. Paul and Holly develop feelings for each other, but can they risk having a relationship that might end their chance at a carefree existence? Audrey Hepburn is unforgettable as the charming, spirited, and secretly vulnerable Holly.

• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal

• Director: Blake Edwards

• Year: 1961

• Runtime: 114 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

"Carnival of Souls" is about as eerie, haunting, and strangely beautiful as horror films get, and its surrealism and masterful black-and-white cinematography bring new life to a classic premise. This dreamlike narrative follows Mary, who escapes a car wreck and sets out to begin her new life ... only to find herself beset by strangeness. A pale, uncanny man keeps following her. Sometimes she seems to drop out of reality, with other people not acknowledging her at all. She has trances and nightmarish visions. Is there something supernatural going on, or is it all in her head?

• Starring: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger

• Director: Herk Harvey

• Year: 1962

• Runtime: 82 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

This thriller centers on Harry Caul, an introverted surveillance technician whose expertise in bugging and wiretapping has ratcheted up his personal paranoia, and the human cost that's sometimes involved with his job has made him miserable with guilt. When he takes on his most ambitious job yet, he comes away with a recording where the key line — "He'd kill us if he had the chance" — seems to promise more of the violence and tragedy Caul is anxious to avoid. It's difficult to back out, however, when his client's office is applying so much pressure. Ambiguity, exquisite tension, and finely crafted characterization make "The Conversation" a classic.

• Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield

• Director: Francis Ford Coppola

• Year: 1974

• Runtime: 113 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

This meditative historical drama zooms in on a handful of people whose disrupted lives are never quite put back together again. When steelworker Bill needs to flee Chicago, he takes his sister, Linda, and girlfriend, Abby, with him. It's 1916, and Bill and Abby can't live together without attracting attention, so they claim to be brother and sister — which means Abby soon catches a farmer's eye. Bill hatches a plan to turn the farmer's interest to their collective advantage, but it's not likely to go smoothly. "Days of Heaven" beautifully captures the Texas countryside, and its simple story serves as the backbone for some real cinematic poetry.

• Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard

• Director: Terrence Malick

• Year: 1978

• Runtime: 93 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

"Edward Scissorhands" is a quirky fairy tale with gorgeous, eccentric visuals and a dark whimsy all its own. The lonely, off-kilter Edward was left unfinished by his maker, still with scissor blades instead of hands. When he's brought into a kind of alternate suburbia — where he pines for the teenage Kim — it goes better than expected ... until jealousy, lies, and fear of the outsider make the townspeople start to turn against him. It's an unusual and moving romantic fantasy, and Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder make Edward and Kim into one of the top Gothic couples in movies.

• Starring: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Anthony Michael Hall

• Director: Tim Burton

• Year: 1990

• Runtime: 104 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Edward Norton plays an unnamed character whose polished, successful life leaves him fundamentally unsatisfied and in search of something that feels more "real." His life changes when he meets the charismatic Tyler Durden, a trickster-like figure who seems to have all the clarity the narrator lacks. Tyler's ethos of cathartic violence leads to the invention of Fight Club, where men regularly meet for bare-knuckle brawls. Soon, though, Tyler starts building Fight Club up into something more — the dangerous terrorist group Project Mayhem. Gripping, memorable, and often wickedly funny, "Fight Club" deserves its iconic status.

• Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter

• Director: David Fincher

• Year: 1999

• Runtime: 139 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Lisbeth Salander, a hacker and social outsider, teams up with Mikael Blomkvist, a talented but disgraced journalist, to investigate a long-ago disappearance that's really a probable murder. Unearthing the dark history of the wealthy Vanger family means dealing with a legacy of Nazi sympathies, brutality, and the abuse of women — and not all of it is safely in the past. The mystery is grim and complex, the setting is vivid, and Lisbeth in particular immediately feels like an iconic character.

• Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre

• Director: Niels Arden Oplev

• Year: 2009

• Runtime: 152 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Legendary director Paul Thomas Anderson hits the ground running with "Hard Eight," his feature film debut. Sydney Brown is a weary gentleman gambler whose life is a series of casinos and hotel rooms. When he meets down-on-his-luck John Finnegan, he quickly takes him under his wing and begins treating him like a kind of surrogate son — even gently finessing John's relationship with Clementine, a cocktail waitress and sex worker. John and Clementine quickly get in serious trouble, however, and they need Sydney to bail them out ... a rescue that winds up revealing part of Sydney's past he's been trying to keep buried. Strong performances and a dramatic, noir-tinged plot make this a great introduction to a major director.

• Starring: Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow

• Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

• Year: 1996

• Runtime: 101 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

"Hidden Figures" is a lively and engaging historical film that celebrates the crucial but frequently minimized contributions that Black female mathematicians like Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan made to the space program. The three "human computers" wind up playing a key role in a successful launch, but they have to fight tooth and nail to have their voices heard in an atmosphere of intense, institutionalized racism and sexism. The movie chronicles their struggles and triumphs, giving an enriching view of scientific history without stinting on entertainment.

• Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monaé

• Director: Theodore Melfi

• Year: 2016

• Runtime: 126 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

This lustrous black and white film starts with Anna, a Polish orphan raised in a convent and now ready to take her vows. She has one known relative, however — Aunt Wanda, a former prosecutor who fought in the Resistance against the occupying Nazis — and the convent believes she needs to connect with this part of her life before she decides to give it up. When she meets Wanda, she learns that her birth name was actually Ida, she's Jewish, and both her parents and aunt suffered horribly during World War II. Ida has to choose how to reach out to the newly revealed past and to the larger historical understanding of living in the aftermath of mass tragedy.

• Starring: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik

• Director: Pawel Pawlikowski

• Year: 2013

• Runtime: 82 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

"It's a Wonderful Life" is a Christmas movie masterpiece — heartfelt, perfectly acted, and full of a surprising darkness that makes its essential hopefulness and good cheer resonate even more. The film tells the story of George Bailey, who spends years longing for travel and adventures. However, George's responsibilities to others keep him in a shabby but cozy life in Bedford Falls, as he's the only one who can stand up to Mr. Potter, the town's wealthy, cold-hearted bully. Then one night, George's life comes crashing down around him, making him genuinely think everyone would be better off if he'd never been born. It takes his eccentric guardian angel, Clarence, to prove otherwise.

• Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore

• Director: Frank Capra

• Year: 1946

• Runtime: 125 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

"The Fellowship of the Ring" begins a genre-defining fantasy epic with a sweeping focus and plenty of grandeur, adventure, and emotional impact. Frodo Baggins comes into possession of his uncle's mysterious ring, which turns out to have a dangerous — even apocalyptic — power. Dark forces are already amassing to try to claim it, and the ring has a corrupting influence all its own. Frodo might be the only person who can resist its allure long enough to see it destroyed for good, but he has a fellowship of friends and warriors to protect and accompany him on his journey ... but how long can they survive, and how long can they stay together? The result is one of the all-time fantasy films, with a stirring score from Howard Shore, expert direction from Peter Jackson, and a gorgeous, frightening, fantastic world beautifully adapted from the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien.

• Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen

• Director: Peter Jackson

• Year: 2001

• Runtime: 178 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

It's easy for sound design — distinct from a film's score — to vanish into the background, but it can be critical to a film's meaning, mood, and aims. "Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound" calls attention to the techniques that help our favorite movies have such an impact. For example, it'll help you hear the wild animal roars that enliven the jets in "Top Gun." This appreciative, illuminating documentary covers the rich history of sound in movies, and it features interviews with landmark sound designers like Walter Murch, as well as with top directors like Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Ryan Coogler, and David Lynch. This is an essential documentary for movie fans.

• Director: Midge Costin

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 94 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Framed for blowing up the Kremlin and causing an international incident, IMF agent Ethan Hunt once again winds up having to work without the full support of his agency. The Impossible Missions Force has been shuttered and officially disavowed, but Ethan and his fledgling team still have to track down some rogue nuclear codes and make sure they don't wind up causing World War III. It's an intimidating task that "Ghost Protocol" uses as the deliciously high-tension excuse for incredible stunts, action sequences, creative cons, and cool (if not always reliable) technology. This is smart, funny, and well-paced action movie that will keep you glued to the screen.

• Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg

• Director: Brad Bird

• Year: 2011

• Runtime: 132 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

An all-star cast, a sumptuous setting, and one of Agatha Christie's most brilliant mystery plots all combine to make 1974's "Murder on the Orient Express" a lasting classic. The film takes legendary detective Hercule Poirot on an eventful train journey — one featuring the violent death of a difficult American businessman who, Poirot's investigation soon reveals, was hiding a dark past. His old sins led to more than a few lasting enmities, and it's up to Poirot to untangle who may have finally acted on their hatred. Solving the mystery, however, could be easier than deciding what to do next ....

• Starring: Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman

• Director: Sidney Lumet

• Year: 1974

• Runtime: 127 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Even after decades of zombie films, "Night of the Living Dead" remains definitive. This eerie, nervy black-and-white film looks at what happens when the dead suddenly begin to return. These reanimated corpses may be slow and shambling, but they're also numerous, fearless, and all-too-capable of tearing the living to shreds ... especially when people are too paralyzed with fear to move. A group of survivors led by the quick-thinking, cool-headed Ben take refuge in a farmhouse to try to survive, but the danger — both supernatural and all-too-real — still surrounds them.

• Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Marilyn Eastman

• Director: George A. Romero

• Year: 1968

• Runtime: 95 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

The intense and electric "One Night in Miami..." takes place on the night Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight champion of the world. Afterwards, Ali joins Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown for a supposed party that turns out to be more of a discursive — and sometimes heated — discussion about Black life and success in America. Political and personal tensions can run high, especially when it comes to the question of how openly to challenge the white establishment, but the night also reveals the respect the men have for each other. This window into the fictionalized history of an actual event is a fantastic actor's showcase for the four outstanding leads.

• Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge

• Director: Regina King

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 115 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

"Paterson" is a beautiful, tender, and quietly funny slice-of-life film all about creativity, marriage, and the routines of an ordinary week. Paterson is a bus driver and poet who lives in Paterson, New Jersey — the home of William Carlos Williams, his favorite poet. He lives a simple but contented life, drinking in the details of the world around him. He's deeply in love with his wife, Laura, whose own artistic tendencies are less settled but vividly manifested in a signature black and white aesthetic. Eventually, we'll discover that this week does feature a couple of big events for Paterson, but the big events aren't the point. This is all about the peaceful happiness of appreciating your day-to-day life.

• Starring: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, William Jackson Harper

• Director: Jim Jarmusch

• Year: 2016

• Runtime: 118 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

Cecilia has an unhappy life. The country is in the midst of the Great Depression, and it seems like no real relief is in sight. Movies are her only escape, and her favorite is the romantic adventure-comedy "The Purple Rose of Cairo," where the dashing archaeologist hero can distract her from her abusive home life — and then, one day, he walks out of the screen to greet her. With the border between reality and cinematic fantasy suddenly permeable, Cecilia is whisked away to a better life, but it's one that offers its own challenges and dilemmas. This is clever, heartfelt metafiction with an obvious love for the movies.

• Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello

• Director: Woody Allen

• Year: 1985

• Runtime: 82 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

When brutal Cold War paranoia meets a romantic fantasy spin on "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," you get Guillermo del Toro's "The Shape of Water." Mute cleaner Elisa works at a government lab that's holding and experimenting upon an amphibious man. Elisa pities him, and the two form an unusual bond that only grows deeper and more passionate once she helps him escape the lab — but it's hard to make a clean getaway when the violent, unpredictable Colonel Strickland is trying to track them down. Del Toro makes this unusual setup into an intense and heartfelt look at the bonds that can form between people the world dismisses as misfits.

• Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins

• Director: Guillermo del Toro

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 123 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

FBI trainee Clarice Starling is unexpectedly pulled into the frantic hunt for "Buffalo Bill," a serial killer who kidnaps, murders, and skins women. She's tasked with interviewing the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter — brilliant, terrifying, and fond of cannibalizing his victims — to see if he can point them in the right direction. Lecter is willing to help but only at a price: He has certain demands, and one of them is hearing about Clarice's painful past. The stellar performances of Foster and Hopkins — and the intense, unsettling rapport between their characters — make this unforgettable. While the Buffalo Bill plot contains certain transphobic elements, overall this is a compelling and powerful thriller that straddles the line between mystery and horror.

• Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn

• Director: Jonathan Demme

• Year: 1991

• Runtime: 118 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

A long stagecoach journey from Arizona to New Mexico is guaranteed to be uncomfortable, especially when it involves crowding too many people — with too many differences — into a very small space. There's a meek salesman, a drunken doctor, an outcast saloon girl, an Army officer's wife, a homespun stagecoach driver, a friendly outlaw, a marshal, a corrupt banker, and a Southern gambler. "Stagecoach" doesn't just put them all together, it takes them through dangerous territory, as they're unwanted travelers over Apache land. The high stakes make the bonding, comedy, drama, and sweet romance all the more compelling.

• Starring: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine

• Director: John Ford

• Year: 1939

• Runtime: 95 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Funny, bittersweet, and thoughtful, "Up in the Air" looks at modern life from an unusual angle. Ryan Bingham travels light. He has a corporate consulting job — tactfully handling layoffs and terminations individual companies don't want to deal with — that keeps him constantly crisscrossing the country, and that's the way he likes it. He loves his glossy, transient life of flights and hotels, but he has to reconsider it when the dogged but inexperienced Natalie begins advocating for Ryan to do his work over video calls. While Ryan gives Natalie a crash course in the human element, he has to figure out what to do with the sudden threat (and intriguing promise) of permanence.

• Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

• Director: Jason Reitman

• Year: 2009

• Runtime: 109 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

A brilliant little indie film that plays like an episode of "The Twilight Zone," "The Vast of Night" takes place in a 1950s town out in the middle of New Mexico. While most everyone's busy watching the high school basketball game, radio DJ Everett and operator Fay hear strange things over the phone lines and receiving unsettling calls. Soon enough, they get the creeping suspicion that maybe there's something out there in the sky. But as they dig deeper and deeper into the world of UFOs and alien lore, they're faced with a series of unsettling questions. If there really are otherworldly visitors, how long have they been there? What do they want? And what can Everett and Fay do about it? Rich on creepy atmosphere, "The Vast of Night" ratchets up the tension until the truth simply can't be denied.

• Starring: Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer

• Director: Andrew Patterson

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 91 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Gaudy, mind-numbing excess takes center stage in "The Wolf of Wall Street," which chronicles the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, whose embrace of fraud and predatory tactics both make and break him. Jordan knows how to sell — especially when he can lie and manipulate as much as he wants — and he knows how to play the market to his own advantage. His unethical methods attract a whole bevy of employees who only care about success and the drugged-out decadence that comes with it ... but they also draw the attention of the FBI. This darkly comedic masterpiece of soulless greed is compulsively watchable.

• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie

• Director: Martin Scorsese

• Year: 2013

• Runtime: 179 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%