Now that the holiday craziness is over and the cold winter weather is setting in, it’s a perfect time to stay indoors and relax with a great movie. Plus, watching a movie won’t violate any of your lofty New Year’s resolutions that won’t happen anyway.
While Netflix may be the undisputed streaming king, Amazon Prime is a second-best option and members have some great choices from its catalog. Here is a rundown of 10 solid movies available now on Amazon Prime, as if you needed another excuse to stay indoors anyway…
Pick of the Month: Timbuktu (2014)
2014’s French-Mauritanian movie directed by Abderrahmane Sissako was one of the most widely acclaimed of last year and for good reason. The story revolves around a group of characters living in the Malian city of Timbuktu which has become occupied by jihadists. Despite extremist groups like ISIS dominating headlines and world politics for the past few years, Timbuktu is the first fictional movie to really bring audiences to the ground-level of what life is like under Jihadist rule. While it’s gorgeously shot and at times poetic, the subject matter and message is tragic, distressing, and urgent. The city of Timbuktu and surrounding lands are beautiful, as well as its inhabitants, which makes the city’s violent jihadist occupation all the more heart-wrenching. Timbuktu is one of the most important movies of last year and also one of the best.
Slow West (2015)
John Maclean’s directorial debut is one of the most refreshing and excellent westerns in recent years, up there with other modern heavyweights such as The Proposition (2005) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). Slow West is, like most westerns, savagely violent and has its share of crackling gunfights. But what elevates it above the rest of the pack is its dark humor, rich visuals, and some unconventional elements/themes. There’s a tender beating heart at its core that pumps out a really engaging narrative with little quirks that capture the absurdity and of the frontier as well. It also helps that the two leads played by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender have more chemistry between them than you can shake a stick at. While it’s title may imply the movie’s a slog, Slow West is anything but.
Ex Machina (2015)
It would be a crime to list a great crop of movies available on Prime right now without mentioning Ex Machina. One of the most talked about and praised movies of last year is now available to stream and it’s totally worth it. Alex Garland, who wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine, wrote and directed this exceptional little sci-fi movie that has some big ideas. Both Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac turn in fine performances but its Alicia Vikander who steals the show as Ava, a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence built by mysterious genius Nathan (Isaac). Ex Machina is smart, disturbing, and philosophical, dealing with themes like the god-complex, desire, and gender that’ll keep you thinking long after the credits roll.
Interstellar (2014)
There’s a lot you can ding Christopher Nolan’s 2014 science-fiction-space-travel-save-the-world epic for. It’s bloated, it’s not very well-written, and it could have ended half a dozen times. But damned if it isn’t awe-inspiring stuff. Don’t watch it expecting a cohesive story with layered characters; watch it for far-fetched ideas and entities like wormholes, space-time, and massive tidal waves all wonderfully manifested into some truly “holy shit” moments. Sure, special effects lend their hand but it’s the first time we’ve seen some of this mind-boggling space stuff depicted on screen so well. Bonus: Hans Zimmer’s haunting score is top-notch and some of Interstellar’s most exciting scenes are enhanced tremendously by it. The results will make your jaw drop.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Glengarry Glen Ross is one of those movies you can never get enough of. The story is so simple, the writing so sharp, the dialogue so cracking, that once the credits roll you wish there was more to hang around for. The performances are also mesmerizing—the movie features an ensemble cast made up of Al Pacino, Jack Lemon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, and Alec Baldwin. Need I say more? The men, for the most part, play foul-mouthed, wise-cracking, washed-up real-estate agents desperate for sales after their office brings in a “motivator” (Baldwin) who informs them that in one week, all will be fired except the top two salesmen. What ensues is a bitter, darkly funny race to save their jobs and it makes for one hell of an entertaining watch.
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