These days, I turn to Amazon Prime Video's streaming hub to watch more movies than Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus combined. The service has a “product” (i.e. films made before 2011, tons of trash). But damn, the interface stinks. Whether it's navigating a TV device, laptop or phone, trying to find something half-decent on a service is often a tedious task. So let me do you a favor.
Instead of spending 30 minutes watching a bunch of Prime Video movies hoping: pray you will be taken to the page for the desired genre, here are three amazing films that you can watch right now on the service.
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Night of the Hunter
I've heard this many, many times from people who truly love art: “I can't watch black and white movies.” But can you really ignore one of the greatest serial killer dramas of all time, endorsed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Spike LeeAnd Coen brothersjust because shadow cinematography lacks the blues, reds and greens of everyday life? As if.
Night of the Hunter is infamous for being actor Charles Laughton's only directorial effort, and Robert Mitchum works with absolutely zero levels of iciness. Told from the perspective of two soon-to-be orphans whose innocence turns Laughton's adaptation of Davis Grubb's novel of the same name into something of a dark fairy tale. Night of the Hunter discovers real-life psycho preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum) is playing stepfather to find $10,000 in cash he believes is hidden in an orphanage. There seems to be no one Powell wouldn't kill to claim his prize, which sends the children on the run through the West Virginia wilderness.
How is that Terminator interrupted To Kill a Mockingbirdor the film that David Fincher might have made if he had been at the top of his career in the 1950s. Yes, it's a black-and-white film from a bygone era, but the thrills pulsing through each stoic image – turbulent religion, sexuality, misogyny and raw human bloodlust – feel modern in their impact.
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Grizzly Man
Today's streaming platforms are dominated by sensational stories linked by archival footage and iPhone videos – whatever horror you want to dive into, you can do so 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on Netflix, Prime Video or other platforms. So maybe Werner Herzog Grizzly Man won't look as revealing as it did in 2005, when self-filmed glimpses into the lives of others mostly amounted to America's Funniest Home Videos.
But I doubt it: as with many of his documentaries, Herzog delves deeper into the psychology of his hero, conservationist Timothy Treadwell, and allows viewers to peer deeply into the restored footage. Treadwell spent much of his later life in Katmai National Park in Alaska, where he studied and became increasingly close to the local brown bear population. But in 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled and reportedly eaten by one of the older bears. This was the first known case of a bear killing a person in the park.
What's happened? Herzog's questions go beyond your typical 20/20 an exposé that paints a three-dimensional portrait of Treadwell, who expressed his love for the bear population and fear of poaching activity. Has he gone mad, a mad genius who has come closer to bears than any human, or both? Herzog doesn't offer easy answers, but instead revels in Treadwell's personal filmmaking.
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Snack bar
I was thinking about directing a Francis Ford Coppola film. Talk or Alfonso Cuaron Human Children in that third slot because they are both undisputed masterpieces. Instead I will recommend Snack bara secular story of friendship framed in the form of 1980s comedies that would never in a million years be grouped into a collection of “masterpieces,” but should be. What a feat of compassion and comedy—one virtually unheard of in 2024!
Gabriel LaBelle (ur.Fabelmans) and Conor Sherry (Happy Gilmore 2) play two high school hustlers who will do anything to make a few bucks and smoke a few cigarettes. In the future, they would either be slackers at the local racetrack or billionaire CEOs, but in the summer of 1991, they accidentally became the new owners of their poolside snack bar, a pit they turned into a gold mine.
Writer and director Adam Carter Rehmeyer knows how to portray real teenage boys – they drink, they fight, they melt in the face of genuine emotion. Like a classic summer movie, the boys get into a lot of trouble and meet a girl who will change their lives forever. So yeah Snack bar follows the typical beats of a teen comedy, but as a classically trained pianist performing Mozart. Even the film's juicy, melodramatic twists and turns had me hooked in the end. A masterpiece of its genre.
