You may not pay for Amazon Prime for Prime Video, but Amazon’s video arm is still one of the best streaming services. And you’d be excused for not realizing that, as Amazon’s terrible at promoting its archive — the whole of the Prime Video app often seems most focused on promoting new original shows and movies you need to pay extra for to watch.
To help everyone find prime material for their movie night, we at Tom’s Guide have a list of the best movies on Prime Video. But we also understand that said list is kinda long, and sometimes you want something more focused and recent. So this is where this list of top-rated Prime Video movies comes in.
We last round up the latest Prime Video cinematic offerings in January 2023, so we were a little worried we may not have enough options for you. Fortunately, we were wrong. That said, a high Rotten Tomatoes score is not a guarantee of a movie’s quality, so we make sure to apply our own critical thinking and expertise.
So if you’ve got an Amazon Prime account and are looking for something to stream this weekend, here are 7 new Prime Video movies that are well worth adding to your watchlist.
Southside With You (2016)
Back in 1989, Chicago was hot, and a romance was about to heat up between a couple that would go on to The White House. Southside With You tells the story of how law firm associate Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers) wooed a lawyer named Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter). She doesn’t want to admit that it’s a date, but the chemistry sparks between them, and quickly proves her wrong.
Praised for being a pitch-perfect romantic comedy that also manages to speak to both Barack and Michelle’s intellectual and moral drive, Southside With You won critics over. It didn’t hurt that Sawyers and Sumpter delivered excellent versions of the humans that we’ve already been familiar with.
Genre: Romantic biopic
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Food, Inc. (2008)
If you’ve been eating without thinking about your consumption, Food Inc. may be more than a documentary: it might be the horror movie you didn’t know you were living. Documenting how corporations have mutated food for their own gains, and analyzing how this results in worse meals for the public, Food Inc. set out to change how people think about food.
Food Inc. was lauded for exposing an industry with the vigor that Michael Moore brought with An Inconvenient Truth while also having none of Moore’s worse tendencies as a filmmaker.
Genre: Documentary
Rotten Tomatoes: 95% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Sugar (2008)
Baseball fans may know about the pipeline that brings young, aspiring talent to the states from the Dominican Republic, but Sugar (from directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck) seeks to give all audiences a more intimate look at the life of an aspiring pitcher. And Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) may have the confidence in his arm to flex his confidence as a ladies man and top prospect, but he also runs into trouble adjusting to life in America.
Drawing comparisons to iconic sports film Hoop Dreams, Sugar manages to impressively thread the needle when it comes to both honesty and entertainment. The result is a story free of cliches and full of heart.
Genre: Sports drama
Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
At this point, younger audiences (and those who haven’t thought about the company in a while) would excused for not knowing the Enron corporation beyond the vague notion they did terrible things. Which makes now a perfect time to recall why Alex Gibney’s enthralling documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a beloved film.
Gibney should be credited for doing all of the work to make this film thorough and understandable, with a thorough dissection of the corporate misdeeds. That said, the Enron execs were the perfect subject for such a film, combining greed and buffoonery to excessive levels.
Genre: Drama
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
So far, we’ve given you two documentaries, a historical romance and a sports story. How about some high drama and noir? Devil In a Blue Dress stars Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins, a Black World War II veteran who needs a gig, badly, especially when everyone looks to use and discard him. He finds much more than that, though, when DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) sets Easy on the trail of a missing woman named Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals).
Hailed as a studio flick with auteur style and perfectly pulpy noir tones, this adaptation of Walter Mosley’s title of the same name is as seductive as its title suggests. Also, watch out for a scene-stealing performance from Don Cheadle.
Genre: Drama
Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Something Wild (1986)
Hitchcock thriller and wild comedy are flavors that shouldn’t go together, but Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild pulls it off. Mild-mannered Charles (Jeff Daniels) is also mismatched, as Lulu (Melanie Griffith) is a bit more of a wild child than he would normally be expected with. The two set off on a weird path, and one that gets too complicated once we meet and discover Lulu’s got a husband (Ray Liotta).
Hailed for combining engaging twists disguised in a colorful look, Something Wild fits its title perfectly: a vague promise of fun that has something amazing up its sleeve.
Genre: Comedic mystery
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (opens in new tab)
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Back on Prime Video after a hiatus, 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers proves that you should take time between remakes. Over two decades, in fact. This version stars Donald Sutherland as San Franciscan Matthew Bennell who’s a little late with his discovery that the west coast is under siege. If only he’d listened to his friend Elizabeth (Brooke Adams)’s concern about her husband acting peculiar.
A rare critically-beloved remake, the ’78 ‘Invasion’ impressed with a cocktail of introspective thinking driven by social commentary.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%
Stream it on Prime Video (opens in new tab)
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