The best new Amazon Prime Video shows and movies 2024

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino’s comic book-style take on World War II is typically brash, bold and bloody. It’s packed with the filmmaker’s trademarks: virtuoso camera work, sizzling dialogue, memorable characters and abundant violence.

With Brad Pitt and his band of Jewish-American guerrillas hunting down Nazis in occupied France while a French girl plots her revenge on the German colonel that slaughtered her family (Christoph Waltz in his Oscar-winning breakout role), the plot is heavy on twists, even if it has a fairly conventional structure. At over two and a half hours it feels a bit bloated, but hey, you’re streaming it – so taking the occasional bathroom break is no biggie.

Watch Inglourious Basterds on Prime Video

Outer Range (S2)

Yellowstone spliced with Twin Peaks by way of Nope, Amazon Studios’ underrated drama stars Josh Brolin as a Wyoming ranch owner with a mind-bending phenomenon on his property: a seemingly unfathomable black pit.

Will he get to the bottom (no pun intended) of the mysterious hole in this new season? It’s not likely to be his only challenge, either: with family issues aplenty and a rival rancher determined to settle old scores, Brolin’s Royal Abbot is about to have a royal bunch of problems on his hands.

Watch Outer Range on Prime Video

Clarkson’s Farm (S3)

This reality show has achieved the impossible: made Jeremy Clarkson come across as a normal, likeable human being. Occasionally, at least.

Years of puerile scripted ‘reality’ shows dulled any edge he once had, but putting Clarkson in charge of an English farm (one he genuinely owns) and simply following his trials and tribulations makes for a refreshing and involving experience. There’s a feeling of authenticity here that the latter-years Top Gear or Amazon’s own The Grand Tour never managed to muster, while the cast of colourful countryside characters Clarkson encounters keep things fun.

Watch Clarkson’s Farm on Prime Video

Gone Girl

Faithfully adapted from Gillian Flynn’s bestseller, Gone Girl is a smart and refreshingly cynical psychological thriller. Ben Affleck’s small-town boy has to come to terms with the sudden disappearance of his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) – and growing speculation that he may be the one responsible for it. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that neither of the spouses are quite what they seem, and that this case is more than a simple whodunnit.

Slickly directed by the masterful David Fincher, this unconventional mystery will fix its hooks into you from the off – unless of course you’ve already read Flynn’s book, in which case you’ll be familiar with the twists and turns before they happen. Even if you’re in the know, however, Fincher’s stylish direction and Affleck and Pike’s performances make this an enjoyable watch.

Watch Gone Girl on Prime Video

Amores Perros

Before Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu became a Hollywood heavyweight (he’s the director of The Revenant and Birdman) he made: Amores Perros. And it’s a gritty, relentless Spanish-language debut that really got him noticed.

Telling three separate stories that literally collide in bone-crunching fashion on the streets of Mexico City, it’s a film that demonstrates skills far beyond a first-time director. It also plonked Gael Garcia Bernal well and truly on Hollywood’s radar. Dog-owners, just make sure to cover your four-legged friend’s eyes during the brutal dog-fighting scenes. You don’t want him getting any ideas…

Watch Amores Perros on Prime Video

The Northman

Robert Eggers’ brutal and blood-drenched retelling of Hamlet – in which Viking warrior Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) takes revenge for his father’s death – cost a similar amount of money to a gigantic summer blockbuster. Despite that, it retains the slightly off-kilter sensibilities of an indie movie.

It certainly makes no attempt to coddle its viewers with likeable characters, a fast-moving plot or frequent action scenes, and while it never feels like a chore it’s not always an easy watch. It’s a glorious-looking piece of cinema, though, and few viewers will be left in any doubt as to Eggers’ commitment to making interesting films over and above crowd-pleasing money-makers.

Watch The Northman on Prime Video

The Green Mile

Like The Shawshank Redemption before it, The Green Mile sees Frank Darabont adapt a prison-set Stephen King tale for the screen. Here, though, things cross over into the fantasy genre thanks to the miraculous talents of enigmatic death row inmate John Coffey, a gentle giant seemingly blessed with an ability to heal the sick. Tom Hanks plays the guard who grows to respect and seek to protect his charge against not only the electric chair but the depredations of fellow inmates and cruel corrections officers. It’s moving stuff that’ll likely have you blubbing like a baby by the final reel.

Watch The Green Mile on Prime Video

Coming to America

One of the classic big screen comedies of the 1980s, Coming to America stars Eddie Murphy as a pampered African prince seeking a wife in New York – and where better to find a royal consort than the borough of Queens?

The fish-out-of-water setup proves a rich source of gags, bolstered by a fantastic supporting cast including James Earl Jones, John Amos and a pre-superstardom Samuel L Jackson, but this is definitely Murphy’s show. Even if his central protagonist is a little less outwardly comedic than some previous roles, Murphy’s performances as several other characters gives him ample licence to show off his talents.

Watch Coming to America on Prime Video

Brooklyn

Another (albeit very different) movie where a foreigner arrives in New York is this fantastic adaptation of Colm Toibin’s bestselling novel – a 1950s-set drama in which a small-town Irish girl emigrates to Brooklyn, leaving behind one potential life (and one potential love) for something completely dissimilar and unfamiliar. Saoirse Ronan plays young Eilis Lacey with quiet grace, poise and skill, delivering one of her most memorable performances and creating the anchor that elevates this film from mere romantic period drama to an unconventional, female-led exploration of the immigrant experience.

Watch Brooklyn on Prime Video

American Beauty

Long before he was helming Bond movies, Sam Mendes made his big screen debut directing this unconventional and intelligent drama. It went on to receive no fewer than six Oscars, cement Kevin Spacey as one of the leading actors of his generation and ensure none of us ever looked at a discarded, wind-blown plastic bag in the same way ever again.

As a bleakly comic examination of contemporary life through the eyes of Spacey’s jaded salaryman Lester Burnham, his materialistic realtor wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and his rebellious teenage daughter (Thora Birch), American Beauty turns its spotlight on the US suburbs. It depicts a place of crushing conformity and superficiality where, on rare occasions, one can still spot the pure, untarnished beauty lying just below the surface.

Watch American Beauty on Prime Video

Boyhood

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is one of a kind. While its themes of how everything changes over time and how people cope with growing up may have a ring of familiarity to them, there’s nothing common about the production. Linklater filmed it over a 12-year-period, using the same actors – including familiar faces Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette – throughout. Seeing the actors naturally age as the film progresses is surprisingly affecting.

Arquette won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role, and Linklater was nominated for his direction while picking up plenty of other accolades for his work here. But the star is undoubtedly Ellar Coltrane as the lead character Mason, who starts the film as a six-year-old and ends it on the cusp of adulthood. A true original.

Watch Boyhood on Prime Video

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (S1)

That forgettable 2005 Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie action-comedy about married assassins assigned to kill each other? Amazon has rebooted it as a TV series. But before you start groaning, this one is genuinely quite interesting and fun. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine lead a star-studded cast (Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, John Turturro), with Glover himself in the creative hotseat alongside his Atlanta creative partners Francesa Sloane and Hiro Murai.

The concept of the show is also a departure from the movie in that John and Jane Smith don’t know each other at all before they’re joined in matrimony by a shadowy spy agency. They must then perform dangerous and challenging missions together, all while discouraged from forming a genuine connection – a rule which they break almost immediately.

Watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith on Prime Video

Hazbin Hotel (S1)­

With Hell dangerously overpopulated, ruling demon Charlie decides to free up space by rehabilitating some of her fellow denizens to the degree that they can finally ascend to Heaven. This new adults-only animated series – complete with expletive-laden musical numbers – follows her struggles to turn bad souls good.

Having originally appeared as a pilot on YouTube way back in 2019, the full series (made by Amazon Studios in association with ultra-cool indie studio A24) has finally made it on to a “proper” streaming platform, and has enjoyed the largest global debut for any Prime Video animated series – no mean feat when you consider some of its contemporaries.

Watch Hazbin Hotel on Prime Video

Reacher (S2)

Amazon’s adaptation of Lee Childs’ novels isn’t particularly inventive, subversive or clever – it’s simply incredibly entertaining. Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) is a modern-day American ronin: a wandering avenger who roams the country, fighting evil and injustice whenever he encounters it. And very good at fighting he is too, being a 6-foot-something ex-military police operator with arms thicker than tree trunks, a mind as sharp as a stiletto and a fiercely burning sense of righteousness urging him along.

This second season sees Reacher reunited with his old crew after one of them is found dead, leading to an unauthorised investigation that employs some inventive detective techniques such as arm-snapping, nose-breaking and kicking the bumper of a car so hard that the air bag explodes into a villain’s face. Cheesy, fun and wonderfully watchable stuff.

Watch Reacher on Prime Video

American Psycho

Christian Bale’s breakout role sees him don the Boss suit and Gucci oxfords of Patrick Bateman: financial trader in 1980s Manhattan; Phil Collins aficionado; handsome, wealthy – and a sadistic, sociopathic murderer. Or is he?

Based on Bret Easton Ellis’ cult novel, this film is shockingly violent, intensely disquieting – and very, very funny. It is, after all, far more of a satire than it is a psychological thriller, and as a critique of the emptiness lying at the heart of the capitalist American dream, it hits the mark like an axe to the back of the skull.

Watch American Psycho on Freevee

Barbarian

Barbarian opens with a young woman arriving at an Airbnb in a desolate and menacing Detroit suburb – only to find the house already occupied by another guest who claims to have booked it through another short letting app. Does she take up the stranger’s offer to come in and work out what’s going on, or give up and look elsewhere for accommodation, with no guarantee that she’ll find anywhere to stay at all? It’s a situation it’s easy to imagine finding yourself in, which makes what happens next all the more disturbing. We’ll say no more, save to advise you to make sure you have some large sofa cushions nearby to hide behind while you watch what unfolds in this wildly inventive horror movie.

Watch Barbarian on Prime Video

Fargo (S5)

The fifth season of this wonderful black comedy anthology series is being drip-fed onto Prime Video weekly. Loosely inspired by the Coen brothers’ 1990s classic crime movie, every season of the show tells a different self-contained story (all guaranteed to exhibit twists, turns, violence and huge helpings of dry wit) featuring an all-new cast, so even if you haven’t tuned into previous seasons you can start right here.

And right here, this time? It’s Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019, with seemingly ordinary housewife (Juno Temple) falling foul of the authorities and being forced to confront her troubled past. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Hamm and Joe Keery also star.

Watch Fargo on Prime Video

Zodiac

David Fincher’s cinematic deep dive into the case of the Zodiac Killer and the men who tried to unravel it is a quiet masterpiece, buoyed along by its tone, acting, editing and camerawork. Less showy than some of Fincher’s previous movies and entirely lacking in the sort of hysterical approach taken by many serial killer films, Zodiac will leave you with more questions than answers – a traditional whodunnit tale, this ain’t. The antithesis of Fincher’s own Seven, perhaps, it’s more about how serial killers affect us than the killer himself.

Looking back years after its release, we think it’s one of the finest films of the noughties and a future classic: creepy, funny and thought-provoking, with impeccable performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo.

Watch Zodiac on Prime Video

Brokeback Mountain

Ang Lee’s meditative tale of a secretive, decades-long romance between two rugged shepherds has lost none of its power in the 15 years since its release. Quietly heart-wrenching, beautifully shot and wonderfully acted by Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, to call it “that gay cowboy film” would be a huge oversimplification. The freedom the pair feel together in the vast open spaces of the American West is juxtaposed with the suffocating claustrophobia of their home lives, and Ledger’s performance in particular as the would-be stoic Ennis Del Mar, able to convey so much with so few words, is a career best.

Watch Brokeback Mountain on Prime Video

Invincible (S2)

“A cartoon about a teenage superhero, you say? Surely that’s for children – and I’m a grown-up!” is the sort of thing you might be thinking when you first hear about Invincible. And yes, it’s a coming-of-age story where first love happens roughly around the same time as first unaided flight. But it’s far, far from a kids’ show, as evidenced by the shocking gut-punch that happens at the end of the very first episode and the gallons of blood and buckets of gore that follow throughout.

A second season has now landed on Prime Video, and it’s very much in the same vein as the first: our hero Mark must come to terms not only with his growing power but the legacy of his father, who was the mightiest superhero on the planet – until he was revealed as something else entirely.

Watch Invincible on Prime Video

Blue Velvet

David Lynch’s typically atypical take on film noir is a tale of small-town mystery, dangerous dames and psychopathic drug-dealing murderers, all set to the languorous strains of Bobby Vinton’s eponymous lounge-core classic.

Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern and Isabella Rossellini are superb in their roles, but it’s left to the late Dennis Hopper to provide the true standout performance of the movie as gas-chugging crime boss Frank Booth. Hopper’s manic turn is one of many reasons to stream, however – others being the fine sense of Lynchian dread hanging over everything and the glorious soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti who, like MacLachlan, would return to work with Lynch on Twin Peaks.

Watch Blue Velvet on Freevee

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

At a backside-numbing 161 minutes, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tends to elicit one of two reactions: unadulterated Quentin Tarantino worship or terminal boredom. As usual, a more considered response for this 1960s-set jaunt through Tinseltown’s Golden Age probably lies somewhere in the middle.

While it’s true that there are drawn-out scenes of seemingly inconsequential dialogue that feel self-indulgent, QT’s weird obsession with women’s feet is more in-your-face than ever, and you’ll need a strong constitution to stomach the violence when it comes, when have any of these things put people off his films before? Glossy, glitzy, cool – it’s an event movie that will sweep you up in spite of your reservations.

Watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Prime Video

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s spectacular vision of a dark future sees rogue AI-driven robots, indistinguishable from humans but faster, stronger and more deadly, hunted down by sanctioned enforcers. It’s no exaggeration to say Blade Runner set the tone for an entire generation of cyberpunk fiction.

Harrison Ford plays replicant-chaser Deckard with typical understatement, but there’s so much flair, atmosphere and spectacle in this neo noir yarn that it doesn’t lack for personality.

Watch Blade Runner on Prime Video

Gen V (S1)

A spin-off from Amazon’s wonderful The Boys (which is set to return for its fourth season at some point in the not-too-distant future), Gen V concerns Godolkin University School of Crimefighting, a school for would-be superheroes in which ‘gifted’ youngsters are put to the test in gruelling challenges.

Gen V might sound like an opportunistic teen drama looking for some cheap success off the back of a genuinely interesting original show, but it’s thankfully anything but. Based on a story arc from the actual Boys comics and featuring the same winning blend of humour and gratuitous and graphic violence, it’s a genuinely enjoyable series in its own right – and has already been renewed for a second season.

Watch Gen V on Amazon Prime Video

Bosch: Legacy (S2)

Cop series Bosch, in which a grizzled Titus Welliver stalks the streets of Hollywood hunting down killers, was arguably one of Amazon Prime Video’s best original series. With its seemingly hyper-authentic depiction of homicide investigation matched by a great cast of characters and several compelling long-running storylines, it went on for a full seven seasons – and refused to die.

It’s returned in a slightly different form in this Freevee-exclusive spin-off series, with Harry Bosch working as a private detective while his daughter Maddie becomes a rookie cop. Thankfully, the second season of Bosch: Legacy, much like the first, is very much in the same gritty and realistic vein as its predecessor, and a gripping watch despite its slightly narrower focus.

Watch Bosch: Legacy on Amazon Freevee

John Wick: Chapter 4

You really should know the drill by now: it’s more Keanu Reeves assassinating assassins while wearing a lovely suit. The Baba Yaga John Wick is once again being hunted by the nastiest hired killers on the face of the planet and must seek allies where he can find them if he’s to survive, earn his freedom – and take down The High Table once and for all.

Watch John Wick: Chapter 4 on Amazon Prime Video

The Blair Witch Project

It might not have been the original “found footage” horror movie – but The Blair Witch Project was the first to break into the mainstream. Despite being made on a shoestring budget, it raked in truckloads of cash thanks to a marketing campaign that hinted at the footage being real – that the movie was cobbled together from tapes discovered after a trio of college film students disappeared in the Maryland woods.

It’s not real, of course, but the shaky, low-grade camcorder footage, unknown cast and their mounting sense of panic as they sense they may not be alone all serve to create an authentic feel that cinemagoers hadn’t experienced in years. In the time since its release we’ve been deluged with similar films (some of which you’ll find elsewhere in this very list), but this remains one of the creepiest and best-executed examples.

Watch The Blair Witch Project on Amazon Prime Video

Totally Killer

With Spooky Season well and truly upon us and the evenings drawing in, this high school slasher might be the perfect low-stakes horror flick for a dark, silent night. Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka jumps back from the present day to 1987 in order to help her own teenage mother – then an acerbic bully – prevent a masked psycho killer from murdering three of her contemporaries. Think Mean Girls meets Scream meets Back to the Future and you’re in the right ballpark.

Watch Totally Killer on Amazon Prime Video

An American Werewolf in London

After a young American tourist is set upon by a strange and vicious beast on a Yorkshire moor, he discovers that something inside him has changed – and realises that something terrible is going to happen come the next full moon.

Perhaps best known for its ground-breaking transformation scene (courtesy of special effects legend Rick Baker) John Landis’ movie remains one of the most enjoyable horror-comedies ever made, largely because it succeeds in being both extremely scary and drily amusing without either trait spoiling the other.

Watch An American Werewolf in London on Amazon Prime Video

Galaxy Quest

The cast members of a beloved sci-fi TV series, now reduced to ekeing out a living by appearing at fan conventions, find themselves exploring the cosmos for real when a group of aliens mistake them for real space explorers and recruit them for a galaxy-saving mission. This beloved 1999 comedy thrives on its dissection of fandom, washed-up actors and hackneyed sci-fi tropes – and a stellar cast including Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver certainly doesn’t hurt.

Watch Galaxy Quest on Amazon Prime Video

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Set in 2029, this iconic anime based on the manga by Masamune Shirow follows a cyborg agent trying to track down the Puppet Master, a hacker able to manipulate people’s personalities and memories.

Ghost in the Shell not only looks staggering, being one of the first films to combine cell animation with CGI, but also raises questions about the nature of identity. A cyberpunk classic – and this version is far better than Hollywood’s 2017 live-action remake starring Scarlett Johansson, even if the lack of a subtitled Japanese audio option is sure to irk anime purists.

Watch Ghost in the Shell on Amazon Prime Video

A Quiet Place

This sci-fi thriller poses a simple and terrifying question: what if making the slightest sound would result in your potential death? It does it by making its baddies alien monsters with super-sensitive hearing, always on the look-out (listen-out?) for prey.

Real-life couple John Krasinski (who also co-writes and directs) and Emily Blunt are superb as the parents struggling to keep their young family safe from these sonar-wielding nasties. Despite barely a word being uttered in the film (most of the dialogue is signed with subtitles) sound plays a major role in cranking up the fear, and a good set of surround speakers goes a long way toward making the viewing experience even more butt-clenchingly stressful, particularly when Blunt’s character goes into labour while the monsters are roaming nearby.

Watch A Quiet Place on Amazon Prime Video

The Long Good Friday

Gangland boss Harold Shand has plans to make millions redeveloping London’s crumbling Docklands, but a mysterious spate of bombings and murders among his crew threatens to derail everything. Now Shand must unravel this mess before his investors turn tail – and that’s going to mean a lot of claret getting spilled.

Brutal, brusque and buoyed along by a rollicking performance by Bob Hoskins, The Long Good Friday is arguably the greatest British gangster film of all time. A Cockney classic and no mistake.

Watch The Long Good Friday on Amazon Prime Video

Dune (2021)

Don’t get us wrong: we’re huge David Lynch fans here at Stuff. But James Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel has finally got the screen adaptation it deserves thanks to Denis Villeneuve and co.

With an all-star ensemble cast, stunning cinematography, effects and sound design and a riveting plot taking in war, betrayal, colonialism and family in the far-off future, Dune is an event movie that manages to provide far more than just spectacle.

Watch Dune on Amazon Prime Video

Mad Max: Fury Road

Screeching steel, battered chrome, scorching flames, shattered glass, choking sand, blazing sun and broken bones make up the mood board for veteran director George Miller’s 2015 return to the character he first put on screen back in 1979.

Tom Hardy takes on the title role in what amounts to a two-hour car chase/fight scene interspersed by a few on-foot brawls and some post-apocalyptic musings. As a piece of filmmaking Fury Road is absolutely breathtaking, with the majority of its action scenes based on practical effects and stunts rather than CGI. There’s nothing quite like it out there, so buckle up and get on the road.

Watch Mad Max: Fury Road on Amazon Prime Video

Pacific Rim

A love letter to mecha anime and classic kaiju movies with a smattering of Top Gun chucked in for good measure, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is the high-concept popcorn movie Michael Bay wished he’d thought of first: towering human-piloted robots in epic punch-ups with giant sea monsters from another dimension. Del Toro creates a smart, imaginative and visually outstanding spectacle in a manner Bay never could, even if the relentless brawls and lack of character depth can become slightly wearing towards the end.

Watch Pacific Rim on Prime Video

Dog Soldiers

Well-trained and heavily armed squaddies (including a few recognisable British thesps) versus werewolves in the Scottish Highlands. Who you got? The fight isn’t as one-sided as you might expect, leading to nail-biting moments followed by dry heaving as you take in the gallons of gore that make Neil Marshall’s low-budget Brit flick a stone-cold cult classic. And here’s a nice bit of trivia: despite being set in the wilds of rural Scotland, it was filmed almost exclusively in Luxembourg. Put that in your fact pipe and smoke it.

Watch Dog Soldiers on Freevee

Get Out

A genre-bending horror that succeeds both as a straight-up scary movie and as a wry, insightful satire on race relations, Get Out is an outstanding debut film from Jordan Peele. And, as you’d expect from a film written and directed by a man formerly known for his sketch comedy, it’s well stocked with laughs too. Add in Daniel Kaluuya’s fantastic lead performance (also Oscar-nominated) as a black man visiting his white girlfriend’s wealthy family for the first time and its box office smash status, and you can see why it attracted the Academy’s attention with an Oscar nod. But hey, who needs their seal of approval when you have ours?

Watch Get Out on Freevee

Fargo (1996)

Not to be confused with the anthology series (an also-excellent spiritual spin-off), this multiple Oscar-winning thriller stars Frances McDormand as the heavily pregnant police chief of a small Minnesota town where nothing much happens – until it does. When a kidnap plot goes horrifically awry and bodies start turning up in the snowy landscapes (beautifully filmed by Roger Deakins), McDormand’s no-nonsense approach to law enforcement is put to the test.

If Fargo sounds like a typical noir, it isn’t. The Coens (Minnesota natives themselves) wring something uniquely comic from each and every one of their characters, from William H Macy’s pitiful car salesman to Peter Stormare’s laconic bleached blond criminal. Their keenly observed portrayal of what’s known as ‘Minnesota nice’ is particularly funny, and somehow even more so when it’s playing out against the film’s grim backdrop of violence, betrayal and moral rot.

Watch Fargo on Freevee

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan’s recreation of the British and French armies’ evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 is an audio-visual masterpiece, richly served with moments of both quiet grandeur and epic spectacle.

With comparatively little dialogue, few CGI effects and an enemy that’s never directly seen, Nolan conjures up the hopelessness of the surrounded British Expeditionary Force, trapped between the sea and the German army and prey to horrifying attacks from the air, and the heroism of soldiers, sailors, pilots and civilians caught up in a desperate situation. Hans Zimmer’s score, meanwhile, remains a masterclass in understated power.

Watch Dunkirk on Prime Video