New films, and classics, just keep coming, but you don’t have to drill down to find the finest selections to stream. We’ll do the heavy lifting. You press play.
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As Netflix pours more of its resources into original content, Amazon Prime Video is picking up the slack, adding new movies for its subscribers each month. Its catalog has grown so impressive, in fact, that it’s a bit overwhelming — and at the same time, movies that are included with a Prime subscription regularly change status, becoming available only for rental or purchase. It’s a lot to sift through, so we’ve plucked out 100 of the absolute best movies included with a Prime subscription right now, to be updated as new information is made available.
Here are our lists of the best TV shows and movies on Netflix, and the best of both on Hulu and Disney+.
‘Snack Shack’ (2024)
Adam Rehmeier’s coming-of-age story is set in the summer of 1991, and initially seems not only about that era, but of it, replicating the look and sound of teen sex comedies. (You can’t get more ’90s than a montage set to EMF’s “Unbelievable.”) But that’s a bit of a head fake; this is a movie with more on its mind. A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle) are a pair of young entrepreneurs who see a moneymaking opportunity in the concession stand at the local public pool. As often happens in these tales, a girl threatens to come between them, but that’s where we diverge from the formula; as written by Rehmeier and played by Mika Abdalla, the “cool girl” Brooke has the complexity and agency of a contemporary heroine, allowing Rehmeier to navigate a third-act flip into serious waters with grace and dexterity.
‘Nico, 1988’ (2018)
The filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli brilliantly sidesteps the conventions of the musical biopic with this unorthodox portrait of the German singer Christa Päffgen — better known to the world as Nico, the Velvet Underground vocalist and mainstay of Andy Warhol’s Factory. But Nicchiarelli introduces us to Päffgen long after those years, and honors the singer’s wish not to revisit them, instead focusing on her difficult final days and the constant inconvenience of that legacy. It’s a risk that pays off, thanks in no small part to Trine Dyrholm’s mesmerizing lead performance, which manages to channel the singer’s dark charisma without lapsing into anything so pedestrian as mere imitation. (If you like indie dramas, try “Morvern Callar” and “Eight Men Out.”)