Amazon has begun to invest more in movies streaming exclusively at Amazon Prime Video, and it can be tough to keep up with the latest. As the rest of the catalog has shrunk, original content has grown, but even the giant retailer’s latest movies can be hard to find on the site. Below are seven of Amazon Prime’s biggest film releases over the last several months, covering everything from drama to horror to anime to action comedy. The quality varies as much as the genre.
Here are 12 of the newest movies on Amazon Prime:
1. Shotgun Wedding
Amazon Prime Release Date: January 27, 2023
Director: Jason Moore
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Coolidge, Sonia Braga, Cheech Marin, Selena Tan, Alberto Isaac, D’Arcy Carden, Callie Hernandez, Desman Borges, Steve Coulter, Lenny Kravitz
Genre: Romantic action comedy
Rating: R
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Jennifer Lopez stars opposite Josh Duhamel in Shotgun Wedding, as a couple whose glam island wedding is upended by pirates. Already the movie is off to a completely relatable start! Darcy (Lopez) and Tom (Duhamel) have invited all their family and friends for a destination wedding at a luxury resort in the Philippines. In a nice flip of the cliché, it’s Tom who has turned into a groomzilla, wanting everything to be absolutely perfect. Tom is all about Etsy and pineapple centerpieces and very unfortunate cocktail napkins with Darcy and Tom’s face on them. “You got so fixated on the wedding, you turned into a different person,” Darcy tells him. Tom, it seems, has forgotten that her love don’t cost a thing. While Mark Hammer’s script has a few zingers, it’s the stacked supporting cast that makes the movie pop. Tom’s mom Carol (Jennifer Coolidge) is thrilled to be visiting an island, while his videotaping dad Larry (Steve Coulter) just wants to make sure his wife is happy. It’s a little hard to believe the ever-fabulous Coolidge could ever be unworldly, but when she keeps telling Darcy things like “Hi, it’s your future mother-in-law Carol,” you can’t help but laugh. Cheech Marin and Sonia Braga are Darcy’s divorced parents Robert and Renata. The extremely wealthy Robert has brought his new, annoying girlfriend Harriet (D’Arcy Carden). Things really start to get interesting when Lenny Kravitz shows up as Darcy’s ex-fiancé. Darcy and Tom are already struggling with their different ideas of how their wedding should go, but must set their squabbles aside once the wedding is attacked by pirates trying to extort Robert. But this is a movie where the plot doesn’t really matter. Lopez is a mega star and is such a magnetic screen presence that you’ll probably greet even the most outrageous plot twist with a “Sure, why not?” Lopez and Duhamel have a great rapport. However, you never forget you are watching The Jennifer Lopez and it is her absolute star quality that pulls the movie through.
—Amy Amatangelo
2. Nanny
Amazon Prime Release Date: December 16, 2022
Director: Nikyatu Jusu
Stars: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
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Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny is a tale of prolific sadness that challenges horror’s identity. Whenever the film approaches moments where supernatural events might indulge frightening fantasies, Jusu pushes harder for tragic authenticity. Anna Diop stars as transplant Aisha, the hired nanny to an Upper East Side family struggling to maintain their lifestyle. Amy (Michelle Monaghan) enlists Aisha to care for her daughter Rose (Rose Decker) while her photojournalist husband Adam (Morgan Spector) is away shooting another conflict. Everything seems copasetic, Rose adores Aisha, but Adam’s return home causes tension amidst the altered apartment ecosystem. Aisha works day and night to raise money for her son Lamine’s (Jahleel Kamara) birthday flight to America, but Amy starts missing payments, and working conditions become increasingly uncomfortable. Diop portrays a character drowning in maternal remorse as she cares for another’s neglected child while fighting the guilt of “neglecting” her own son, still living abroad. Monaghan and Spector aren’t playing exaggerated demons—they’re flawed New Yorker stereotypes trying to juggle professions, marital spats and what they believe are Rose’s best interests. The comparing and contrasting that takes place between Aisha and Amy becomes tumultuous when Amy enforces a dehumanizing employer-client boundary. Nanny doesn’t require a grotesque Clive Barkerian imagination—life is terrifying enough for outsiders. Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut is a noteworthy victory in terms of dreary tones, simmering tension and emotional brevity. Its horror accents don’t lunge from shadows or squeal at high pitches. Nanny exists as a sobering exploration of the American Dream gone disgustingly sour, like 2017’s Most Beautiful Island, another New York City reinterpretation of melting-pot alarmism. Patience is a virtue here, as long as audiences holster their Blumhouse expectations and allow Jusu to express herself. —Matt Donato
3. Something from Tiffany’s
Amazon Prime Release Date: December 9, 2022
Director: Daryl Wein
Stars: Zoey Deutch, Kendrick Sampson, Ray Nicholson, Shay Mitchell, Leah Jeffries, Jojo T. Gibbs, Javicia Leslie
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Rating: PG
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Based on a Melissa Hill novel of the same name, Something from Tiffany’s kicks off with a classic Christmas Switch. Getting ready to pop the question to his girlfriend Vanessa (Shay Mitchell), novelist Ethan Greene (Kendrick Sampson) purchases Something from Tiffany’s: A lavish engagement ring. His proposal gets derailed, however, when he accidentally swaps gift bags with tattoo artist Gary (Ray Nicholson), who bought his charmingly earnest baker girlfriend Rachel (Zoey Deutch) earrings from the same store. Sounds like a foolproof setup for a holiday romp, right? If you answered in the affirmative, then I’m sorry to disappoint you. After its promising setup, Tiffany’s gets off to a rocky start. The stiff, canned dialogue would be much easier to forgive did it not set the tone for the entirety of Tiffany’s. Every scene is painfully contrived, desperately straining to mimic human emotions, and the characters are offered the same amount of depth as the scenes they’re in. They are each provided with an average of one personality trait, two if they’re lucky. Gary is a jerk, Vanessa is materialistic, Terri doesn’t like Gary. But Ethan is a widow and he really likes bread; Rachel lost her mom and she owns a bakery. Nobody expects all Christmas movies to be masterpieces. But it’s hard not to be disappointed by low-energy affairs like Tiffany’s, which is nothing more than a mindless attempt at adhering to the Christmas movie algorithm. Even the Grinch would probably ask for something more. —Aurora Amidon
4. Good Night Oppy
Amazon Prime Release Date: November 23, 2022
Director: Ryan White
Genre: Space documentary
Rating: PG
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What if I told you that one of the most absorbing protagonists of 2022 is a motorized vehicle? I’m talking, of course, about Opportunity, or “Oppy,” the rover that NASA shot to Mars in July of 2003 to search for proof that the planet once retained water and, perhaps, hosted life. Directed by Ryan White, Good Night Oppy follows Oppy and her twin sister Spirit, the machines that became beloved public spectacles when they exceeded their projected expiration dates by years. Good Night Oppy tells their stories in a neat blend of archival footage of rocket launches and NASA situation rooms, interviews with the masterminds behind the dynamic duo, and sublime CGI reimaginings of the rovers’ adventures on Mars, courtesy of the VFX magicians at Industrial Light & Magic. Even if one were to remove the artistry and emotional resonance from Good Night Oppy, Oppy’s story is more than enough to keep our eyes glued to the screen. The billion-dollar little-robot-that-could was in the works for decades, and after surviving being launched millions of miles into space within an air-tight window of time, she managed to weather the angry conditions of the big red planet for a staggering 15 years. Not only was this a once-in-a-lifetime scientific feat, but one that also helped us obtain near-proof of life on Mars. Good Night Oppy is sentimental but rarely over the top, dazzling to look at, frequently dabbles in the realm of the nail-biting thriller and, on top of all that, it’s highly informative. But above all, through its loving personification of Oppy, the film bridges the gap between Earth and the unknown, just a little bit. Isn’t that what space travel is all about? —Aurora Amidon
5. The People We Hate at the Wedding
Amazon Prime Release Date: November 18, 2022
Director: Claire Scanlon
Stars: Kristen Bell, Ben Platt, Allison Janney, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Dustin Milligan, Karan Soni
Genre: Rating: R
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Why is The People We Hate at the Wedding in such denial about being a Kristen Bell romantic comedy? The premise makes perfect rom-com sense: Alice (Bell), coming off a year of personal turmoil and stuck in a hot-and-cold relationship with her boss (Jorma Taccone), reluctantly attends the wedding of her wealthy half-sister Eloise (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), where she meets Dennis (Dustin Milligan), a stranger who falls in love with her whole messy deal. Bell can be a winning anti-heroine, and her director is Claire Scanlon, of the widely loved Netflix rom-com Set It Up. Yet the movie insists that it is equally about Alice’s brother Paul (Ben Platt) and their mother Donna (Allison Janney), and the attendant familial and relationship drama. It’s based on a novel that probably gives equal time to the shared family history of Alice, Paul, Eloise and Donna—covered here with some awkward opening narration and a single flashback scene. Eloise has invited everyone to her London wedding, inspiring immediate grumbling phone calls between an aggrieved Paul and Alice. The People We Hate at the Wedding cordons off most of its fun in the Alice/Dennis relationship; Milligan going googly-eyed over Bell’s misbehavior has more potential than depth, but at least it’s enjoyable. Until, that is, the movie corners her further, into the lesson-learning that looms on its agenda from the start. As with Set It Up, Scanlon shows a certain crispness with her camera, probably honed by editing dozens of episodes of The Office and directing shows like Great News and Fresh Off the Boat. That wealth of experience explains the random cameos from performers like Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan. It doesn’t, however, explain why chunks of the movie’s comedy are farmed out to guest stars—or why no one noticed that the movie’s stealth romance works so much better than its sulky dramatics. —Jesse Hassenger
6. My Policeman
Amazon Prime Release Date: November 4, 2022
Director: Michael Grandage
Stars: Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, Gina McKee, Linus Roache, David Dawson, Rupert Everett
Genre: Romantic drama
Rating: 18+
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It’s the 1950s in Brighton, England, and love is in the air. The moment schoolteacher Marion Taylor (Emma Corrin) lays her eyes on devastatingly handsome policeman Tom Burgess (Harry Styles), she becomes utterly besotted with him, and before the sweltering summer is over, the young romantics are deep in the throes of a passionate affair. But Marion isn’t the only one pining after Tom. The policeman has also been partaking in a forbidden relationship with sophisticated museum curator Patrick (David Dawson)—a liaison that not only jeopardizes Tom’s budding relationship with Marion, but also runs both men the risk of being arrested for homosexuality. Adapted from Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel of the same name, My Policeman tells two stories. The first takes place in the 1990s and sees an older, now married Marion (Gina McKee) and Tom (Linus Roache), take in Patrick (Rupert Everett) to care for him after a stroke. During this time, the three are unable to ignore the harrowing truths of their shared past. Their attempts to accept things lost play out in lengthy flashbacks that chronicle the tempestuous love triangle that took place 40 years prior. Once its action sets into motion, the film becomes a lot of different things. It’s a period piece, a character study, a slow burn. But above all, My Policeman is an effective love story. And while My Policeman undoubtedly could have benefited from a number of people involved loosening up just a little, this doesn’t distract much from its undeniable, heartbreaking and scintillating ode to the waning art of forbidden romance. —Aurora Amidon
7. Run Sweetheart Run
Amazon Prime Release Date: October 28, 2022
Director: Shana Feste
Stars: Ella Balinska, Pilou Asbaek, Clark Gregg, Aml Ameeny, Dayo Okeniyi, Betsy Brandt, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
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At first it seems like Shana Feste’s latest film, Run Sweetheart Run, marks a drastic shift in the director’s established genre. Having directed multiple features in the romantic dramedy realm, Feste’s turn toward horror—particularly as it pertains to a date night drenched in crusted crimson (period) blood—feels almost like a jaded response to her previous filmography. On the contrary, Run Sweetheart Run proclaims that a woman known for crafting stories predicated on compatible courtships can still have plenty to say about the dangers of the heterosexual dating scene. Based on a traumatizing experience the filmmaker once had while on a date in her native L.A., Run Sweetheart Run plainly represents the misogyny that runs amok in this country—going so far as to personify (and literally demonize) this pervasive societal ill that has plagued womankind for millennia. While the film contains some impressive scares, a phenomenal lead performance and steadfast central message, Run Sweetheart Run is far too preoccupied with speaking to a cultural reckoning that is truly only occurring in terms of optics and vernacular. It’s bold horror debut from Feste, commendable in its relative inventiveness and directorial confidence. —Natalia Keogan
8. Argentina, 1985
Amazon Prime Release Date: October 21, 2022
Director: Santiago Mitre
Stars: Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Claudio Da Passano, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski
Rating: R
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The horrendous historical reckoning inherent to Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985 is unmistakably evoked through the film’s title. The Argentine director, who is best known for political dramas that examine the country’s social follies, meticulously recreates the circumstances surrounding what’s considered the most ambitious trial against fascist human rights violations in Latin American history. Co-written by Mitre and Mariano Llinás (the filmmaker behind the four-part epic La Flor), Argentina, 1985 is a stylistically assured procedural that manages to tastefully recount the mass torture, rape, killing and “disappearance” of more than 30,000 Argentine civilians by the military dictatorship during the so-called Dirty War that lasted nearly a decade from 1974 through 1983. Through capturing victim testimonies as they were presented in court during this months-long trial as well as the dogged pursuit for justice by a ragtag team of bravely dedicated prosecutors, the film wholly resists sensationalization, opting instead to faithfully reconstruct the events that culminated in a landmark win for social justice amid a shakily budding democracy. Ricardo Darín plays Julio César Strassera, the lead prosecutor of the Trial of the Juntas, who is initially fearful over the prospect of publicly presiding over the case against these murderous fascists, none more notorious than one-time acting ruler Jorge Rafael Videla. Obviously, Strassera’s apprehension is more than warranted: With the national wounds still raw from the junta’s merry mass extermination of citizens accused of opposing their rule, he immediately begins to fret for the lives of his wife and children. This anxiety manifests in subtle and overt ways — he loses sleep, relies on nerve-numbing cocktails and begins taking his son to school on the subway instead of risking the threat of car bombs being planted in his modest sedan. However, the pressure of this undertaking is partially lifted from his shoulders when deputy prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani) joins the case. Together, they select a legal team to aid in their extensive, labor-intensive hunt for witnesses, incriminating documents and written statements that detail the nauseating cruelty and violence of the junta. While much of the film is focused on the collection of evidence and ensuing court case, Argentina, 1985 is also masterfully imbued with period-specific details in the costume and set design, painstakingly emulated from archival footage. Sumptuously captured by cinematographer Javier Juliá’s lens, these visual facets make the two-hour-and-twenty-minute runtime melt by. Of course, the film’s streamlined, never-clunky narrative is no doubt bolstered by Llinás’ involvement as co-writer. After helming an 808-minute feature in 2018, an 140-minute undertaking must feel like light work.—Natalia Keogan
9. My Best Friend’s Exorcism
Amazon Prime Release Date: September 30, 2022
Director: Damon Thomas
Stars: Elsie Fisher, Amiah Miller, Rachel Ogechi Kanu, Cathy Ang, Clayton Royal Johnson, Christopher Lowell
Genre: Horror Comedy
Rating: R
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The best part of My Best Friend’s Exorcism is Christopher Lowell, showing up around the last lap as a Bible-thumping, bodybuilding wannabe exorcist, who chickens out the minute he sees a vision of his dead mom. Whatever film everyone else involved thinks they’re making, they’re not in the same one as Lowell; he’s on a wavelength of self-aware and immersive, toeing the line where ’80s nostalgia is separated from ’80s parody. My Best Friend’s Exorcism’s ingredient list is sumptuous: Christopher Landon producing an adaptation of the same-named Grady Hendrix novel starring Elsie Fisher. Damon Thomas directs. This is the least eye-catching name of the lot, but with so much talent allocated everywhere else, you’d be perfectly rational to anticipate goodness from the film. You may also be sorely disappointed. Somewhere in the transition from page to screen, Hendrix’s work was pressed and blanched, reduced to a flavorless porridge that doesn’t reflect his author’s voice in the slightest. Everything here is affected or flat, from the scare scenes to happier, upbeat moments between teenage girls on the precipice of seismic life changes. Ostensibly, this is a movie about best friends and the exorcism that comes between them. Only the second part of the title lands. Fisher plays Abby, on track for college. Amiah Miller plays Gretchen, about to move two states away. They’ve been pals since fourth grade, through thick and thin, but not thick enough to keep a demon from screwing up their bond. After a night hanging out at a lakeside cabin with the rest of their friend circle, Glee (Cathy Ang) and Margaret (Rachel Ogechi Kanu), the girls incur the wrath of a malicious spirit who slowly wriggles its way into Gretchen’s body, bent on expelling her soul. Abby sees that something’s wrong with her friend, and no one else does, because of course: Horror. What would a genre film be if everyone believed the protagonist’s claims of demonic possession? How an adaptation like this can end up feeling so empty with such rich source material to mine is as much a mystery as Gretchen’s change in attitude is to her friends and family—but Thomas can’t claim the excuse of demonic intervention. —Andy Crump
10. Memory
Amazon Prime Release Date: September 23, 2022 (Originally released April 29)
Director: Martin Campbell
Starring: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Harold Torres, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon
Genre: Thriller
Rating: R
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No man is immortal, and at least theoretically, no man can continue fronting action features until the end of time, but don’t tell Liam Neeson that. Despite occasionally saying he’s retiring from the action genre, the Oscar-nominated icon continues to accept those paychecks, even at 69 years old. The latest, flopping in theaters back in April and now streaming on Amazon, is titled Memory, and can even boast a legitimate Hollywood director in the form of Martin Campbell. But we’ve now gone so far down the senior citizen action hero rabbit hole that even the plots of Liam Neeson action movies have effectively become about how he really shouldn’t be starring in these films. Memory sees Neeson as your classic “assassin with a heart of gold,” happy to murder just about anyone, regardless of their allegiance or family, but don’t ask him to kill a kid! That would be wrong, see. Meanwhile, the assassin coming to the end of his road is also struggling with memory loss. This is essentially the prestige version of what is increasingly being referred to as the “geezer teaser,” the brand of low-budget, straight-to-VOD action movies that build their marketing around relatively small appearances from washed-up Hollywood stars like Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal. Neeson, on the other hand, is still held to a somewhat loftier pedestal—films like Memory are being made for modest but respectable budgets, by a filmmaker who can count Casino Royale and Goldeneye among his credits, and Neeson is legitimately serving as a main character with all the screen time you’d expect. With that said, a plot involving an elite senior citizen assassin vigilante going after “child traffickers” feels uncomfortably familiar in 2022 to the fever dreams of would-be QAnon-style vigilantes, who fantasize about doing exactly the same themselves. But hey, at least we have an incredibly scuzzy looking Guy Ritchie, playing an FBI agent too trapped in bureaucracy to take down the bad guys. —Jim Vorel
11. Goodnight Mommy
Amazon Prime Release Date: September 16, 2022
Director: Matt Sobel
Starring: Naomi Watts, Cameron Crovetti, Nicholas Crovetti
Genre: Thriller, Horror
Rating: R
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Goodnight Mommy, a Naomi Watts-starring English language remake of the nightmare fuel-laden 2014 Austrian film by directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, is the story of a fractured family unit, which sees twin brothers Elias and Lucas being dropped off at a remote farmstead to spend an extended visit with their estranged mother. Mom, a seemingly faded former actress of some renown—one wonders how Watts felt about the implications of the casting—has recently undergone extensive cosmetic surgery on her entire face, necessitating strange, over-the-head bandages as she recovers, almost ski-mask like in appearance. This discomfiting visual, coupled with Mom’s strange changes in behavior and cold, distant disposition eventually lead the brothers to consider a terrifying possibility: What if the woman under the bandages isn’t their mother after all, but an imposter? It’s a powerfully simple premise that pits the realities and inherent power imbalance of adulthood against the imagination and perceptiveness of children. Put simply, this version of Goodnight Mommy is badly lacking in verve and conviction, sanitizing the film it’s remaking as it attempts to shy away from confronting its more genuinely disturbing elements. It’s this smoothing and simplification that ultimately undoes Amazon’s Goodnight Mommy. New director Matt Sobel has preserved the broad beats and plot of the Austrian original, while abandoning any of the potentially unsavory elements that made the original film an anxiety-inducing watch. This story has been painstakingly and brutally shoved through the American cinematic food processor, mushed into pablum and carefully stripped of any texture that might offend the palate. It’s not attempting to thrill, or to frighten, unless those involved had a very low threshold of what the audience might find thrilling or frightening. —Jim Vorel
12. Samaritan
Amazon Prime Release Date: August 26, 2022
Director: Julius Avery
Starring: Javon Walton, Sylvester Stallone, Pilou Asbæk, Dascha Palanco, Moisés Arias, Martin Starr
Genre: Superhero
Rating: PG-13
Paste Review Score: 6.1
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Director Julius Avery’s Samaritan is a Sylvester Stallone vehicle that draws on his persona as society’s worn-out and discarded has-been, where a masked vigilante long thought dead turns out to be alive, living among normies, keeping a low profile out of weariness and survivor’s guilt. Samaritan, the hero of the title, fought with his brother, Nemesis, in a slobberknocker of the gods 13 years before the film’s events. A colossal explosion killed them both. But, in the present, young, impressionable Sam (Javon Walton), thinks that Samaritan made it out of the blast and now leads a humble existence as Joe (Stallone), a reticent garbage man holed up in the apartment across the way. Is Joe Samaritan? Is he just a regular guy doing what he can to get by? Why does he have a freezer full of ice cream? Are criminals really all that bad, and should Sam get in good with Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a Nemesis fanboy and gangster who fancies himself a modern-day Robin Hood? Are superheroes super after all? Samaritan tosses questions at the viewer like dice at a craps table and expects they’ll answer themselves. Mostly, Avery and screenwriter Bragi F. Schut are interested in Walton palling around with Stallone, who plays Joe as a tough guy caught in arrested development: Streetwise but childlike, strong but incongruously innocent. He’d rather avoid a fight than throw elbows, a preference he tries to impart on Sam. But Sam is an actual child. He has no familiarity with violence or its repercussions, or how people who embrace violence as a catalyst for change are willing to cross moral lines. Cyrus is, unsurprisingly, a brutal monster and a version of a Nazi paraphernalia collector: The guy busts into a police evidence depot to retrieve Nemesis’ two defining effects, his mask and hammer. By the end, all of the exciting narrative possibilities laid out in the first act boil down into a beat-‘em-up climax floating on disappointing black-and-white ethics. To the movie’s credit, the defining motifs—we are who we choose to be, everyone deserves a second chance—remain present, if too backgrounded, even after Avery stops striving for something greater than “generic” by folding recognizable elements of contemporary social unrest into his material: He comes frustratingly close to pulling off an ACAB superhero movie. The Boys, Samaritan is not. But even a failed attempt at making a superhero movie out of whole cloth rather than pre-existing IP is welcome, particularly one that challenges the genre’s mores. —Andy Crump