The 20 best Amazon Prime movies and series to watch tonight
Coming this month: A Very Royal Scandal, the new dramatisation of Prince Andrew's disastrous interview with veteran Newsnight host Emily Maitlis
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GQ's list of the best Amazon Prime Video movies and TV shows is updated monthly.
It's Friday night. Netflix isn't cutting it. Disney Plus? Meh — you're just not feeling another The Simpsons season six rewatch. So, Prime Video. There's loads on there: thousands of classic movies and original TV shows, like Fallout (probably the best show of 2024), Reacher and the upcoming A Very Royal Scandal (streaming from 19 September), the second streaming title to tackle Emily Maitlis v. Prince Andrew after Netflix's movie Scoop.
Such is why we’ve trawled through the Prime Video catalogue to round up its best watches. Slide down Saltburn's bath drain and you'll find underrated gems like Hacks and Fellow Travelers, prestige classics like The West Wing and Mad Men and schlocky romps like Jake Gyllenhaal's new Road House remake. So, here are the 20 best things to watch on Prime Video. GQ tested and approved. And if you're looking for our guides to Netflix series and movies, then look no further.
1/24The Batman
Colin Farrell’s Penguin might be getting all the attention at the moment for his new TV show, but let’s not forget where its titular nightclub mogul began. You could’ve been forgiven for sighing and rolling your eyes when you heard there was going to be another Batman film, but then it came out. And, well, it was very good indeed. Robert Pattinson, Colin Farrell, Zoe Kravitz – all excellent. It was a casting masterclass, each of them slotting perfectly into their parts in a refreshingly grown-up superhero film that took its action as seriously as its plot and saw the benefits. Absolutely worth a (re-)visit. You can watch The Batman on Prime Video.
2/24Nathan For You
Before he was making everyone cringe (on purpose) with Emma Stone in The Curse, or by himself in The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder made his name make everyone cringe (on purpose) in Nathan For You. The premise is perfect: he poses as a business consultant (who “graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades”), and gives struggling businesses in LA terrible advice on how to improve their businesses. They follow it, hilarity ensues. Leading examples include “Dumb Starbucks”, where Nathan discovers you’re allowed to use a business’s name as long as it’s for parody and so suggests a coffee shop re-brands as “Dumb Starbucks”, and the one where he helps an independent electronics store use big-time rival Best Buy’s price matching promise to their advantage, by listing their TVs for $1 (thereby forcing Best Buy to do the same) – and then introducing a black tie dress code to enter the store and keeping the TVs on the other side of an impossibly tiny door and an alligator. Sublime. You can watch Nathan For You on Prime Video.
3/24Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Like being shown around a city by its most charismatic local, except that person is also a local to every other city in the world. Anthony Bourdain had a talent for getting under the skin of a place, with his enthusiasm that came wrapped in a disarming grumpiness and disdain for anything he disapproved of. If Bourdain liked a place, you knew he wasn't just saying it, and you knew he’s not saying it because he thought it was the trendy thing to like – he was as likely to sing the praises of a crusty dive bar or a greasy burger spot as a fine-dining institution. A voice you can trust, and have a lot of fun trusting. You can watch Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on Prime Video.
4/24Modern Times
Watching Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times on your laptop, in your bed, whenever you happen to feel like watching it, is one of those moments that really makes you take stock of what technology has given you. And funnily enough, that’s kind of what Modern Times is about – it might be a very different kind of technology (we’re talking industrial revolution here), but the 1936 slapstick comedy is still eerily prescient in addressing the ways in which the march of technological progress can both help and hamstring us. Widely considered one of the best films ever made, you’ve really got no excuse not to have seen it now. You can watch Modern Times on Prime Video.
Christopher Raphael5/24A Very Royal Scandal
Remember the box office interview that was Emily Maitlis v. Prince Andrew? Of course you do, because it was literally five years ago. It has already been fictionalised this year in the Netflix film Scoop, in which Gillian Anderson put in a strikingly on-point impression of the legendary Newsnight anchor. Now steps in Ruth Wilson opposite chameleonic actor Michael Sheen — who collects public figures to play like they're Pokémon cards — as the controversial royal. This one is set to expand on Maitlis' “professional and personal journey” in-and-around the scandalous bout. Watch it with a thin crust from Pizza Express. Hold the sweat. You can watch A Very Royal Scandal on Prime Video from 19 September.
© AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC6/24Fallout
200 years after a retrofuturistic ‘50s-style America is laid to waste by nuclear bombs, the men and women who have been preserved in expansive underground shelters — known as “vaults” — start to emerge. One such Vault Dweller is the happy-go-lucky Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), who is forced out of subterranean safety after a band of raiders invade her home and kidnap her father (Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan). And so begins her journey across the scorched landscape of post-nuclear Los Angeles, where she meets hulking metal men unified by their chivalry fetish (the Brotherhood of Steel), radiated humans (ghouls) and psychopathic robots. It's as batshit as it sounds. A worthy adaptation of the role-playing game series that Skyrim developer Bethesda made famous when it bought the rights in the mid-2000s. Hopefully the world isn't nuked for real before the second season drops. You can watch Fallout on Prime Video.
Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo7/24The Shawshank Redemption
The greatest movie ever made (per IMDb and your dad) is thirty years old in September. Where'd all that time go? The story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), an unassuming accountant who finds himself on the wrong side of prison bars in ‘40s America, has gone down in cinematic lore for good reason: it’s a two-and-a-half hour masterwork about the tenacity of the human spirit, our ability to triumph against adversity … and Morgan Freeman is really, really good as fellow prisoner Red. Double bill it with The Green Mile on a Sunday afternoon and reminisce about the time when streaming platforms didn't exist and all we had were endless reruns of the classics on ITV 2. You can watch The Shawshank Redemption on Prime Video.
Brooke Palmer8/24Reacher
Reacher is a social experiment in testing just how large a person can be to fit on your small screen. Alan Ritchson – maybe the most swole man in Hollywood right now – plays the titular character in this new take on the Lee Childs series, Jack Reacher (a marked difference from when Tom Cruise played him on the big screen!). Jack Reacher is a former military policeman who takes down bad guys as he traverses the country. It's your classic lawman shtick, but with two seasons that both landed at the top of Amazon's watch lists when they were released, it's probably the best version of that we have going right now. You can watch Reacher on Prime Video.
Courtesy of SHOWTIME9/24Fellow Travellers
Tired of sex scene discourse? Watch Fellow Travelers, with its gluttonous number of passionate sex scenes shared between Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey. The show chronicles the decades-long romance between two men who first strike up a relationship against the backdrop of 1950s McCarthyism. It's a gorgeous historical series that centres on a topic not usually afforded such lengthy exploration – the love between two men as society slowly catches up with progress. You can watch Fellow Travelers on Prime Video.
Courtesy Everett Collection10/24Anatomy of a Fall
You've heard all about Messi, the hottest dog in Hollywood right now. But that's just one reason to see Anatomy of a Fall — frankly you'd need at least four paws to count them all. Sandra Hüller plays Sandra, a woman accused of pushing her husband out of their attic window, setting up a classic did-she-dunit mystery that plays out in large part in the courtroom. Thank god, then, that there's so much meat on the screenplay, its acerbic dialogue delivered by Hüller with bite and wit. (The script won an Oscar.) It's a rich legal drama that will have you switching sides the whole way through until the very end. You can watch Anatomy of a Fall on Prime Video.
Laura Radford11/24Road House
Jake Gyllenhaal's remake of this Patrick Swayze classic arrived in March with the urgency of a surprise throat rip. This isn't a particularly faithful retelling of the 80s guilty pleasure, really only taking its core premise of being about a hench bouncer who beats up bar thugs. In a modern twist, Gyllenhaal plays an ex-UFC fighter whose career washed up after pummeling a guy to death in the ring. Expect bare Gyllenhaal pecs, wince-inducing fight scenes and a vaguely homoerotic square-up between Gyllenhaal and Connor McGregor. You can watch Road House on Prime Video.
12/24Hacks
Real Hacks-heads here will understand the instant surge of joy that came with the first trailer for its upcoming third season recently dropped. For many, it's the best show that not enough people have seen. It revolves around an ageing Vegas comedienne (think Joan Rivers-lite) who reluctantly enlists the help of a queer, gen z comedy writer to punch up her material for the current climate. It's essentially an odd-couple pairing (starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbeinder) and one that, with every episode, will make you wish we weren't in an era of eight-episode seasons anymore. You can watch Hacks on Amazon.
13/24Joy Ride
Since the halcyon, pie-fucking days of American Pie, the sex comedy has rarely ventured far from the male lens, other than a few outliers like Girls Trip and Blockers. Joy Ride is the female sex comedy we've been hankering for with more than a healthy side-portion of feel-good, heartfelt emotion. It follows Audrey (Ashley Park), a Chinese adoptee in the US who, while on a business trip in Beijing, ends up on a mission to find her birth mother with her three best friends. OK, the logline sounds pretty light on the sex, but it's there in spades. As well as being just extremely funny, it's groundbreaking in its all-Asian cast and the focus on Asian women's sexuality, something often not given its own POV in mainstream movies. You can watch Joy Ride on Amazon.
14/24Reality
Sydney Sweeney's flashier roles in recent years - like Euphoria, The White Lotus and Anyone but You - may have taken some of the spotlight away from what is arguably her best performance to date in Reality. In the film, she plays Reality Winner, a US Navy vet who leaked classified documents about Russia's interference with the US Presidential elections in 2016. The leak had global ramifications and landed Winner in prison for the longest time under any government leak. Sweeney's portrayal of Winner is vulnerable and intimate, and it's a shame more people didn't get to see it when it was unceremoniously released on HBO Max without much fanfare. You can watch Reality on Amazon.
Rex Features15/24Catch Me if You Can
If you're a person that sees sense, you'll probably recognise Catch Me if You Can as the film that Leonardo DiCaprio should have won his Oscar for (no offence to The Revenant). Maybe he was just too young, hot and in demand to be given the little gold man, but it's those traits that make his performance in Stephen Spielberg's crime caper so good. In this true story, DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr, a con man who posed as a pilot, doctor and lawyer and cashed millions of dollars worth of forged cheques all while the FBI was on his tail. Oh, and all before his 21st birthday. Tom Hanks co-stars, naturally, and it's just a wholly enjoyable and thrilling ride from start to finish. You can watch Catch Me if You Can on Amazon.
16/24The West Wing
We'd never be as naive to suggest that US politics in the '90s was a hopeful place, however, looking back at the West Wing with the context of the absolute dumpster fire we've existed through in the last decade or so, you can't help but feel a wistful sort of ‘halcyon days’ feelings for its optimistic approach to those in power. Aaron Sorkin's political series followed the daily grind of the senior staff of The White House, from the press secretary, played by Alison Janney, to the Democrat President, played by Martin Sheen. It's still considered, to this day, one of the best TV shows ever made (at least until Sorkin left after the fourth season). You can watch The West Wing on Amazon.
©AMC/courtesy Everett Collection17/24Mad Men
In a TV landscape that's now bursting at the seams with prestige hit after prestige hit, it says something that the sleek excellence of Mad Men still hasn't been touched. The world of 60s advertising – with its whiskey lunches and 20-pack-a-day pitch meetings – headed up by a revelatory Jon Hamm barely wavers in quality throughout its seven seasons, making it one of the most satisfying investments of time. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's good to be reminded of how great TV can be. If you somehow missed it the first time around, prepare to lose weeks of your life (and come out the other end with only a mild disdain for the concept of men as a whole). You can watch Mad Men on Amazon.
Everett Collection18/24Bottoms
We support gay rights, but we also support gay wrongs, such as starting up a high school fight club so you can hit on (and get hit by) hot cheerleaders. That's the conceit of Bottoms, the chaotic brainchild of Rachel Sennott and director Emma Seligman. The film stars Sennott and Ayo Edebiri as two lesbian losers looking lose their virginities before they graduate, so they concoct a bonkers plan to set up an all-female after school self defence club in the hopes of luring their crushes under the endorphins of being beat up. It's dumb in the best possible way. You can watch Bottoms on Amazon.
19/24The Curse
The Curse is probably the best show you won't enjoy watching right now, which is true to Nathan Fielder's form. The king of cringe teams up with Emma Stone and Benny Safdie for this take on the cult of home improvement TV culture, but because this is Fielder and Safdie we're talking about, it's far from your usual satire. Fielder and Stone play a married TV host couple who, while filming a virtue-signalling series called Flipanthropy, worry they've been inflicted with a curse. Whether or not the curse is real, or just the fear that it might start manifesting in their daily lives, is one of the questions posed by this series. The other is how the hell did this even get made? It's a career-best performance from Emma Stone, which is saying something as she's currently one of the frontrunners for a second Oscar this year. You can watch The Curse on Amazon.
Warner Bros. Pictures20/24Saltburn
By now, you won't have been able to avoid all the twists and turns that Saltburn has to offer if you've spent even a nanosecond on the internet. Maybe it's just been in passing, but you've surely heard vague horrified utterings about bathwater and freshly dug graves. We'll let you discover those shocks for yourself if you haven't got around to watching yet. Emerald Fennell's peak into the upper echelons of Britain's upper class is told through the eyes of its strange little outsider protagonist, played by Barry Keoghan. After being taken under the wing of an ethereal-looking Jacob Elordi, Keoghan's character is dragged into the gilded doors of Saltburn, a sweeping, rural estate. What he does after that, well, let's just say you'll need a bath after. You can watch Saltburn on Amazon.
21/24Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's magnum opus follows a 30-something-year-old navigating life and love in London while managing crushing grief. Considering its regular gut punches and oft-cringe set pieces, the series has become an unlikely comfort watch. Both seasons are available to watch now, including the one where Andrew Scott's hot priest made us all take moral pause for a hot second in 2019. You can watch Fleabag on Amazon.
22/24Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
In Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino changes history. (Again.) Revolving around the murder of Sharon Tate at the hands of Charles Manson's compound of hippies, the film introduces washed up TV star Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff (Brad Pitt), who manoeuvre the sun-drenched decay of '60s Hollywood and end up in the right place at the right time. You can watch Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood on Amazon.
23/24Palm Springs
You know what you're getting with time-loops. Someone is stuck repeating the same day over and over again, changing bits of it to see how things change only to wake up the next day to do it all again. Palm Springs very much sticks to this framework, but it's made excellent by its anchoring stars Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti who play wedding guests fated to experience the same festivities until the end of time. You can watch Palm Springs on Amazon.
24/24Zodiac
David Fincher's Zodiac is about as scary as you can get without being a full-blown horror. The film revolves around the hunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who wreaked terror on California in the 60s with a series of puzzles and cyphers. Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo star as a group of reporters and detectives on the hunt for the murderer who, by the way, has still never been identified. With its neo-noir stylings, Zodiac is chilling and tense and you will probably want to double-check the bolts on your windows before you go to sleep, just in case. You can watch Zodiac on Amazon.
