New releases, discoveries and rewatches: the best stuff we saw on Prime Video this month
The best of Prime Video from the past month includes a mind-twisting sci-fi, a hit mob series, and some certified classic films.
The Assessment
Watch on Prime VideoIf you’re after a well-acted piece of mind-twisting dystopian sci-fi, this one’s a real gem. In a role semi-reminiscent of her cunning robot from Ex Machina, Alicia Vikander anchors this film tremendously as an agent for the state who assesses which couples are deemed worthy enough to legally become parents. With birth rates tightly controlled, parenthood becomes the rarest of privileges.
Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel play off Vikander valiantly as the hopeful mum and dad. Though the couple claim to be fully prepared for a child, nothing can prepare them for the invasive and downright creepy trials the assessor has in store for them. As tensions run high and the assessor’s motives grow more questionable, so too does the movie’s psychological cringe factor. It all leads to a complex, but deeply satisfying, conclusion.
Overcompensating
Watch on Prime VideoBeyond study, my university life was non-existent. I made no friends on campus, had zero-night stands, and my only attempt at joining a club was one painful night on a debate team. Colour everyone shocked, then, that I’d latch onto this myth-debunking college comedy from Benito Skinner like a leech on a boil.
In her experience with the show, Eliza Janssen praised: “Wicked and warm in turn, Skinner’s show confidently lays out a thesis for its first season: that everyone in college is lying, and once they realise they’re not alone in this, they might finally be allowed to be happy.”
MobLand
Watch on Prime VideoStreaming services are littered with gangster shows, so it takes a lot to stand out. Fortunately for MobLand, the highly successful Amazon Original that just wrapped its first season, it’s managed to do just that. Doesn’t hurt to have Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren as the pillars who hold up this story of two clashing crime families with ties across the world.
This trio knows the genre inside out, so perhaps it’s no surprise this series ended up being so compelling. But, as David Michael Brown observed, the show goes deeper than you may expect: “By focusing on knife violence, an abhorrent act of annihilation on the increase in the UK, the show garners a gravitas and urgency beyond mere entertainment. Which, with actors like Hardy, Mirren and Brosnan, this show effortlessly does.”
Nine Perfect Strangers: Season 2
Watch on Prime VideoAfter topping the charts as Hulu’s most watched original series, this seductive and shifty-eyed show returns. Nicole Kidman’s dodgy guru Masha Dmitrichenko takes her wellness centre, and nine new strangers, to the Alps for another intensive therapy retreat, giving the group an ominous time limit of ten days to get over their trauma.
As Amelia Berry discovered, Nine Perfect Strangers benefits from a second season. “Not only is it free from some of the restraints that come from adapting a popular novel (and the restraints of being produced under full Covid restrictions)—but now that we definitely know that Masha’s therapy works and that she’s not secretly an evil serial killer or whatever, we’re free to focus on the juicy, juicy, inter-character drama that makes the show so good.”
Perfect for those currently suffering White Lotus withdrawals.
John Wick
Watch on Prime VideoA decade ago, this humble hitman film starring Hollywood sweetheart Keanu Reeves would light a match—or a wick, if you will—that would ignite a massive blockbuster franchise. The premise sounded silly: a man goes on a murder-thon to avenge his dead dog. The early poster was even sillier. The results, however, were the stuff of legends, an action spectacle spearheaded by stunt masters that championed a perfect harmony between cinematography and choreography.
After four movies and a prequel miniseries, we’re about to see Ana de Armas enter the John Wick universe in upcoming cinema release Ballerina, making this the perfect time to revisit the groundbreaking original. Also keep your eyes out for making-of doco Wick is Pain, which details the stack of production nightmares that threatened to end the film before it started.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Watch on Prime VideoTo celebrate its tenth birthday, why not melt your face to George Miller’s outstanding wasteland thrasher? A critical hit, a total crowd-pleaser, and collector of six Academy Awards, this gargantuan action masterpiece hasn’t lost a minute of manic magic since its cinema release. What more could be said? A lot more, it turns out. Flicks’ own Luke Buckmaster went over the film, the franchise, and Miller’s legacy in intricate detail in his book Miller and Max.
It’s worth mentioning that you can catch our favourite war boy, Nicholas Hoult, in his early years in Skins, the BAFTA-winning rough-as-guts UK teen series, with every episode currently streaming on Prime Video. You could also gain a whole new appreciation for Fury Road by first watching Asylum knockoff Road Wars: Max Fury—it’ll be like savouring a crème brûlée after eating a dirt sandwich.
Misery
Watch on Prime VideoRob Reiner delivered one of the great Stephen King adaptations with this nasty, obsessive relationship horror. James Caan plays a famous author who, after a gnarly car accident, finds himself injured and bed-bound in a middle-of-nowhere cabin. Kathy Bates, in an Oscar-winning performance, plays the woman who saved his life and is nursing his wounds. She’s also his number one fan and is enjoying his company… perhaps a little too much.
What unfolds is an ever-tightening sense of fear and paranoia as Caan’s writer grows increasingly cautious about his supposed saviour. Are her intentions pure? Is she sound of mind? What exactly is “hobbling”? Bates revels in making her captive—and the audience—squirm with these questions with a terrifying, perfectly tuned performance.
And she’ll give you the answers. Especially that last one. It’s a doozy.
