These days, we all expect the latest blockbusters to drop on our chosen video streaming services faster than the Flash eats a peanut butter, banana, raisin, honey and cheese sandwich.
But what to watch in between today’s hits? The good news is there are plenty of other great movies available that’ll put a widescreen-sized grin on your chops, that you’ve possibly never heard of.
Prime Video in particular has a cornucopia of cinematic treats, both archive and recent.
Ask Alexa to search out Sergio Corbucci’s original Django, the spaghetti western classic that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and relish the amazing score by Luis Bacalov, or get your apocalyptic groove on with the pitch-perfect disaster thriller Greenland, Starring Gerard Butler. The latter is available in UHD HDR10+ with a cracking Dolby Atmos sound mix.
Admittedly, the Prime Video UI isn't particularly inviting, but stir the pot a little and some great movies you may well have missed soon come to the surface.
Introducing the five best movies on Prime Video you’ve (probably) never heard of, or perhaps simply haven't got around to watching yet!
Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone
For those not in the know, Evangelion Neon Genesis is a legendary Japanese anime produced in the mid-nineties. The Gundam franchise may be more mainstream, but Evangelion’s mix of visually stunning mecha action and quasi-religious themes puts it into a different pop culture league altogether. Created by Hideaki Anno, it’s funny and dark, exciting and perplexing in equal measure.
Which brings us to this: the first in a cinematic tetralogy that rebuilds the show in HD and 5.1. The widescreen animation is entirely new, but based on the drawings produced for the original TV episodes. If you’ve never watched the show before, this is your best jumping-on point. The CGI animation the best reason yet for that Vivid / Dynamic setting on your TV, while Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 sound mix is consistently exciting during the various Eva Vs Angels battles.
Stream Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone on Prime Video
A Cure For Wellness
Deeply unsettling and visually astonishing, this Gore Verbinski-directed physiological horror will put you off spas for life.
Set in a nightmarish Swiss alpine retreat where patients check in but never check out, it stars Dane DeHaan as a city slicker sent to retrieve his AWOL CEO. Upon arrival, he meets the spa’s director played by Jason Issacs, as well as the always eerie Mia Goth.
The movie ticks every hospital horror box you’ve ever had, and visionary cinematographer Bojan Bazelli will keep you transfixed with his inventive framing and sudden shocks. The movie streams in HD with a 5.1 soundtrack that’s far from conventional – there’s an early car crash that will throw you from your couch. You can also use the extraordinary Alpine retreat to see how well your 4K screen up-scales, and copes with the copious sparsely lit, high contrast scenes.
Stream A Cure For Wellness on Prime Video
The Green Knight
Dev Patel plays Gawain in this stylised interpretation of the 14th-century chivalric romance. Not a genre typically frequented by AV fans, this becomes something very different in the hands of director David Lowery. His dark, trippy fantasy looks tremendous in UHD HDR10+ and the faux classical electronic rock soundtrack, by Daniel Hart, is a particularly immersive Dolby Atmos treat.
Stream The Green Knight on Prime Video
Suspiria (2018)
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is rightly regarded as a classic of ’70s Italian horror cinema, with its bravura use of vivid Technicolor (red has never looked so bloody!), and Goblin’s prog rock score. You can catch it on Prime Video.
This 2018 remake is not as highly regarded, but is also well worth visiting on Prime. Available in UHD HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos, it’s an engrossing body horror that picks up on the original’s Wicca themes but heads in a different direction entirely. Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson lead a largely all-female cast.
This time around the score is by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and the result is dizzying.
Stream Suspiria on Prime Video
Warcraft: The Beginning
The title might have tempted fate (there was never a sequel, due to its poor box office performance), but Duncan Jones’s cinematic translation of the hugely popular Blizzard Entertainment role-playing game is a terrific action adventure in its own right.
If you’ve enjoyed Avatar, then you’ll feel right at home. This movie is tailor-made for home cinema systems.
Story-wise, this treads familiar fantasy ground, but director Jones manages to make the show’s blue-skinned Orcs more compelling characters than the humans of Azeroth they revile.
Prime Video streams the show in UHD and the various spellcasting sequences look gorgeous. The depth of detail in the landscapes is also mesmerising, while the torch-lit low-light scenes will test the near-shadow detail of your display.
Audio is presented in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, and sounds as sharp as an Orc’s tusk. The score, by Ramin Djawadi (probably best known for his work on Game Of Thrones) is fittingly epic.
Stream Warcraft: The Beginning on Prime Video
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