The Best Movies To Watch on Amazon Prime After You're Done Shopping For Toilet Paper

Amazon Prime Video Streaming Guide (Updated Nov. 13)

Why is it that in all the stories about the streaming landscape, everyone always uses the very specific example of Amazon Prime being the “thing everyone has so they can shop for toilet paper.”

I don’t know about you but I have never bought my TP on Amazon, and I don’t think I ever will. But spiritually it still feels true, an omnivorous behemoth of an organization that cares about its (very expensive) video platform only as a marketing vehicle and value add-on for its primary business of selling you….well, everything else.

Yet scrolling through the library, Amazon is the home for just as many old classics as Max, and I think is the definitive library for 1990s genre fare (back when the movie formula was as simple as coming up with a great premise and throwing two movie stars in it, and somehow every one turned out to be at least decent).

Also, it’s a really competitive player in the first streaming window for theater hits, like Challengers this year or Saltburn last year, which is where a lot of people discovered those movies for the first time.

I’m hoping to go a little further to the deeper stacks (an outdated term from when we used to walk around actual movie stores) for this Amazon Prime Streaming Guide.

Utilizing all of the 1000+ movie suggestions I’ve made over the past six years in my Friday edition of the newsletter, I’ve hand-picked the best of the best on each platform (updated on a rolling basis…here are my most recent ones for Netflix and Max).

Much like my Cinephile Bucket List, I’ve broken these down into categories that should help you to browse depending on the vibe you’re looking for on a given night, with blurbs both new and old like a sales pitch to convince you to try out movies you’ve hopefully never seen before. Let’s get into it!

Hidden Gems