11 Best Prime Video Movies Ever, Ranked

One of Ron Howard’s lesser-known productions is this pic, released just four years after the real-life event it depicts: the multinational effort to rescue a group of teenagers and their football team captain from a flooded cave system in Thailand. Between this film and Apollo 13, Howard really knows how to ratchet up the tension as he shows humanity’s drive for survival against all odds.

After depicting young adulthood in the 21st century in Girls, Lena Dunham did so in the 13th century as the screenwriter and director behind this medieval comedy. Bella Ramsey plays the title character, an English teen resisting her father’s desire to marry her off for financial gain by outsmarting him and the suitors who come her way. And bonus: We count four reunions between Ramsey and other Game of Thrones actors in this production.

This political drama — a recipient of the Human Rights First organization’s Sidney Lumet Award for Integrity in Entertainment — brings to the big screen a sobering true story: Senate Intelligence Committee investigator Daniel Jones’ inquiry into the CIA’s use of torture in the post-9/11 era. Led by Adam Driver, the film is another ripped-from-the-headlines whistleblower saga too important to miss.

Are you there, Judy? It’s us, the readers who grew up on your coming-of-age novels. Fortunately, Blume is one of the many talking heads — famous or otherwise — offering commentary in this documentary about her legacy as a seminal and oft-controversial YA author whose characters were more real than some readers were comfortable with. (We wouldn’t have it any other way.)

Perhaps the most lovable space-fairing robot since WALL-E, NASA’s Opportunity rover explored the surface of Mars for nearly 15 years, far longer than the 90-day lifespan engineers expected. As wondrous as outer space is, that robot is almost more miraculous. And as visual FX company Industrial Light & Magic and narrator Angela Bassett help tell Oppy’s story, we dare you not to get goosebumps.

Though this Emmy-winning documentary didn’t get as much press as fellow Prime Video original Being the Ricardos — the Aaron Sorkin film about the making of I Love Lucy — it’s a much more faithful portrait of the titular Hollywood power couple. And director Amy Poehler handles her subjects with reverence — in other words, she didn’t have any ’splainin’ to do.

Riz Ahmed plays a metal drummer struggling to reconcile his musical passion with his increasing hearing loss in this drama that could have easily veered into melodrama territory. Ahmed shines, as does Paul Raci as the deaf man who guides the drummer’s evolution, and the film’s Oscar-winning sound design is a wonder in itself.

Often armed with a video camera, late actor Val Kilmer was a diligent chronicler of his life as he rose to fame in films like Top Gun, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. And when his life forever changed with his throat cancer diagnosis, he decided to narrate his life story — with his son providing his voice — in a documentary that serves as a testament to his talent and too-short life.

Between her gigs giving exciting twists to the Candyman and 28 Days Later franchises, filmmaker Nia DaCosta did the same for a 19th-century Henrik Ibsen play about a woman manipulating her way out of a suffocating existence. Mark our words: While lead actor Tessa Thompson isn’t yet headed for Oscar glory with this unmissable performance, some other big-screen turn will get her there.

Gael García Bernal won an Astra Film Award for his big-hearted portrayal of real-life luchador Saúl Armendáriz. As this biopic dramatizes in fabulous style — with Bad Bunny filling a supporting role, no less — Armendáriz found fame after embracing flamboyance in the ring as the exótico dubbed Cassandro. And whether he’s swinging his hips or his fists, Bernal keeps us captivated.

Regina King made a hard-act-to-follow feature-film directorial debut here, as Kemp Powers adapted his own stage play for the big screen. The story imagines a fictional meeting between activist Malcolm X, boxer Muhammad Ali, football player Jim Brown, and singer Sam Cooke in a Criterion-endorsed exploration of politics and power at a pivotal point in the Civil Rights Era.