AMAZON PRIME’s Video streaming service has a surprisingly good selection of films, a selection that puts it ahead of Netflix right now.
One tip I have for all these services: no point in paying for them all at once. After you pay for a month you can cancel right away, so why not do a month on Netflix, a month on prime, then a month on Disney+, rather than paying for all three at once?
A Cure For Wellness: If part of lockdown has you missing trips to spas and wellness centres, this is a good way to remove all longing for that kind of thing. This is a fun little horror movie that entirely loses its way in the second half - a shame because the first 40 minutes are really good fun, but not for the squeamish.
The Mauritanian: Jodie Foster caught people by surprise when she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in this film a few months ago. This is a fascinating, infuriating, story about a man held for 14 years in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The story is worth telling, but is not inherently cinematic, and as a film just feels a little flat. Would this be better told in a different medium?
Heat: I’m going to suggest Heat because there is never a not a good time to watch Heat. Heat is the most watchable film ever made. If you haven’t seen Heat watch it. If you have? Watch it again. It is really good.
Greenland: This one surprised me. An end of the world thriller in the vain of Deep Impact or The Day After Tomorrow but much better than both of them. Surprisingly fun, with Gerard Butler playing an engineer deemed worthy of a spot in a bunker that will hold the surviving humans after an asteroid hits the earth. It takes a reasonably realistic approach. A good Friday night watch with a take away. Somehow the impending end of the earth by asteroid is less depressing than The Late Late Show at the moment.
Manchester By The Sea: This film popped into my head after a list of the 10 actors who had won the Best Actor oscar over the last decade was going viral - a truly shocking list of naff performances in lousy films, with one exception, Casey Affleck. He is devastatingly brilliant here, along with co-star Michelle Williams. The scene when the two leads meet each other in the street is only three minutes but has more humanity, pathos, realism, and sadness than most dramatic films have in their entire run time.
