Must-Watch Amazon Prime Original Movies
Four very different, very good Amazon Prime Originals
Last week we dropped our top 10 Netflix Original movies, so this week we are shifting our focus to their rival, Amazon Prime Originals. Amazon does things a little differently, as their movies usually play in theaters before landing on their streaming service. Also, they don’t produce and/or distribute nearly as many movies as Netflix. However, with less quantity comes higher quality. Head to Amazon Prime to try these four standouts.
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Drew recommends…
Honey Boy
Shia LaBeouf has gone through a lot in his 33 years. Beginning his acting career at age 12, he got his big break as the main character on the Disney Channel show Even Stevens (all my Millenials know what I’m talking about). By 2003, he was on his way to movie stardom after playing the lead in Holes. After that, he starred in three Transformers blockbusters and an Indiana Jones sequel, becoming one of the most well-known actors on the planet. However, by 2014 Shia’s erratic public behavior and strange performance art had begun to overtake his celebrity persona. After an incident of disorderly conduct with police, he began seeking treatment for alcoholism. In 2017, he was arrested again and sentenced to probation and court-ordered therapy for his anger and substance abuse. It was shortly after this that he wrote the screenplay for Honey Boy.
I’ll admit I watched Honey Boy with the expectation that it would be overly indulgent and emotionally overwrought. This famous person’s auto-biographical therapy session couldn’t actually be good, right? Well, I was surprised to find that Honey Boy totally worked on me. It’s one of the most moving and honest films I’ve seen in recent years.
The movie follows young actor Otis (a fictionalized version of Shia) as he begins his ascent to fame while also flashing forward to Otis’ struggles with rehab and recovery years later. Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place) plays 12-year-old Otis living with his father, an unpredictable recovering alcoholic and felon. Lucas Hedges (Lady Bird, Manchester by the Sea) is the present-day Otis. But here’s the thing: Shia plays a version of his own father, who he’s had a complicated relationship with since his childhood. It’s a fascinating and intense example of an actor using art as therapy, for all the world to see.
Fortunately, Jupe is up to the challenge, convincingly playing Otis as a talented kid pursuing his dreams while he takes on verbal and psychological abuse from his dad. Jupe is on his way to big things. First-time director Alma Har’el does a brilliant job balancing the heavy emotional combat with moments of childhood nostalgia. She paints alluring and evocative images throughout Honey Boy that will sit with you after the credits roll.
Shia has always been a ball of energy on screen, but here he’s a tornado moving at full speed. You’re never quite sure what he’s going to do, but it could be anything. He plays his own dad not as a one-note abuser, but as an incredibly complex human being. I can’t imagine how deep down Shia had to reach to play this part. Honey Boy is raw and not an easy watch at times, but there is hard-earned pathos and grace to be found here.
The Big Sick
This was not done on purpose, but here’s another movie based on real-life. The Big Sick is the true story of how star and co-writer Kumail Nanjiani met his wife, co-writer Emily V. Gordon. Kumail plays himself as an aspiring comedian whose one-night stand with Emily (Zoe Kazan) turns into something more. This is a problem since Kumail’s Muslim parents expect him to agree to an arranged marriage. Soon after the two break up, Emily is struck by an unexplained illness that puts her in a coma, leaving Kumail to get through the crisis alongside Emily’s parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter).
The Big Sick manages to juggle cross-cultural romance and family drama, while still hitting some truly great jokes. I laughed really hard at several different points, thanks to Kumail’s comic timing and rapport with Romano and Hunter, who are both absolutely terrific. Before this, you might have seen Kumail in the background of a TV show or a bad studio comedy, but The Big Sick proved he could play the lead. (This is good timing, because his new Netflix movie The Lovebirds released today.) Due to his sharp co-writing and engaging lead performance, this is one of the best romantic comedies of the last five years, and fortunately it doesn’t shirk the comedy portion of that identifier at all.
A surprising box office hit in 2017, The Big Sick was also nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. This is exactly the kind of movie we need more of at the Oscars: witty, heartfelt, and intimate. It’s a sweet and affecting small story that will make you feel many things at once.
Billy recommends…
The Lost City of Z
Charlie Hunnam… I don’t get you. Part of me doesn’t like his style and it feels like Hollywood is just shoving him in our faces and yelling, “HE IS A MOVIE STAR!” Then there is part of me that really likes most of the movies he is in. The Lost City of Z being a performance that I really like that is attached to one of my favorite genres: an adventure story.
The adventure story can take on many shapes. An Indiana Jones type, the Lord of the Rings type, the Stand by Me type… I could go on, but no other genre can get me hooked faster. The Lost City of Z shows the life of the man Percival Fawcett who sets out to discover the lost city located in the Amazon. What director James Gray does here is give an epic style that is typically seen in pre-70s cinema. Some type of action set piece would have been in most modern interpretations of this story. Instead the environment is used to show how each character is breaking down and when they get back to modern society they are never the same. At the beginning these adventurers are young, vibrant, and know their end goal. They assume to have the support of their country for the discovery, but as they discover the advancement of these seemingly “lesser” societies their support begins to feel threatened.
The Lost City of Z brings the initial entertainment with a star-studded cast and puts the audience into a trance with a harrowing adventure story that pulls on the heart strings at every stop, while bringing in a commentary on the arrogance of Western Civilization. Somehow their discovery threatened the great things that they have created. Gray brings in so many complicated aspects that could have slowed down the story, but somehow impeccably created a pace that mirrors each stage of their adventure. The Lost City of Z will bring back adventure into your life in a time that it is needed most.
The Handmaiden
Everyone now knows the name Bong Joon-ho because of the Best Picture-winning Parasite. All the accolades are deserved, but I want to highlight another brilliant Korean director Park Chan-wook. He is a director that definitely feels like a Korean director, but with a sinister tone that is unrivaled. His most famous movie, Oldboy, being the movie that most American audiences have heard of. Even though the Spike Lee-directed American version was absolutely dreadful. The Handmaiden eventually gets into a sinister tone like Oldboy, but the first part of this movie is definitely inspired by classic British period dramas, and because of that, it brought a fresh look to a director I thought I had pinned down.
The Handmaiden tells a story of a Korean woman who is hired by a Japanese heiress to be her handmaiden, but secretly she is trying to defraud her. The first part is from the perspective of the handmaiden and the second part is told from the heiress’ point of view. The plotline is set up within the first 15 minutes of the movie and that allows this 2hr 25min run time to feel much faster. The first part is easy to describe because it doesn’t get into the very twist-filled second part. The fraudulent handmaiden is named Sook-hee and as she takes care of the heiress, Lady Hideko, she begins to feel sympathy towards her. Lady Hideko has been groomed as “a lady” her whole life. She can’t go anywhere and all of her hobbies have been decided for her. While Sook-hee has had freedoms taken away from her, Lady Hideko may have freedom by status, but not in reality. That sympathy brings the two extremely close and that closeness turns into a romance quickly.
Park Chan-wook does a brilliant job using the romance to make the audience forget about the selfish motivations of most of the characters. Sook-hee and Lady Hideko’s affair is extremely believable, sexy (that scene with the bath and the tooth, my oh my), and at points disturbing. All of those adjectives can describe Park Chan-wook’s work and it goes in even harder in those ways in The Handmaiden. Once you begin to feel warm and fuzzy because of the seemingly delightful romance in the first part, Park pulls the rug out from under you with disturbing imagery in the second part. While not abandoning the sexiness and romance. Park shifts tones faster than many directors I know and he somehow does not lose the audience in the process (most of the time). I hope that Parasite was able to give you more confidence to dive into some Korean cinema because Park’s The Handmaiden is definitely worth your time.
Links to get you through quarantine
Legally Blonde 3 is officially a go! Reese will be back as Elle Woods with Mindy Kaling co-writing the script.
I miss HBO’s Succession just as much as you. Fortunately, they have released an official version of Kendall Roy’s *iconic* “L to the OG” rap.
The cast of Community (minus Chevy Chase) reunited for a charitable table read of an episode from Season 5. It was delightful.
If you’ve been a proponent of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, then you had a big week. It was recently announced that director Zack Snyder’s cut of DC’s Justice League will be arriving on HBO Max in 2021.