The 50 best movies on Prime Video Australia

There was always going to be a film version of George Orwell’s enduringly influential novel of totalitarian dominance in the year of its iconic title. Thankfully filmmaker Michael Radford was able to capture its dystopian extremes with John Hurt as the bureaucrat who dares to grasp at freedom and Richard Burton, magnificent in his final screen role, as the ruling system’s unyielding tormentor.

20th Century Women (2016)

A ramshackle residence in 1979 Santa Barbara inhabited by a single mother (Annette Bening), her teenage son (Lucas Jade Zumann), and various tenants comes alive—with conversation, dance, ideas, hopes—in Mike Mills’ coming-of-age drama. These lives unfold with tender insight and a sense of personal histories being discovered in the moment.

The Babadook (2014)

One of the great Australian debuts of all time, and an equally great horror film from Jennifer Kent, where the monster is not only under the bed but also inside Essie Davis’ besieged parent. Whether it’s fear of love or love of fear, this claustrophobic thriller lodges itself where it can’t be ignored.

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Italian neorealism was born out of the rubble of World War II, as young filmmakers found a stripped-down means of expression on the barely liberated streets of Rome. Shot on location with actors and non-actors, Vittorio De Sica’s classic is a story of poverty’s grasp, the paternal bond’s painful parameters, and lost illusions.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Sacha Baron Cohen’s finest creation, bumbling Kazakhstani journalist Borat Sagdiyev, returns to the scene of the crime as he tours Donald Trump’s America for a candid camera documentary that reveals xenophobia and the paranoid conspiracy mindset. There’s a shocking moment with a notable Trump associate as Borat continues to be both a hilarious figure and a deeply incisive mirror.

Breaker Morant (1980)

Australia’s belief in defining itself through the deeds of soldiers is torn apart in Bruce Beresford’s ground-breaking examination of war crimes, scapegoats, and imperial hypocrisy as a trio of Australian combatants fighting in the Boer War—memorably played by Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Lewis Fitz-Gerald—face a court-martial.

Bridesmaids (2011)

Raunchy without being provocative, yet never afraid to examine the dynamics between female friends, Paul Feig’s breakout hit turned the cast into comic movie stars. Co-writer Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Rose Byrne all shine, as preparations for a wedding collapse from one mishap to the next.

Casino (1995)

Based on the real-life story of two Mafia associates—Robert De Niro’s shrewd numbers cruncher and Joe Pesci’s brutal gangster—given the run of Las Vegas in the 1970s, Martin Scorsese’s organised crime epic reveals the yin and yang of his masculine longing. There are numerous sequences that pulse with the purest of filmmaking pleasure, but the transformative note is played by Sharon Stone as a Vegas insider who moves between the two men, even though she knows the fix is always in.

Contagion (2011)

Directed and shot with irresistible clarity and momentum by Steven Soderbergh, this apocalyptic procedural follows a deadly new virus arriving in America (via
Gwyneth Paltrow’s patient zero) and collapsing society. Marr Damon’s dad hunkers down, Kate Winslet’s public health worker fights back, and Jude Law’s prescient blogger shills conspiracy theories. Deeply authentic; deeply scary.

Crash (1996)

David Cronenberg proved the ideal interpreter of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel about car crash fetishists who become sexual aroused by collisions, engineering a romance of twisted metal and bleeding bodies. James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Elias Koteas give coldly compelling performances, allowing for both desire and the darkest of humour. Hugely controversial upon release, but now a cult classic.

The Dry (2021)

Robert Connolly’s outback noir thriller about culpability and regret stars Eric Bana as a financial crimes police officer who returns to the hometown he fled as a teenager to investigate a horrific crime attributed to his best friend. Less interested in plot twists than allowing the drought-stricken landscape and its frayed inhabitants to take hold, it’s a masterful Australian genre piece.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

If you’ve ever had a bad thought about Tom Cruise, this alien invasion blockbuster is the film for you: his character, callow soldier William Cage, endlessly dies in a daily loop tied to an alien attack in Europe. Respawning like a video game character, William trains with a hardnosed warrior, Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski, as the battlefield carnage becomes the blackest of jokes and dying becomes the only way to stay alive.

The Endless (2018)

A film in which the possibility that everyone gets out alive is as horrifying as no-one, this immersive and empathetic slow burn thriller took the filmmaking team—and lead actors—Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead into the mainstream. The pair play brothers who revisit the rural home of the cult they fled a decade prior, discovering unknown forces that could be economic inequality or Lovecraftian monsters—or a mix of the two.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

David Fincher amped up the Stieg Larsson novel and its original made for television Swedish adaptation, with the sleek agility of his English language remake starring Daniel Craig as a fallen reporter and Rooney Mara as the punk hacker trying to solve a teenage girl’s disappearance 40 years prior. In both archives and encounters, the pair finds that history’s crimes were always there, luxuriating in their power.

Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott’s revival of the swords-and-sandals genre is a canny blockbuster, focusing on the noble Roman general Maximus (Russell Crowe), who’s supreme in battle but betrayed by politics. Cast into slavery by a jealous new emperor (Joaquin Phoenix), he uses success as a gladiator to steer him toward revenge and a satisfactory death. It’s a doomed scheme, but the digital spectacle helps render it heroic.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western—with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as the titular gunslingers—is the epitome of grisly frontier elegance. The final instalment of the Italian filmmaker’s Dollars trilogy is a study in widescreen panoramas and sweat-strewn close-ups. It’s a masterclass in direction.

The Green Knight (2021)

A heady mix of Arthurian legend, folk horror, mediaeval comedy and revisionist fantasy, David Lowery’s incantatory epic stars Dev Patel as Gawain, a knight forced into a fantastical quest to determine his identity and survive. Unexpectedly challenged at each turn, his very existence is a mystery.

Heathers (1988)

“Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count.” The seminal satire of the teen movie genre, Michael Lehmann’s scorching black comed—determined to bite every hand that would even think of feeding it—offers a bleakly hilarious high school critique with note-perfect performances from Winona Ryder and Christian Slater.

High Tide (1987)

Gillian Armstrong reunited with her My Brilliant Career star, Judy Davis, for this bittersweet and beautifully observed drama about three generations of women—Claudia Karvan’s teenage daughter, Davis as a long-absent mother, and Jan Adele’s wary grandmother—reunited in a wintry New South Wales coast town. It’s an essential Australian movie.

His Girl Friday (1940)

Is there a better screwball comedy from Hollywood’s Golden Age? Absolutely not. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are aces together as a pair of divorced newspaper reporters whose farewell gets side-tracked by a breaking story. With wisecracks and witticisms delivered at madcap speed, this is a timeless Howard Hawks classic.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarantino, as is his wont, turns World War II’s textbook facts and the role of cinema into an alternate history spaghetti western where in 1944 a unit comprised of Jewish-American soldiers commanded by Aldo “Apache” Raine (Brad Pitt), campaign behind German lines in occupied France while Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy come to Paris for a film premiere. Christoph Waltz got an international career out of his mercurial Nazi sadist, Colonel Hans Landa.

It Comes at Night (2017)

Set in the end days of an apocalyptic pandemic that’s left a palpable sense of fear among the few survivors, this psychological horror film from Trey Edward Shults about one sequestered family taking in another is menacingly suggestive.

John Wick (2014)

By my count Keanu Reeves’ retired assassin kills 76 people as an act of revenge, after his beloved pooch is murdered by a crime lord’s son. But what’s notable is how stuntmen turned directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch eschew jump cuts for lengthy tracking shots. The head shots and vicious stabbings are as choreographed as a Busby Berkeley routine.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

In Curtis Hanson’s vivid neo-noir portrait of corruption’s hungry breadth, 1950s Los Angeles is a spoiled paradise—all that bleaching sun only makes for corrosively deep shadows. Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce are very different LAPD officers put on a collision course by a brutal multiple murder, with evocative supporting performances from Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, and Danny DeVito.

The Lego Movie (2014)

Where to watch

This madcap brick symphony is a riot of visual and verbal gags, in which blocky everyman Emmett Brickowski (Chris Pratt at his most goofily appealing) learns that creativity is right and corporate tie-ins can be repurposed for hilarious laughs. Blockbuster conventions are busted, while the likes of Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, and Liam Neeson add exemplary voice work.

Local Hero (1983)

Bill Forsyth’s idiosyncratic 1983 comedy is the source code for successive generations of quirky independent features about small towns and their eccentric populace charming outsiders. But it remains the first and the best, with Peter Riegert as the American envoy of Burt Lancaster’s Texan oil magnate, who is sent to purchase a tiny Scottish town and quickly becomes unstuck.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

The most autobiographical of Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled crime novels was moved to 1970s LA, where director Robert Altman cast a hard eye on the corrupt soul of California through a sardonic but unwavering private eye (Elliott Gould). It’s a film of competing narratives and moral judgments that’s become widely influential; both The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice pay tribute to it.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Peter Jackson and a small army of New Zealand collaborators set the modern ideal of the fantasy epic in stone with this epic middle instalment of the Tolkien trilogy where good and evil clash on both vast and intimate levels and the technical skill—as much physical as digital—brings a world into being.

Lost in Translation (2003)

An ode to ennui and wearing Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola’s now totemic second feature has some brief cultural cliches, but they’re easily overcome by the platonic bond created by Bill Murray’s ageing movie star and Scarlett Johansson’s becalmed young wife. The duo pal around Tokyo’s neon nights and ponder their lives, sharing a bittersweet cinematic moment as the future looms.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

The American neo-noir thriller gets unbound desire and fantastical flourishes in this bracing update from English filmmaker Rose Glass, which tells a deception-laden story about the lesbian relationship between a gym clerk (Kristen Stewart) and an itinerant body builder (Katy O’Brian). Roid rage takes on a whole new meaning.

Malcolm (1986)

The team of director Nadia Tass and screenwriter David Parker nailed a mix of gentle whimsy, unlikely friendship, and madcap set-pieces for this eccentric heist comedy about a shy Melbourne engineering genius (Colin Friels)—he builds his own tram!—who takes on an ex-con (John Hargreaves) as a boarder and finds himself in a criminal enterprise. An absolute pleasure.

Memento (2000)

In Christopher Nolan’s noirish second feature, Guy Pearce plays a man whose memory has stopped working, so he tattoos facts on his body. The picture is run in reverse, each scene followed by the one that chronologically preceded it, giving you the same information as Leonard has—i.e. none—and a sense of how unsettling that is. It’s thrilling puzzle; every piece hurts.

Monster (2003)

Patty Jenkins’ dramatization of the adult life and crimes of Eileen Wuornos, the roadside prostitute who was convicted of killing six clients and subsequently executed in Florida in 2002, has an enthralling double act in Charlize Theron as Wuornos and Christina Ricci as her needy girlfriend Selby. Optimism and bitter manipulation unexpectedly collide, cutting deeper than any criminal transgressions.

Nickel Boys (2024)

Using point-of-view shots to show us not only what a character sees, but how they feel and remember, RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel about a Black teenager sent to a detention centre in segregated 1960s Florida is an often staggering exploration of history and hope. The movie is vivid, beautiful, and heartbreaking.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

At 219 minutes, this is the cut of Sergio Leone’s gangster epic that the revered Italian filmmaker originally submitted. Robert De Niro and James Woods play Prohibition mobsters, matched through illuminating flashbacks as penniless childhood from New York’s slums, in a richly textured vision of American greed and violence.

The Order (2024)

Australian director Justin Kurzel shows a disciplined mastery of genre tropes with this lean, satisfying crime thriller, based on historic events from 1980s America. Jude Law, in full character actor mode, plays the weary FBI agent who discovers a white nationalist clique, inspired by Nicholas Hoult’s menacingly charismatic leader.

Palm Springs (2020)

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are aces together in this barbed time loop romantic comedy, where a wedding party in the titular American resort town soon turns into one guest trapping another in his endlessly repeated life. This is Groundhog Day, but it’s a first-rate riff that makes much of the leads and hits on unexpected twists and realisations. It manages to be both funnier and sadder than you expect.

The Player (1992)

After a decade outside Hollywood, director Robert Altman made the perfect return with this tart satire about a Hollywood studio executive (Tim Robbins) being blackmailed by a scorned writer. It’s a black comedy awash in celebrity cameos and bit parts, as Altman and writer Michael Tolkin send up storytelling tropes and the heroic leading man.

Public Enemies (2009)

Director Michael Mann and masterful Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti used high definition digital cameras to remove the past from this 1930s gangster drama. There’s a narrative immediacy and dynamic verisimilitude to the historic exploits of John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), a bank robber and calculate charmer pursued by Christian Bale’s Melvin Purvis, an agent with the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

In Woody Allen’s terrific Depression era comedy, a struggling waitress named Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes her dismal life by basking in the glow of Hollywood movies. Then a character from her favourite screwball comedy (Jeff Daniels) walks off the screen and professes his love for her. Chaos erupts, in multiple realities, in a sweetly delirious comedy with just a touch of existential fear.

The Quiet Earth (1986)

The wonderful New Zealand actor Bruno Lawrence, best known to Australian audiences as the conniving producer in television’s Frontline, gives a magnetic performance as a scientist who wakes one day to discover that his project has erased the world of other people. Freedom and fear spin out of control, with director Geoff Murphy making the possibilities feel claustrophobic.

Ronin (1998)

More than three and a half decades after directing The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer put everything he had into this European-based action-thriller about a group of former Cold War operatives (including Robert De Niro and Stellan Skarsgard) hired to retrieve a valuable briefcase. The quest is a classic MacGuffin, the film’s essence found in the dialogue’s hardboiled disdain and thrillingly expert car chases.

Rush (2013)

Ron Howard’s biographical sports drama has a compelling pair of protagonists in the form of 1970s Formula One rivals James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Nikki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). The reckless, charismatic Englishman and the precise, reserved Austrian forge a bond, even as their races cross the line between exquisite control and chaotic destruction.

Shame (1988)

An underseen Australian classic, this modern-day western is a palpably direct B-movie that offered a prescient depiction of how misogyny can metastasise into sexual violence. Deborra-Lee Furness is the motorcycle-riding barrister who stops in a small town for repairs and discovers that the community condones by silence a group of young men gang-raping local girls. Her defiance is both inspirational and costly.

Shattered Glass (2003)

Hayden Christensen’s best screen performance is clearly as Stephen Glass, a serial fabricator in this knowing biographical drama from writer/director Billy Ray. There’s a sad, biting honesty to Glass’ trajectory, studded with innumerable telling details and accomplished supporting performances—particularly Peter Sarsgaard as a colleague turned editor who drives the painful reckoning.

Shoplifters (2018)

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sublime family drama, which rightfully collected the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, unfolds on the tucked away margins of Japanese society, where a multi-generational clan lives in a tiny apartment. Observed with tender, telling detail, their lives spill out of the overcrowded home in much the same way that a need for caring and connection spills out from their hearts.

Sicario (2015)

A horror film told through female endurance, Denis Villeneuve’s crime thriller stars Emily Blunt as an FBI door-kicker seconded to a drug cartel task force, menacingly staffed by Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, whose purpose is at odds with her belief and, ultimately, her safety.

A Simple Favour (2018)

Paul Feig updates the camaraderie and competition of female friendship for the influencer age with this wildly knowing and genre-defying melodrama about school mums—Anna Kendrick’s over-achiever and Blake Lively’s flamboyant publicist—whose friendship becomes a mystery when one of them disappears.

Snowpiercer (2014)

The cruel dictates of inequality are magnified to rousing heights in a dystopian allegory about mankind’s return to feudal ranking aboard a train circling an otherwise frozen globe. Chris Evans leads the oppressed masses through the carriages, heading towards the 1% and unpalatable truths about power, propelled by the coiled energy of director Bong Joon-ho.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

Long before the middle-aged deduction of CSI: Crime Investigation, a young William Petersen was a bravura force of nature. His most committed—as in, unhinged—performance was in William Friedkin’s action thriller, playing a Secret Service agent who breaks the law to catch Willem Dafoe’s kinky counterfeiter. Does Friedkin top his The French Connection car chase? He gives it a serious try.

A Vigilante (2018)

Just as she was transitioning from Hollywood leading lady to filmmaker, Olivia Wilde starred in this wrenching independent drama about a vengeance-seeking woman who also helps abused women and children escape from domestic violence. The first half, especially, is sparsely compelling, eschewing exposition for harsh illustration.

Walkabout (1971)

Nicolas Roeg, a British filmmaker of peculiar originality, set the scene for the Australian New Wave with this revered classic about a pair of white children stranded in the outback. Their journey with the Aboriginal teenager who aids them (David Gulpilil, in a remarkable debut performance) is defined by striking imagery, cultural exclusion, and nature’s primal grasp. A timeless survival film.

Titles are added and removed from his page to reflect changes to the Prime Video catalogue. Reviews no longer available on this page can be found here.

Craig Mathieson

Craig Mathieson is a film and television critic with Fairfax Media, contributor to The Monthly, and creator of the streaming review site BINGE-R.

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