It’s been a busy month for the best streaming services: this time of year is when we start to stay in and stream more, and to cater for that there are tons of new things to watch on all the major streamers. Prime Video and Max have added loads of new stuff this month – but if like us you’re saving your pennies for Black Friday deals and the holidays, subscribing to all the streamers isn’t really an option. So, which service should go this month?
Amazon’s streaming service has been particularly busy on the movies front, with over 200 new titles coming to Prime Video this month. Max has been busy too, but Max’s November 2024 schedule is much more focused on TV shows: it’s got just over two dozen new movies to Prime Video’s 200. There are some crackers in there – Goodfellas, Elf, Unforgiven and three Jurassic Parks, for example – but Prime Video clearly has the movie magic this month.
Here are five Prime Video movies that more than justify this month’s subscription.
Carrie (streaming now)
Carrie is one of the best horror movies ever made. One of Stephen King’s best books, one of Brian DePalma’s best movies and one of Sissy Spacek’s best performances combined in the original 1976 movie, a stone cold horror classic about a tormented girl and her terrible revenge. The 2013 remake is available to stream on Prime Video too, but the original is much better: the sequel barely cracked 51% on the Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer, whereas the original has a well deserved 94%.
As The New Yorker’s legendary critic Pauline Kael put it, the film is “a terrifyingly lyrical thriller… Brian DePalma has mastered a teasing style – a perverse mixture of comedy and horror and tension, like that of Hitchcock or Polanski, but with a lulling sensuousness. He builds our apprehensions languorously, softening us for the kill.”
Good Will Hunting (streaming now)
Good Will Hunting stars Matt Damon as a young, headstrong kid and Robin Williams as the professor who takes him under his wing. So far so predictable. But the performances here are something special, with Williams in particular bringing a depth and a darkness that isn’t always there in his other twinkly-eyed roles (and if you want to see an even darker side of him, his performance alongside Ed Norton in Death to Smoochy, is incredible too. That’s a rental right now).
This film is beloved for good reasons: as RogerEbert.com put it, it’s “lyrically directed, efficiently written, side-splittingly funny, quietly devastating.” I love Vice’s review, which says that “It’s a movie that captures (in a way that perhaps an older screenwriter could not convey) the limitless possibilities of youth, a movie in which a character can tell another, without cynicism, ‘You could do anything you want. You are bound by nothing.'”
Jacob’s Ladder (streaming now)
I’ve seen many terrifying things on my TV. Slasher movies. Gratuitous gore. Paw Patrol. But nothing has given me nightmares like Jacob’s Ladder. Forget the remake: Prime Video has the 1990 original, where Tim Robbins delivers an incredibly unsettling performance as a veteran experiencing horrors at home. Amazon’s three-word summary – “cerebral / emotional / frightening” – doesn’t do it justice; this is a film that had me variously sobbing and hiding behind the sofa, and it’s no less powerful today.
Here’s the Seattle Times: “For hours and days after you’ve seen it, you’ll still be putting it together in your head. While all of it is gripping, it doesn’t come together until the final scene, which is jolting, transcendent, unexpected yet inevitable.” There’s a speech by one of the characters, Louis (Danny Aiello), that’ll stay in your head for years.
The LEGO Movie (streaming now)
As a parent, I’m used to enduring cynical cash-ins spun off from big-selling toy brands. But long before Barbie, The LEGO Movie showed just what you can do with a big heart as well as a big brand. In The LEGO Movie, everything really is awesome.
Writing on io9, Charlie Jane Anders explains: “The Lego Movie is both a perfect satire of noisy toy-driven summer action movies, and also an absolutely perfect summer movie in its own right.” Alternative Lens called it “an instant animated classic”. And as Katey Rich of Vanity Fair wrote in a pre-Barbie age, “It’s one of the few movies based on a toy with no explicit story behind it. And it is, so far, the only one that’s really good.”
Coraline (streaming from 24 November)
Writer Neil Gaiman has been credibly accused of abusive behavior, which has tarnished the work he’s been involved in – even though that work has typically been the product of talented teams, not just Gaiman. Henry Selick’s adaptation of his book is an absolutely beautiful and sometimes utterly terrifying classic, and it’s one of the greatest stop-motion movies of all time. If you didn’t catch the 15th anniversary re-release in theaters this year then this will be an absolute treat: it’s visually breathtaking, utterly thrilling and surprisingly scary for what’s officially a kids’ movie.
As Empire says, it’s a true horror movie: “Terrifying and beautiful, believable and fantastical, this is one of the best children’s films in years and Selick’s finest — better even than The Nightmare Before Christmas.”