11 Best Movies on Amazon Prime India

Journeying from Africa to Europe without an official permit isn’t just risky, it’s dehumanizing, if not lethal. And though we’ve heard about the many unfortunate ways migrants have suffered, never has the crisis been as intimately and intensely portrayed as in Io Captain. Here, we get to see who Seydou and Moussa were before the voyage out of Senegal, before they were reduced to anonymous bodies bound to torture, slavery, and racism. Director Matteo Garrone takes care not to exploit their lives and instead highlights the joy and hope they left behind and continue to find in small but meaningful portions. Garrone achieves a delicate balance between stark, depressing reality and heartwarming hope, and it’s beautiful to watch. All this in addition to stunning cinematography and unbelievable performances by the two young leads makes Io Capitano easily one of the best films in recent years.

The manic pixie dream girl unexpectedly entering a young man’s life is the subject of plenty of romance films, to the point that this plot has become somewhat overdone, stereotypical, and overly unrealistic. However, there are moments in cinema when this archetype is portrayed well– Jab We Met is one of them. It’s joyful without being unrealistic, it’s realistic without being too jaded, and as two lost souls share the same train, writer-director Imtiaz Ali creates a feeling of freedom every time then-lovers Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor save each other from the prisons of their different, day-to-day lives. And it all comes with the song numbers as fun as the film’s leading lady.

Celebrities are often described as being “vulnerable” in documentaries, but it’s never been more fitting in this case. Here, Celine Dion opens up about her near-paralyzing illness, which affects her vocal cords and muscles and consequently prohibits her from performing on stage. We see clips of the star having spasms and breakdowns as she tries and fails and tries again to get her voice back. More than just a simple biography of what Dion has achieved, which we already know is massive, the film is largely about the doubt that creeps in and threatens to rock your sense of self, and the strength of the human spirit to persevere despite all that. The film is bracingly, unflinchingly raw, but it’s never exploitative, thanks partly to director Irene Taylor’s gentle direction and to Dion’s unwavering resilience.

For the longest time, land was where people formed strength in community, where people were born, lived, died, and was buried in, but it was also how empires grew in power, often at the expense of the people that came before. Exhuma is centered in a haunted burial site of a Korean family that migrated due to the war, but as the shamans try to unearth the casket, they also uncover the psychospiritual ways in which Japan colonized Korea– haunting the land with their own ghosts, dividing its people through belief, and leaving deep scars that hasn’t yet been fully recovered from. While the double exorcism situation can be a tad confusing, Exhuma nonetheless elevates this folk horror drama with their respect and attention to detail for Korean shamanism.

Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI playbox of time and space and destiny, transforming the simple examination of human life into a sci-fi epic, a moving period romance, and an existential mystery all at once. It can occasionally feel a bit jumbled up at times, with the way Bonello jumps across lives, but Léa Seydoux and George MacKay hold everything together with their performance, making La Bête deeply striking, if a bit derivative.

You know how, instead of condemning sexual violence, some people patronizingly advise women to go home early, move in groups for safety, and make sure to lock the door for safety? Stree takes this usual advice and uses it instead as fictional ritual practices for the men in the small town of Chanderi to escape from the titular spirit. It’s a rather cheeky inversion, one that resolves in a familiar, though understandable, way. While Stree takes a more comedic, jumpscare approach, it does rightly point out that if half of the population acted like this spirit, then the fear the other half feels would undeniably be reasonable.

The first My Spy film was a fun caper that let kids imagine what life could be like if they trained and fought alongside the country’s top agents. This second film, set in Italy and following a now-tween Sophie, tries to be more grown up than the last but instead falls flat in every aspect. The script is bland, the plot is cliched, and even the performances aren’t as exciting this time around. To be sure, there are still laughs to be had, especially when Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) is onscreen, but for the most part, the stacked cast’s talents are wasted. Bautista and Ken Jeong, who plays the boss, are perennial worrywarts, while Anna Faris (in a secret role) is stuck playing a caricature. What a waste of comedic potential! If you’re planning to see this with your kids, it’s harmless good fun, but don’t expect to pick up anything new or worthwhile watching this.

There’s something genuine at the core of Jackpot that unfortunately gets lost in the movie’s violence, spectacle, and “humor,” which is that life has become so unlivable in America that resorting to a Purge-like scenario now seems more likely than receiving actual care and rights from the state. You can see it whenever Katie (Akwafina), a struggling actor, is given room to express her frustration and desperation. These moments, small as they are, feel real and relatable, and they recall Akwafina’s superior performance in the 2018 drama The Farewell, which I believe she should do more of, instead of films like this. And by films like this, I mean Jackpot, which feels like a streaming filler meant to be consumed and forgotten the moment it ends (assuming you don’t pause and look for something else midway). If you want mindless action, then this film could be for you. John Cena is reliably cool, and Machine Gun Kelly makes a surprisingly hilarious cameo. But if you’re looking for something meaningful, you’ll have to buy a ticket elsewhere.

Murder mysteries don’t have to be full of twists to be worthwhile, but if you’re going the predictable route, you might as well make it an exciting one. Killer Heat, despite its name, feels cold and dragging. Gordon-Levitt’s Bali shoots for mysterious and debonair, like the detectives of noir past, but instead, he feels more like a parody of those characters. He never seems to ground Bali into something real, no matter how many flashbacks we get of his tragic family life. Madden similarly feels more like a trope than anything, and it’s beyond frustrating to watch him waste the opportunity to play identical twins. Where other actors seemed to have a blast at this (see: Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers or even Lindsay Lohan in Parent Trap), Madden is just plain indistinguishable. Woodley is the film’s sole believable character, but her affecting performance isn’t enough to save the film.

Like posters and stills of Space Cadet suggest, the film is cute and, occasionally, fun. Emma Roberts is bubbly and funny enough to carry the feature-length movie on her back, and the visuals, which are shock of Lisa Frank glittery pink, elevate an otherwise bland landscape. But the film doesn’t reach far enough into the sky to be the truly weird and out-there film it could be. Instead, it relies on implausible plot lines and go-girl messages to become yet another flatly inspiring film about how anyone can be anything if they just believed in themselves. Space Cadet proves that Legally Blone meets Apollo 11 has potential, but it’s not the film meant to land the idea home.