The 10 best films on Prime Video in February 2022

Black Dynamite (Available on IMDb TV 2/1)Another blaxploitation parody/homage might seem a little redundant after I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and Undercover Brother, but the clever new spoof Black Dynamite justifies its existence with amazing cultural specificity and uncanny attention to detail. Working from a script he co-wrote with star Michael Jai White, director Scott Sanders has created a genre pastiche every bit as loving and meticulous as Far From Heaven or The Good German, though this time it’s in service to a film boom defined by wooden dialogue, terrible acting by models and ex-athletes, and filmmaking that can charitably be called charmingly homemade, or not so generously derided as incompetent.In a potentially star-making performance, accomplished martial artist White stars as the titular badass, an ex-CIA operative who now whiles away his days destroying sparring partners with his devastating moves, making sweet love to an overflowing harem, and generally kicking ass. But when mysterious forces kill his brother, White roars back into action, battling evildoers on an epic quest that takes him from the mean streets of L.A. to Kung Fu Island to expose a conspiracy whose tentacles reach the highest levels of American power. [Nathan Rabin]Read the rest of our review

Die Hard (Available 2/1)During the ’80s golden era of American action movies, there was a certain way these movies looked: burnished steel, gleaming sweat, bulging muscles that couldn’t possibly exist without chemical enhancement. The movies that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were making looked nothing like real life. They looked like a bodybuilder’s fever dream, the sort of thing he might imagine after doing a mountain of blow and watching nothing but early MTV for 48 hours. One fascinating thing about 1988’s , quite possibly the best action movie ever made, is that it didn’t look anything like that. [Tom Breihan]Read the rest of our appreciation

A Fistful Of Dollars (Available 2/1) Fistful is a remake of sorts, borrowing heavily from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. (Kurosawa is said to have sent Leone a note saying, “It is a very fine film, but it is my film.”) According to Leone biographer Christopher Frayling, as word began to leak out that Leone was at work on an uncredited remake, an edict went round the set to the effect that Kurosawa’s movie was not to be mentioned. But there is no disguising the film’s origins. Even if, as Fistful’s producers claimed in their unsuccessful defense against Kurosawa’s copyright-infringement suit, the inspiration for the later film’s plot was the 18th-century Italian play Servant Of Two Masters, the visual scheme of Leone’s movie leaves no doubt as to his familiarity with Kurosawa’s movie. [Sam Adams]Read the rest of our Better Late Than Never column about the Dollars trilogy

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Available 2/1)[F]or a double-barreled blast of what makes the spaghetti Western great … go with The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, in which the Good (Clint Eastwood), the Bad (Lee Van Cleef) and the Ugly (Eli Wallach, in a full-bodied performance as the slovenly Tuco) aid and double-cross each other as they look for lost gold against the backdrop of the American Civil War. It’s everything [director Sergio] Leone attempted with his previous films, but bigger and better, mining a rich vein of black comedy by contrasting its heroes’ search for treasure against the killing fields behind them. They’re selfish, callow men, sure, but against the absurdity of war, their ugly, self-serving behavior looks like a rational response, a sentiment shared by many spaghetti Westerns. [Keith Phipps]Read the rest of our Primer on spaghetti westerns

Hollywood Shuffle (Available 2/1)AVC: Hollywood Shuffle famously had a pretty non-existent budget. It was one of the first films to be paid for entirely via one man’s credit cards.JW: Yeah, what was horrible about it was that we didn’t get paid that much. [Laughs.] But at that time, we didn’t care. We were so excited about being in a movie.AVC: It ended up being one of the first Black independent films to really cross over to a more mainstream audience.JW: Yes, and Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up. I was excited about seeing that. I said, “Wow!” Things you never think about. You do your scene. You do your angles, you go home, you never think you actually touched somebody. But any time you’ve got a movie, they can look at it when you’re gone. So I was shocked that that movie became so big and had a cult following. Read the rest of our Random Roles interview with John Witherspoon

RoboCop (Available 2/1)While I admit Nicole Kidman’s is a close second, I’d be lying if her one-word expletive filled me with as much electricity as the ending of , which sees the title character (Peter Weller) reclaiming his humanity by triumphantly saying his name: “Murphy.” Not only is it the perfect period to a perfect film about one man’s journey from beat cop to robot cop, but it’s also perfectly rebutted by the film’s end credit title card. Is he Murphy or is he RoboCop? Also, one time I saw this at a midnight screening, and a drunk dude in the front row woke up just in time for The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy) to ask, “What’s your name?” Right before Murphy could answer, the guy blurted out, “RoboCop!” That’s what Vin Diesel was talking about when he said, “.” [Matt Schimkowitz]Read the rest of our Q&A on our favorite last lines in movies

The Rock (Available 2/1)The fate of San Francisco is at stake. There’s a missile filled with tiny glass orbs pointed at it, and all those glass orbs are full of glowing neon-green nerve gas. Nicolas Cage, playing a twitchy and sweaty FBI chemical-weapons expert, is working frantically to disarm it. Tony Todd, the guy who played Candyman in Candyman, is an elite rogue marine, stalking him. Todd puts down his gun and pulls out a huge Rambo-esque knife; he wants to have some fun with this one. Cage, practically vomiting word-salad: “Let’s talk music. Do you like the Elton John song ‘Rocket Man’?” Todd, snarling but acting as if this is a perfectly natural thing for Cage to ask in this situation: “I don’t like soft-ass shit.” Cage, stammering slightly: “Well, I only bring it up because it’s you.” He pauses dramatically. “You’re the rocket man.” Cage presses a button and the suddenly disarmed missile blasts through a window, taking Todd with it. Todd then plummets to the ground and impales himself on a fencepost. This is The Rock. This is Michael Bay’s idea of a serious movie. [Tom Breihan]Read the rest of our appreciation

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Available 2/1)In Walk Hard, [star John C.] Reilly has an almost impossibly demanding role. He ages decades. He runs the entire spectrum of emotions, from wrenching despair to ecstatic joy. He constantly does selfish, self-destructive things yet remains enormously likable. He’s called upon to sing in pretty much every genre while remaining in character. In the film’s universally strong songs he’s burdened with simultaneously selling the jokes—in “Let’s Duet” the humor comes as much from timing as the lyrics—and the songs themselves. He does an absolutely magnificent job …The film’s ultimate triumph is that it makes audiences genuinely care about a ridiculous rock and roll cartoon who’s Johnny Cash and Ray Charles and Bob Dylan and Glen Campbell and a giant, mentally challenged baby all wrapped up into a big ball of ridiculousness. Watching Walk Hard at the Brew & View, a Chicago venue that has a movie screen and a liquor license, I actually found myself getting a little choked up at the climactic performance of “Beautiful Ride.” The lyrics are pure nostalgic clichés. But if the glorious, absurd, unkillable history of rock and roll movies have taught us anything, it’s that that, in the right performer’s hands, a silly amalgamation of clichés can be downright transcendent. [Nathan Rabin]Read the rest of our appreciation

Wayne’s World (Available on IMDb TV 2/1)Wayne and Garth, the fictional hosts of Wayne’s World, both showcased and undermined the power of public access television. The rise of communal broadcast resources turned consumers into creators, and as the internet took hold, the emergence of YouTube continued in the grand tradition of democratizing the public’s viewing habits. Though it may have lampooned public access’ low-budget trappings, Wayne’s World was a jumping-off point for viewers to consider that there are viewing options beyond what big networks—and big budgets—have to offer. [David Anthony]You can watch our Popcorn Politics video about Wayne’s World