The 11 best films on Prime Video in January 2022

American Psycho (Available 1/1)AVC: It does seem that we are living in a similar era to the ’80s in terms of sociopathic Wall Street greed.MH: At the time [it came out], people who didn’t like the film or were dismissive of it were saying, “Oh, well, we knew all that about the ’80s.” But to me, it was never just about the ’80s. It was about American vulture capitalism—and not just American, really. Bateman is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with [this system], all the worst and craziest forces—obsession with surfaces, obsession with status, obsession with acquisition. And then the frustration and violence—all of those things.So it might’ve seemed like that was a past era, but we’ve never really left that era. I think the only thing that happened is people got better at covering it up, paying lip service to feminism or whatever … Now, with people like Bateman, it’s more likely that you’ll get them paying lip service to ideas about gender equality or racial equality, but they won’t mean it. People cover things more now. It’s not as naked. The ’80s was a very naked time in terms of greed and exploitation. [Katie Rife]

Crazy Heart (Available 1/1)[Star Jeff] Bridges brings a battered, weary dignity and a suitably weathered voice to the juicy role of a survivor learning to value himself and his gifts after decades of neglect and abuse. Crazy Heart could use more rough edges, but while it’s a little too sentimental and tidy, Bridges’ humane, deeply empathetic lead performance makes it easy to root for one man’s redemption. [Nathan Rabin]

Eve’s Bayou (Available 1/1)Asked what she’d like to see more of as Black horror movies move into the mainstream, [Black horror expert Dr. Robin R. Means] Coleman points to writer-director Kasi Lemmons’ 1997 film Eve’s Bayou, about a 10-year-old girl (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) who seeks supernatural solace after discovering her father’s (Samuel L. Jackson) serial infidelity. The film is usually categorized as a drama, but arguably fits the definition of the horror genre, as Coleman explains:“That is a really interesting movie. I count that as horror. I want to see more of that, where the stories are really smart, are not oversimplified, and really come out of Black culture and Black experience. I love Get Out, but what Kasi Lemmons does here is really different. What Jordan Peele does is he transports us into whiteness, and that’s an important critique. But what Kasi Lemmons does, is she takes us deep, deep into the history and lived experience of Blackness. That’s the difference between Black horror and Blacks in horror.” [Katie Rife]

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Available 1/1)Wes Anderson doesn’t so much direct movies as build them from scratch, brick by colorful brick. He’s an architect of whimsy, his brain an overstuffed filing cabinet of elaborate blueprints. To watch one of his comedies—and they’re all comedies, from the boisterous Bottle Rocket to the magical Moonrise Kingdom—is to be ushered into a new world, custom designed from top to bottom. Anderson’s latest invention, The Grand Budapest Hotel, may be his most meticulously realized, beginning with the towering, fictional building for which it’s named. From the outside, this luxury establishment—situated in a scenic corner of an imaginary Eastern European country—resembles nothing so much as a giant, frosted birthday cake, delectable enough to devour. On the inside, it’s a museum of invented history, every room dressed with so much Andersonian stuff that it could inspire a whole series of spinoffs. Were the merit of the man’s films determined solely by the amount of bric-a-brac they contain, this new one would surely rank first in his illustrious filmography. [A.A. Dowd]

A Hero (Available 1/21)“No good deed goes unpunished,” read early reviews and festival program synopses of A Hero. That pithy idiom doesn’t begin to capture the twists and turns of motivation that drive Asghar Farhadi’s powerhouse drama about an imprisoned calligrapher (Amir Jadidi) who commits an act of apparent altruism that creeps into a web of deception entangling multiple parties. Of course, any attempt to summarize this Iranian filmmaker’s intricate plotting is bound to resort to simplifications. A Hero might be his most morally and dramatically complex since A Separation, with each new complication further muddying our sympathies and peeling back more layers of societal critique, until a gripping character study has become an indictment of a whole culture’s (maybe a whole world’s) value system. In its examination of the fickle nature of internet fame, A Hero can even be described as Asghar Farhadi’s take on the milkshake duck phenomenon—another simplification, yes, but one that reflects the firm finger the director has on the pulse of modern life. [A.A. Dowd]

The Master (Available 1/13)“Your memories are not invited.”Inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church Of Scientology—though by no means explicitly based on, or even about Hubbard—Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s stunning new film, The Master, may be a charlatan, but those five words have the power of real magic. To a World War II veteran trying to drown the nightmare of the Pacific Theater in a tubful of moonshine, the silky assurance of Hoffman’s voice brings instant relief, like a shot of morphine to the psyche. The spell wears off, but at that moment and others, it’s possible to imagine how the ideas and methods of a spiritual guru like Hubbard could find purchase in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Magicians rely on their audiences to complete their illusions—after all, a trick doesn’t work without the willful suspension of disbelief. [Scott Tobias]

Mission: Impossible IV—Ghost Protocol (Available 1/1)[Ethan] Hunt reverts to a Bond-ish bachelor in the superlative Ghost Protocol—easily the best of the series. What [director Brad] Bird understands about Mission: Impossible is that it functions most successfully as a perpetual-motion machine, delivering one pleasure high after another. Having apparently studied his predecessors’ work and learned from their mistakes, Bird loses the convoluted plotting, the melodramatic romance, the brooding—just about anything one might wedge between scenes of spectacular spy work … [M]ost of Ghost Protocol is nothing but joyously virtuosic spectacle, mounted by a director whose years in animation have apparently granted him a breadth of visual imagination. It’s next to, well, impossible to pick a best in show among the film’s numerous thrilling sequences. [A.A. Dowd]

Nightcrawler (Available 1/10)Nightcrawler is a portrait of an amoral opportunist who stumbles upon his horrible calling, and the film’s chief pleasure is watching [star Jake] Gyllenhaal portray what it might be like if Rushmore’s Max Fischer grew up to become Chuck Tatum, the unscrupulous reporter played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s scabrous Ace In The Hole. It’s adolescent solipsism gone grotesquely rancid … Nightcrawler is well worth seeing just for Gyllenhaal’s spectacularly creepy performance … It’s a mesmerizing turn from an actor who, while frequently quite good, has never really had a breakout role until now. Nightcrawler gives him a chance to make a lasting impression, and he takes full, fanatical advantage. [Mike D’Angelo]

The Prestige (Available 1/1)Christopher Nolan is a master of cinematic misdirection, and he uses it to best effect, appropriately, in his movie about dueling magicians, The Prestige. Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, adapted their screenplay from a novel by Christopher Priest, and while they made a number of significant changes (resulting in the movie having a radically different ending from the book), one of the narrative elements they chose to keep involves a secret that’s much easier to conceal on the page than it is on the screen. One could argue that it’s not strictly necessary to conceal it—and, indeed, The Prestige becomes a much richer experience on second viewing, when you know what’s going on and can start to wrap your head around the sacrifices made by both Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). [Mike D’Angelo]

Saving Private Ryan (Available 1/1)Saving Private Ryan remains an abrasive, overwhelming onslaught of a movie. The fact that so many people paid to see it is a wonder … As a cultural phenomenon, Saving Private Ryan is a curious beast. On the one hand, it’s a terrible ordeal to put yourself through, which weirdly added to its appeal. People went to see the movie as a way of honoring older generations and doing penance for not having to go through the same things. But at the same time, Private Ryan is also a fantastic piece of filmmaking, a grand showcase for stars both in front of and behind the camera. Against its own better judgement, it’s even entertaining. [Tom Breihan]