The 12 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now (July 2020)

In 2012, Joss Whedon took various superhero ingredients and combined them into an ensemble action movie that would change the way Hollywood thinks about blockbusters for a generation. Specifically, Tinseltown is now reluctant to make a superhero movie unless it's now part of some sort of connected universe.

Take Captain America (Chris Evans), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and a half-dozen other costumed crusaders, toss in a large heap of quips and witty banter, and end the whole thing with a set-piece battle against a generic CGI alien army—it works so well in The Avengers that it's been the template for virtually every superhero movie ever since. Don't settle for imitation: Re-watch and re-enjoy the original.

Kumail Nanjiani (Kumail Nanjiani) meets and falls in love with Emily Gardner (Zoe Kazan), but his parents—who have set up an arranged marriage for him—throw a monkey wrench in the relationship and she breaks up with him. It sounds like the start of a generic clash-of-cultures romantic comedy, except that this is all real. Kumail Nanjiani co-wrote the screenplay for The Big Sick with his real-life wife Emily Gordon based on the events of their highly unusual courtship.

The heart of the film is about what happens when Emily—no longer dating Kumail—falls deathly ill and her parents (and Kumail) rush to the hospital to manage the illness and care for her. Like any rom-com, lessons are learned, hearts are mended, and poignant moments are shared. But what makes this movie so much more meaningful—and more likely to stay with you long after it's over—is that it really happened.

When people talk about movies that debuted to yawns but went on to become classics, they're probably talking about The Boondock Saints, a movie that was apparently born under a broken mirror. The story of Connor MacManus (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy MacManus (Norman Reedus) is a tale of two brothers who accidentally kill a pair of Russian Mafia thugs and then decide to become vigilantes. The movie lost its original studio, then had the misfortune of being a violent movie released in the wake of the Columbine tragedy. To add insult to injust, it was screened in just five movie theaters.

But you can't keep greatness down. The movie, which tracks the over-the-top antics of the brothers as they try to clean up Boston, has become a cult classic, has spawned multiple sequels, and is a must-watch crime drama.

People seem to love it when chefs 'deconstruct' popular dishes, such as when they give you a sliver of bread, puddle of sauce, and a slice of cheese and call it pizza. Joss Whedon has done something similar with The Cabin in the Woods, deconstructing the genre in an incredibly fun and exciting way.

A group of typical teens including Dana (Kristen Connolly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchison) head off to a remote cabin for the weekend and end up unleashing an army of the undead. But the way they do it—and the unexpected twists and turns the plot takes along the way—is like taking a college course in horror film tropes. And the film's final act sets a new standard for upending your expectations. Moreover, this is an excellent movie not just for die-hard horror fans who want to see the genre turned inside-out; the comedy makes it thoroughly entertaining for horror newbies, too.

For the uninitiated, James Baldwin was a novelist, playwright, and important voice for the African American experience. When he died in 1987, he left behind a barely-started novel that was intended to be a personal account of the lives of three of his closest friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. In this film, director Raoul Peck set out to tell the story Baldwin never had a chance to complete.

Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and featuring archival footage of historical figures like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., I Am Not Your Negro features much of Baldwin's own writings and has won a veritable avalanche of major awards from around the world. Given the current political climate in the United States, this important film should be deemed essential viewing.

Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White are three of the most influential living guitarists in rock history. It Might Be Loud spends time with each of these three musicians so that viewers can learn how they got their start in music and how they developed each of their own signature styles. There's perhaps no better way to start a documentary like this than with watching Jack White build a guitar—from scratch—and then start playing it.

This is a movie for lovers of music, and lovers of classic rock in particular. Jimmy Page is an elder statesman of the 70s sound, while The Edge redefined what rock could sound like with his staccato strumming style in the aftermath of punk and New Wave. And Jack White, of course, has reinvented blues for a new century. This movie captures all of that. And watch out: it might get loud.

Who doesn't love a good heist movie? Lucky Logan is a somewhat off-kilter heist flick, though—it's sort of a trailer park version of Ocean's 11 (which is an even more apt description when you note it's directed by none other than Steven Soderbergh).

What you get in this delicious little heist is a plot to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Memorial Day weekend Coca-Cola 600. You get all the usual characters, like the mastermind Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), explosives expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), and computer experts Sam and Fish (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid) as well as a slew of others in this ensemble cast. The performances are amazing; seeing (and hearing) Daniel Craig lean into his inner oddball hick. Nothing seems to ever go as planned in this clever take on the crime genre, and the well-engineered story keeps paying off right to the very end.

Who would have expected, in 1996, that the cinematic version of the campy old Mission: Impossible TV series would go on to spawn one of the most popular franchises in film history? And that, with a few exceptions, each M:I movie gets better than the one before?

In the latest chapter, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team need to recover the plutonium cores to a trio of nuclear weapons. But like in most M:I movies, the particular MacGuffin they're after is almost irrelevant. Fallout takes the crew to Paris, London, and India, includes an epic car chase, some skydiving, and an insane helicopter that you have to see to believe—all the more amazing because that's Tom Cruise really flying that helicopter.

Between A Quiet Place and Bird Box, horror movies in 2018 seemed focused on our five senses—but A Quiet Place is unquestionably the best film in this unusual genre. Civilization has collapsed because aliens with an acute sense of hearing have invaded our planet, and Lee Abbott (John Krasinski, who also directs), his wife Evelyn (real-life wife Emily Blunt) and children try to stay alive, mainly by walking on an implausibly large amount of sand.

This movie is gripping and powerful, largely because Krasinski knows that what you don't see is often scarier than what you do. It's Krasinski's major studio directorial debut and was one of the best popcorn flicks of 2018.

Which would you rather watch—a bare-knuckles car chase that culminates in defusing a nuclear bomb, saving New York City, or US Senate staffers doggedly researching fraud and abuse through painstaking legal channels? If you pick that second one, The Report is for you. At the request of Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) is a staffer tasked with investigating very real-world CIA interrogations in the wake of 9/11.

Hollywood doesn't make a lot of movies like this, and the reasons why are right there on the screen: it's slow-moving at times, steeped in real-world political esoterica, and lacks the punch of a fictional (and more satisfying) ending. All that might sound like criticism, but it's said with love. If you're a political junkie, this is a must-watch film.

If you grew up singing along to Bennie and the Jets, Crocodile Rock, or, dare I say it, Rocketman, then you will not want to miss Taron Egerton slip seamlessly into the role of world's best-known rock and roll piano player.

Yes, it's a bit of a paint-by-the-numbers biopic, but unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie Mercury's recent biography, this look at the life of Elton John has the advantage of being more or less accurate. Along the way, you get all the great music, the ups and downs of his life and musical career, and get to meet the most important people in his life, including manager John Reid (Richard Madden) and partner Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell). And for fans, that's more than enough.