Looking for your next favorite movie? You’ll probably find it on Amazon Prime Video.
In addition to streaming several good or even great movies, Prime Video has a select number of movies that Watch Would Us would claim are actually no-notes, 10/10 perfection.
If you’re the kind of person who only watches masterpieces, look no further than these three films.
And our choices span multiple genres, including musical, comedy and horror.
Our first choice is La La Land, the gorgeous romance musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
‘La La Land’ (2016)
After first meeting during a less-than-ideal instance of road rage, struggling jazz pianist Sebastian (Gosling) and aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) find each other again months later, where Mia encourages Sebastian to keep pursuing his dreams. Drawn to one another by their infectious passion and common goal to do what they love, Mia and Seb eventually become romantic and move in together. But as their respective success builds, they find themselves faced with growing uncertainty about their relationship.
While La La Land quite nearly swept the Academy Awards back in 2017, it was rightfully halted by Moonlight during that infamous Best Picture snafu. Still, if Damien Chazelle‘s movie had taken home Oscar gold instead, we wouldn’t have been sad about it. Gosling and Stone continue to display the chemistry they first shared in 2011’s Crazy, Stupid, Love, and Chazelle’s clear affection for stage musicals and jazz comes through in this buoyant, beautiful modern musical dramedy.
‘Hundreds of Beavers’ (2024)
This indie comedy breakout from 2024 takes a decidedly unique approach in telling its bizarre story. Shot entirely in black-and-white and with no dialogue, the movie follows an applejack salesman named Jean Kayak (Ryland Tews), who finds himself at the mercy of, well, hundreds of beavers intent on destroying his life. Also, the beavers are all played by guys in giant beaver suits. After the beavers lay waste to Jean’s apple orchard, he struggles to survive in the Pacific Northwest by clawing his way to becoming a master fur trapper.
It is likely you will not have seen any movie like Hundreds of Beavers before in your life, especially since it’s an hour and 48 minutes of wordless video game logic and Looney Tunes-esque slapstick violence. This ambitious premise manages to stay sustained through sheer directorial verve, stylistic editing and a deluge of classic gags that never get old when they involve guys in giant beaver costumes. Singular, creative and utterly unforgettable, Hundreds of Beavers breathes new life into modern comedy.
‘The Descent’ (2005)
One year after the severe trauma caused by the deaths of his husband and daughter, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) reunites with her thrill-seeking friends for a spelunking trip in the North Carolina Appalachian mountains. But when the friends descend into the cave structure, they learn that they’ve been led into an unexplored route after they get trapped by a collapsing tunnel. With nowhere else to go but forward, the group delves deeper into the cave, where a bloodthirsty terror lurks silently within the depths of the Earth, waiting for them.
The Descent is a horror movie masterclass; a powder keg of claustrophobia and tension that will make you swear off any future spelunking ideas if they’d ever even crossed your mind. With the confined setting surrounded by utter darkness while horrifying predators stalk them unseen, The Descent crafts simple, unpretentious terror from making its audience feel just as at risk and exposed as its characters.
