The best new movies on Prime Video to watch this weekend

If you’re burning through your 2022 movie watchlist, you’re not alone. We’ve watched some killer sci-fi. We’re making our way through TV from the ’90s.

Luckily for truly everyone involved, streaming sites like Prime video TV and Netflix are constantly in flux. That can be sad when your favorite show or movie leaves a known platform, but feels like a personal victory every time you see something new you were dying to watch. We looked at one of streaming’s overlooked movie libraries on Amazon Prime Video to find the best movies added in the last six months. It’s an exciting mix of new releases, old favorites, and Amazon originals, and we can’t wait to devour it.

Here are our favorite top-reviewed new movies that were recently added to Prime Video streaming:

1. Tombstone

In the realm of modern Westerns, Tombstone has few rivals. The “based on true events” story of Wyatt Earp and his brothers taking down the last of the notorious Cowboy gang is a wild ride at every turn. And we haven’t even mentioned the cast yet.

Kurt Russell stars as history’s most famous Earp, with Bill Paxton and known “B-I-T-C-H” Sam Elliott playing brothers Morgan and Virgil. Riding at their side is another historic Wild West figure, John Henry “Doc” Holliday, who is played by Val Kilmer in one of his most beloved and memorable roles. They face off against a gang of Cowboys led by William “Curly Bill” Brocious, an infamous real-life outlaw played here by Deadwood fave Powers Boothe.

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2. Good Morning, Vietnam

Robin Williams had a tremendous talent for comedy, but his best work as an actor was often more complex and nuanced. Good Morning, Vietnam is when the wider world of moviegoers first started to see that. Director Barry Levinson’s war film is a little bit comedy, a little bit drama, and a whole lot of tremendous acting from the late star and co-star Forest Whitaker.

Williams stars as Adrian Cronauer, a radio DJ who heads to Saigon in 1965 for a job with the Armed Forces Radio Service during the Vietnam War. Cronauer’s big personality and irreverent sense of humor are a hit on air, but censorship struggles at work and a growing connection with the local population reveal to him some darker truths about the war and the U.S. role in it.

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3. A League of Their Own

For sports comedies, it doesn’t get much better than A League of Their Own. This classic tells a fictionalized account of the beginning of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which ran in the ‘40s and ‘50s as women were replacing men in many occupations during and after World War II. A League of Their Own follows the beginnings of the league and the newly forming team, the Rockford Peaches, on their journey to the league’s first World Series.

The movie is both heartwarming and hilarious with great performances by legendary actors including Geena Davis, Madonna, and Tom Hanks.

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4. Black Swan

Thirsty for a sensational and sexy psychological thriller? Then you’ll want to leap into the thrall and frenzy of Darren Aronofsky’s universally heralded Black Swan. In an Academy Award-winning role, Natalie Portman stars as a ballerina poised to snatch the coveted lead in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. However, the New York Ballet scene is one of brutality and ferocious competition.

A bitter has-been (Winona Ryder), a relentless artistic director (Vincent Cassel), a sensual rival (Mila Kunis), and a harping stage mom (Barbara Hershey) push her body and mind to their breaking points. Bones crack, synapses snap, and…are those feathers sprouting out from her back? Swirled with surreal sequences, this fascinating film ushers audiences into its heroine’s splintering psyche, which bleeds with lust, ambition, and nightmares. The result is beguiling, haunting, and uniquely exciting. Dare you join the dance?(opens in a new tab)

5. White Men Can’t Jump

In 1992, Hollywood served audiences a sports team-up for the ages: Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. In White Men Can’t Jump, the two star as street ballers who are friends and frenemies in equal measures. Harrelson is Billy Hoyle, a former college phenom with big dreams who survives day to day by hustling his way through games where people assume they’ll get an easy win from the tall and lanky white guy. But Sydney Deane (Snipes), one of the best players around, sees Billy for who he is.

A contentious friendship forms between the two naturally competitive men as they agree to join forces and stage a bigger con than Hoyle could manage solo. But Billy’s proclivity for self-sabotage is an albatross he carries everywhere, from owing money to the mob to constantly letting down his brilliant trivia whiz of a wife, Gloria (Rosie Perez), who just wants to live the dream of being a Jeopardy! contestant.

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6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Pick any movie from sibling filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, and you’re bound to have a good time. But O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a clear all-timer. The Coens’ wry retelling of Homer’s Odyssey plays out against the banjo-picking backdrop of backwoods Mississippi during the Great Depression. It’s a beautifully composed and shot production that’s crammed wall-to-wall with toe-tapping folk music.

George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson star as Ulysses Everett McGill, Pete, and Delmar O’Donnell, a trio of chain gang escapees who hit the road together and have a series of adventures as they try to evade the long arm of the law. They’re ostensibly on a hunt for Everett’s long-lost buried treasure, but O Brother is less about the treasure than it is the journey it takes to get there.

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7. Enemy of the State

What an upsettingly prescient story Enemy of the State turned out to be.

Director Tony Scott’s 1998 political thriller about a man who sees something he shouldn’t have is a terrifying consideration of the U.S. surveillance state. The unlucky citizen is labor lawyer Robert Dean (Will Smith) and the thing he shouldn’t have seen is an NSA official (Jon Voight) overseeing the politically motivated murder of a sitting Congressman. When those nefarious powers-that-be learn that Dean was unexpectedly (and unknowingly) handed a video of the incident, he’s quickly marked for public ruination and death.

This is vintage ’90s-era Smith, with Enemy of the State capping off a four-year run of hit blockbusters, following Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black. (The less we speak of 1999’s Wild Wild West, the better.) He’s a more subdued version of himself than he was in the three preceding releases, but this underrated classic — which also features Regina King, Lisa Bonet, and an early career appearance from Jack Black — is still a gripping must-see.

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8. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The epic time-twisting journeys of Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) should need no introduction. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its two sequels — Bogus Journey and Face the Music are both also available on Prime Video — are forever burned into our pop culture consciousness.

When the two music-loving, airhead high schoolers find themselves under the gun on an end-of-year history project, all seems lost — until a mysterious visitor arrives. Rufus (George Carlin) was sent back from the future in a phone booth-shaped time machine to get Bill and Ted back on track with their lives. Turns out, these two bozos are going to one day use their music to bring out world peace. But that’s not going to happen if they don’t finish high school, and putting together a killer project with contributions from historic figures like Billy the Kid (Dan Shor), Beethoven (Clifford David), and Socrates (Tony Steedman) is the only way to pull it off.

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9. The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense is where we learned that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan knows how to mess with an audience.

The movie’s central twist is a well-executed shock if you can somehow manage to go in unspoiled more than two decades after its 1999 release. But The Sixth Sense is a capable and creepy thriller beyond that.

Bruce Willis stars as Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist whose latest patient, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), claims to possess a unique ability: he can talk to the dead. Or, to quote Cole himself in the movie’s most iconic line, “I see dead people.” Crowe’s efforts to help the child take him to some spooky places as a growing number of questions pile up about what the hell is actually going on here.

There is an answer. If you don’t know it, you really should set aside the time to watch The Sixth Sense and find out.

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10. Road to Perdition

Road to Perdition is director Sam Mendes’ follow-up to his Oscar-winning breakout, American Beauty. It tends to get overlooked as a result, but you shouldn’t miss this noir-vibed crime drama starring Tom Hanks and featuring a powerhouse ensemble that includes Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Stanley Tucci, and Daniel Craig.

Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a Great Depression-era mobster who is forced to go on the lam with his son Michael Jr. (Hoechlin) after a partially successful attempt on his family’s life leaves his wife (Leigh) and younger son dead. But it’s a complicated situation. Michael was very close with his boss, John Rooney (Newman), but that closeness became a sore subject for John’s adult son Connor (Craig) — so much so that he organized the hit himself. Michael, meanwhile, is left to grieve and seek vengeance while he also tries to figure out for the first time how to really be a parent.

Based on a graphic novel and shot with all the beautiful intensity that source material would suggest, Road to Perdition is a dark, stylish, and thoroughly engrossing examination of loss, father-son relationships, and cycles of violence.

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11. Top Gun

It feels like 35 years since Tom Cruise announced the plan for a Top Gun sequel — but that’s actually how long it’s been since we got the original! Now, Top Gun: Maverick is here (it’s extremely Top Gun) and the classic blockbuster from which it springs is streaming on Prime Video.

Tony Scott’s 1986 classic introduced us to Maverick (Cruise), Iceman (Val Kilmer), and the whole crew, delivering unforgettable movie moments like “I feel the need…the need for speed” and the coolest low-budget Halloween costume you’ll never stop seeing at parties. ns in a new tab)