Amazon Prime Watching List
If you have Amazon Prime (looking at you college students), I highly recommend checking these films out! In no particular order, they represent some of the best examples of cinema artistry.
The Handmaiden: Holy cow. Korean films do not get enough attention here in the States, yet this is one of the best psycho-thriller dramas I’ve seen. It moves like a Victorian novel, combining proto-feminism with an erotic character study- but beyond that, it is rich in illusion and cinematography— simply put: it’s beautiful to watch. Set in the 1930s, an orphaned pickpocket and a Korean con man devises an elaborate plot to seduce and bilk a Japanese woman out of her inheritance. But of course, nothing is ever what it seems.
Manchester by the Sea: You will cry a lot while watching this, and maybe hate Boston accents a lot less by the end of it. Casey Affleck gives a performance that I don’t know if anyone has ever topped since. You follow a man named Lee Chandler, as tragedy unfolds, as does the rest of his past.
Generation Wealth: An incredible documentary, directed by world-respected photographer Lauren Greenfield, that explores and examines materialism, celebrity culture, and social status and reflects on the desire to be wealthy at any cost. This visual history of the growing obsession with wealth uses first-person interviews in Los Angeles, Moscow, Dubai, China, and around the world to bear witness to the global boom-and-bust economy and to document its complicated consequences.
The Last Black Man of San Francisco: I could try and describe this film to you— this drama meets documentary— but this NY Times review does it so much more justice.
The Birdcage: Show me a film where Robin Williams does not give a brilliant performance……I’ll wait. Add this to your canon of classics that never gets old, and can be enjoyed by all audiences. It’s a joyful remake of the classic French farce, “La Cage aux Folles”.
happy watching!
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