13 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now (May 2025)

It’s been five years since Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) last saw her former BFF Emily (Blake Lively), who went to prison for her crimes. So it’s a bit of a shock for her to see Emily waltz into her book reading and ask her to be her maid of honor at her upcoming wedding in Capri. How can Stephanie resist a free vacation and more material for a future bestseller?  But is Emily truly reformed, or is she just plotting revenge on the woman who took everything away from her?

Another Simple Favor has just enough of the same off-kilter humor that made the original such a treat back in 2018. Lively and Kendrick are a good comedic duo, and the movie’s twisty story is entertaining enough to keep you glued to the screen. 

It’s not often a sequel outshines its predecessor, but Babe: Pig in the City did just that when it was released in late 1998. Audiences rejected it, but it has since become a cult classic due to its incredible visuals and stylized direction from Mad Max auteur George Miller (Furiosa).

When the talking pig Babe travels with his owner Esme (Magda Szubanski) to Metropolis, he’s so overwhelmed by the experience that he gets separated from her. Lost and all alone, Babe must find his way back to Esme to leave the city, and the only way to do that is to team up with other animals, including a trio of chimpanzees and a disabled Jack Russell Terrier. Will Babe ever find his way back home?

Evelyn (Kathy Bates) is a lonely housewife who meets Ninny (Jessica Tandy) while visiting a family member at a nursing home. They hit it off immediately, and the two women bond over Ninny’s tall tale about two Southern women, Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), in 1930s Alabama. Evelyn soon gains inspiration from Ninny’s stories, but she realizes that her elderly friend may be telling her more about her own life than a fictional story with made-up characters.

Based on Fannie Flagg’s bestselling book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, this 1991 movie is a surprisingly moving portrait of female friendship in two very different time periods. The four female leads all give terrific performances, and the movie has a terrific sense of time and place — you can almost feel the heat and sweat of its Deep South setting. The movie’s excellent supporting cast includes a young Chris O’Donnell as Idgie’s doomed brother and veteran actress Cicely Tyson as a woman you wouldn’t want to mess with.

“Are you not entertained?” Russell Crowe memorably asked in the first Gladiator all those years ago. That question pops up again in the sequel, and the answer is a muted “kinda.” Gladiator II isn’t perfect, and it fails to match the raw muscular power of its predecessor, but it’s still mostly entertaining and has one of Denzel Washington’s most enjoyable performances ever.

Decades after Maximus Meridius’ death, his exiled son Lucius (Paul Mescal) follows in his father’s footsteps and seeks revenge on the powerful people who killed his wife. But his need for vengeance will bring him back to a home he has never known and a mother (Connie Nielsen) who abandoned him to protect him. Can Lucius fulfil his destiny while also satisfying his need to honor the family he lost?

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday and the whole world is in mourning. But what happens after a pope passes and a new successor must be chosen? That’s the central theme behind Conclave, a critically acclaimed 2024 movie that won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.   

Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) oversees a conclave of the world’s best priests to determine who will be the next pope. But surprising revelations and intense political campaigning threaten to derail the process, and Thomas must decide who is telling the truth and who just wants to be chosen to fulfil their personal ambitions.

Conclave is an intense drama, an amusing black comedy and a surprise thriller, too. Selecting the next pope doesn’t sound particularly suspenseful, but director Edward Berger milks enough thrills from the material to make it an absorbing and fun movie to watch. The cast is superb, with Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini both terrific as quiet members of the church who hold more power and influence than most of their peers realize.

Rachel Flax (Cher) is one of those mothers all the other wives disapprove of and every husband lusts after. At least, that’s what her daughter Charlotte (Winona Ryder) thinks, especially when they move to a small town in Massachusetts and the spotlight is on them. Rachel and Charlotte don’t get along, but they’ll need each other as both women encounter unexpected romance and heartbreak in early 1960s America.

Mermaids is a low-key charmer, a “small” movie that prefers to concentrate on its central mother/daughter relationship rather than a plot. When the climax of a movie involves someone slapping another person hard in the face, you know you’re watching a good melodrama. Cher won an Oscar three years earlier for Moonstruck, but she’s even better as the always loving, slightly irresponsible Rachel. Look for a young Christina Ricci as Charlotte’s swimming-obsessed little sister and Bob Hoskins as Rachel’s ardent suitor.

Tashi (Zendaya) is a former tennis player who is the wife and coach of Art (Mike Faist), a Grand Slam champion who has one last shot at glory. He enters a minor league challenger tournament to regain his mojo, and the couple quickly realizes that Art’s former friend and rival and Tashi’s ex-lover, Patrick (Josh O’Connor), is competing as well. Will Art and Patrick renew their rivalry during the tournament? And does Tashi still have feelings for the man she once loved?

Challengers is impressive on many levels: it features a great trio of performances by its three lead stars, the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a genuine banger, and it makes minor league tennis somehow interesting to watch. But its greatest achievement is being one of the horniest movies ever made while not having any explicit sex scenes at all. But what else would you expect from Luca Guadagnino, a director who is always concerned with how desire plays out in the body and the mind?

In this superb prequel to the first two A Quiet Place movies, we finally find out how the initial invasion of Earth by those noise-sensitive aliens began. Lupita Nyong’o is Sam, a cynical woman with terminal cancer who travels to New York City with her pet cat, Frodo. Once there, aliens begin to destroy downtown Manhattan, forcing Sam to team up with others, including Joseph Quinn’s law student Eric, to survive the onslaught. Can they leave the island and seek sanctuary from their otherworldly invaders before it’s too late?

A Quiet Place: Day One is the rare prequel that’s actually better than its sister movies. There’s plenty of action, with a sequence set in the subway that ranks as an all-timer, but it’s the quieter moments that make the movie truly special. Director Michael Sarnoski previously helmed the character study Pig with Nicolas Cage, and his sensitive touch is evident even when his characters are fleeing from slimy CGI creatures.

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is the best there is at what he does: getting beaten up. As one of Hollywood’s best stuntmen, he’s been crashing cars and falling off buildings for years. Yet lately, the jobs have dried up, and he’s desperate for work. When his ex-girlfriend, film director Gail Meyer (Emily Blunt), hires him for her new action movie, Colt thinks his fortunes have changed. But when the film’s lead star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), mysteriously disappears one day, it’s up to Colt to find out what happened to him.

Based on a long-forgotten 1980s TV series, The Fall Guy is a breezy, lightweight action-comedy that recalls Romancing the Stone and Bird on a Wire. Gosling and Blunt have indelible chemistry together, and the stunts are appropriately impressive. It’s the rare movie that will please both rom-com purists and action movie bros.

There’s a moment early on in The Bikeriders when Kathy (Jodie Comer), the film’s lead female character, gazes at Austin Butler’s impossibly handsome, cool guy Benny across a pool hall and is rendered speechless. Cathy is all of us in that moment. The Bikeriders tells the story of the Vandals Motorcycle Club, a gang of men and women in too-tight T-shirts and shiny black leather who roam the American Midwest on their bikes.

Their leader is Johnny (Tom Hardy), but Kathy only has eyes for Benny (you can’t blame her), and soon the two engage in a love affair. Over the years, the gang grows in size but also becomes more violent, and Benny and Kathy’s relationship is tested by Benny’s loyalty to his chopper crew.

The Bikeriders doesn’t have much of a plot, but its chief pleasure lies in watching cool dudes ride around in sweet rides across a picturesque 1960s America. Hardy is right at home as a sweet tough guy, but it’s Butler who impresses the most. As the elusive Benny, he’s got charisma to burn, and you understand why Kathy is drawn to him even though he’s bad news. Rebellion never looked so good.

Elliott (Maisy Stella) is at a crossroads. She’s about to leave for college and is in a casual relationship with another girl, Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera). One night, she takes some psychedelic mushrooms with her friends and hallucinates a future version of herself, Older Elliott (Aubrey Plaza). Proving she’s the real thing, Older Elliott cryptically tells her younger self three things: spend more time with your family, appreciate the farm that you grew up in and avoid a boy named Chad. She disappears, but leaves her number in younger Elliott’s phone.

That’s the far-out premise of My Old Ass, a comedy that isn’t ashamed to be sentimental. Elliott doesn’t exactly believe anything her future self says at first, but gradually, she finds herself growing closer to her family. Chad eventually appears, and it’s in this development that My Old Ass reveals itself as an effective tearjerker in disguise. Plaza is great as always; if everyone grew up to be like Older Elliott, we’d all be OK.

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is a world-famous detective, but he may have found the one case that’s stumped even him. Famous mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead one morning with his throat cleanly slit but no other signs of foul play. Ruled a suicide by the police, Harlan’s death is suspicious enough for Blanc to investigate.

As he interviews members of the Thrombey household, which includes ne’er-do-well grandson Hugh (Chris Evans), sleazy son-in-law Richard (Don Johnson), dotty daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) and kind-hearted nurse Marta (Ana de Armas), Blanc soon realizes this mystery runs deeper than he thought. Can he catch Harlan’s killer in time to prevent another murder?

A big hit when it was released in 2019, Knives Out has already spawned a sequel, Glass Onion, in 2022, and a third one, Wake Up Dead Man, is due for release in 2025. Nothing can touch the original, though, with writer/director Rian Johnson clearly having a ball weaving a mystery yarn worthy of Agatha Christie. Everyone in the cast has their moment to shine, and the ending is just about perfect.

Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) is a New Yorker you don’t want to cross. A con woman who makes her living selling fake coins to unsuspecting people over the phone, Bridget steals her crooked dentist husband’s drug money and hides away in a small town upstate. Bridget’s not one to rest on her laurels, and soon, she seduces local dumb hunk Mike (Peter Berg) in an elaborate insurance scam that will pad her pockets and allow Mike to leave his hometown forever. But Bridget’s past catches up with her fast, and Mike soon finds himself in over his head in a way he never imagined.

One of the greatest neo-noirs ever made, The Last Seduction hasn’t aged a bit, even though it’s three decades old and was initially released as a cable movie on HBO. The movie is tough and unsentimental, and it features one of the best female performances ever from Fiorentino. As the calculating Bridget, she’s always one step ahead of everyone, and that includes the audience. You keep expecting her to let up, to show some kind of humanity, and she never does. Bridget’s rotten to the core, and it’s fun watching her be so very bad.