“The Boys” Season 5 is not the only noteworthy title arriving on Amazon’s Prime Video in April.
The streaming service has also expanded its film library this month with a collection of classic and contemporary movies, including an influential 1980s noir thriller directed by crime-movie maestro Michael Mann and an endearing early ’90s coming-of-age comedy. Prime Video’s April arrivals additionally include a quotable, culinary-themed social thriller that was released just a few years ago and an acclaimed dramedy that rightly earned a lot of awards attention in 2024.
Here are the seven best movies new to Prime Video you can stream in April.
“Thief” (1981)
In Michael Mann‘s “Thief,” a low-level safecracker (James Caan) falls in love with a diner waitress (Tuesday Weld), dreams about raising a family with her and tries to escape his life of crime by getting out from under the thumb of a narcissistic Chicago mafia boss (Robert Prosky). The film’s story is, in other words, a very familiar one to fans of the noir and crime genres. But there is so much more to “Thief” than just its story — the visual beauty in every frame, the hypnotic power of its Tangerine Dream score, the blue-collar frustration simmering throughout it and, perhaps most powerfully of all, the middle-aged desperation and exhaustion driving its protagonist.
It may not be as well-known or widely beloved as other Mann films — namely, “Heat” and “Collateral” — but it holds many of the same qualities that make those movies great. Caan’s lead performance is seismic, and the film itself is as complete an achievement of artistic vision and control as anything else Mann has ever made.
“The Aviator” (2004)
2004’s “The Aviator,” director Martin Scorsese’s second collaboration with longtime creative partner and leading man Leonardo DiCaprio, is one of the more under-appreciated entries in Scorsese’s filmography. An ambitious, visually inventive dramatization of the life of aviation pioneer and filmmaker Howard Hughes (DiCaprio), “The Aviator” works simultaneously as a complex portrait of obsessive-compulsive disorder and a glamorous exploration of the undaunted, reckless levels of ambition that helped build both Hollywood and modern America from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Cate Blanchett won her first Academy Award for her performance in the film as Katharine Hepburn, one of the great loves of Hughes’ life, and rightly so. Her chameleon-like performance is emblematic of “The Aviator” itself, a film overflowing with technical artistry that yet never loses its grasp of the moving, sometimes ugly humanity at the center of it.
“The Sandlot” (1993)
A love letter to both childhood and baseball, 1993’s “The Sandlot” is a coming-of-age comedy that will live on for-ev-er. Directed and co-written by David Mickey Evans, the film follows a diverse group of young kids who play recreational baseball together as they grow closer and experience different adventures over the course of a single summer in the early 1960s. Full of quotable lines and memorable, enduring cinematic moments, “The Sandlot” works whether you are 12 or 34.
Nostalgic and yet clear-eyed, it is a film that understands the ways both good and bad that childhood is so different from adulthood, and it captures that separation, as well as the fleeting beauty of youth and hard-earned camaraderie, with equal parts humor and heart. It is not just a classic, but the rare kind of film that feels like it has existed forever, despite only being 33 years old.
“The Terminator” (1984)
It is a testament to the artistry of “The Terminator” that, despite being ripped off and imitated countless times over the past 40 years, the film still stands on its own. Directed and co-written by “Avatar” and “Titanic” filmmaker James Cameron, the film’s story of a cyberkinetic assassin sent back in time to kill the mother (Linda Hamilton) of mankind’s future savior gives it the chance to work alternately across its 107 minutes as a thrilling chase movie, inventive retro-future drama and chilling, unrelenting slice of sci-fi horror.
Co-writers Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd bely the complexity of the film’s time travel story with a simple, elegant narrative structure defined by periodic confrontations, chases and escapes, and the result is a high-concept thriller that effortlessly holds your attention and, in typical Cameron fashion, delivers some of the most indelible images in cinema history along the way.
“Spy Game” (2001)
2001’s “Spy Game” is one of the most underrated films that “Top Gun” director Tony Scott has ever made. Set during the last days of the Cold War, the film follows a veteran CIA operative (Robert Redford) who sets out to save his former protege (Brad Pitt) from execution in a Chinese prison and, in doing so, begin to unravel the betrayals that created the high-stakes situation in the first place.
Twisty and propulsive, “Spy Game” is slighter than its star power and Cold War premise would suggest, but not as superficial as its minuscule reputation would have you believe. It is an entertaining and stylish spy thriller made by one of cinema’s most boundary-pushing mainstream stylists, and it is well-deserving of two hours of your time.
“The Menu” (2022)
An acid-tongued, blackly comic thriller, “The Menu” is a contemporary spin on a typical haves-vs-haves-not horror film set in the world of high-end culinary dining. Ralph Fiennes leads and supercharges the film with his performance as the maniacal chef of a famous, ultra-exclusive restaurant who decides to surprise his latest guests with a menu full of increasingly savage and distressing turns.
Anya Taylor-Joy co-stars in the film as the female date of a restaurant-obsessed foodie (Nicholas Hoult) who finds herself fighting for her life, and “The Menu” steadily and expertly ratchets up the tension over the course of its 107 minutes. The result is an immensely entertaining thriller — one that lingers in your mind afterward less because of its surprising social and cultural observations and more because of the gusto with which it and its performers lean all the way into its absurd, heightened horror reality.
“American Fiction” (2023)
Speaking of biting comedies with an edge, 2023’s “American Fiction” marked the feature directorial debut of writer-director Cord Jefferson. Based on a 2001 novel by Percival Everett, the film follows a frustrated Black novelist and professor (Jeffrey Wright) who, in a moment of frustration and grief, writes a satirical takedown of stereotypical “Black” stories only for the book to be taken seriously and lead to immense financial and personal success.
Both a scathing social satire and a surprisingly moving exploration of having to grow up and become responsible for more than just yourself, “American Fiction” scored five Oscar nominations in 2024. Jefferson took home the Best Adapted Screenplay award that year, while Wright and co-star Sterling K. Brown both earned nominations for their performances in the film. Its success was deserved, to say the least, and if you missed it in theaters, now is as good a time as any to stream it on Prime Video.
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