The Best Amazon Prime Movies for Your Parents

It may look like a cheap TV movie, but this quietly affecting story of a lonely grandmother looking for kindness and meaning at a retirement hotel is an absolutely charming watch for you, your parents, and your own grandparents. The stakes are refreshingly low, as the title character’s quick friendship with a twentysomething writer helps each of them get through their feelings of being out of place. There’s lots of effective, British-style comedy from this small cast of instantly likable actors, and an unexpectedly potent emotional core, making you realize only by the end just how invested you’ve become in their interactions. As Mrs. Palfrey, Joan Plowright is a wonderful, gentle presence, and her easy chemistry with Rupert Friend is exactly as wholesome as the film needs.

It’s uncanny how innocent love can resemble stalking and obsessiveness. We first see Lea’s (Alessandra de Rossi) perspective as she meets funny-man and friendly neighbor Tonyo (Empoy Marquez) out of the blue. Later, we see Tonyo’s perspective and follow his pathetic journey through the heartbreak that led to him shadowing and eventually speaking to Lea. By the time we see both perspectives, it’s too late to judge the surprising events that unfold. The premise seems simple: it follows a relationship that feels comically wrong as it involves a temporarily blind woman and a man who only develops his confidence from not being seen. But it comes alive thanks to the playful chemistry and casting of de Rossi and Marquez, who charm in this brilliantly self-aware Pinoy rom-com.

When a woman that looks like the love of your life randomly shows up at an empty train station, but strangely has no memory of you, maybe you should try to confirm their identity first– doppelgangers do exist, after all. But aside from this detail, there’s a certain charm in the way Be With You unfolds, as the family gets a second chance to cherish a loved one, and as Woo-jin indulges in sharing their love story, a story that Woo-jin understandably doesn’t want to forget. Be With You doesn’t reinvent the entire genre, and it would inevitably be compared to the 2004 Japanese original, but this Korean remake does it so well, celebrating the way love transcends lifetimes.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel invites us to an earnest meditation on old age and change. The film centers on a group of British retirees traveling to the titular hotel in India, in hopes of a good retirement. The group cast is an excellent choice: prominent names from British movies and television line the cast, and it’s a pleasure to see them act alongside each other with equal screen time and their own detailed plotlines. Their plotlines inspire empathy towards different struggles that the elderly face: finding love again, dealing with accumulated debt, and handling loss. All of these are tough, but especially when you feel your time has run out. The best of these plotlines are the ones that acknowledge loss but still persist through accepting changing circumstances and actively going for one’s desires.

This journey is as much about Jake Roberts overcoming his addiction and damaged self-outlook, as it is about the heroic, life-changing efforts that DDP made to get him there. DDP’s brand of aggressive wholesomeness and belief in Roberts is palpable, and the rawness of the presentation only accentuates how real this friendship is, and how urgent DDP’s mission is—he will do this himself because no one else can. The documentary is inspiring with its vulnerability alone, as the underlying story is of men renouncing toxic behaviors that keep them looped into destructive habits. It doesn’t waste time with fluff minutes or details, just straight to your heart from start to finish.