Best History Movies to Watch on Amazon Prime
The best history movies streaming right now.
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The first things that grab your attention in Nickel Boys are its beauty and technicality. Director RaMell Ross, a large-format photographer, ensures every frame relays something deep, intimate, and moving. Then there’s how he takes these shots: we see things unfold through the POV of Elwood and Turner, students at an abusive reform school in […]
The Apprentice is as much about Roy Cohn as it is about the titular mentee, a very green Donald Trump. It’s Cohn who teaches Trump the dirty tricks and the power moves, and it’s he who instills in him his everlasting entitlement. It’s also Cohn who arguably steals the show. As expected, Strong disappears into […]
A Million Miles Away sticks so closely to the Hollywood biopic template that it threatens to be less about José Hernández as a person with his own complexities and more about the idea of him as a one-size-fits-all inspirational figure. This isn’t to say the film isn’t effective when it really counts; Hernández is worth […]
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Sweetwater has a precious story in its hands, along with a sparkling cast of tried-and-true actors and a generous budget that allows them to go all in with the movie’s 1950s setting. But the parts are far greater than the sum here, because all together, Sweetwater is a mess. It promises to be a biopic […]
Wilt Chamberlain’s story is inherently fascinating. An athletic wonder who rose to fame in the South during the Jim Crow era, Chamberlain had to pave the way for other Black athletes who followed in his footsteps. It wasn’t enough that he was good, or that he had the height to end all heights; Chamberlain had […]
Argentina, 1985 is a legal drama about how a prosecutor and his young team were able to mount evidence—despite all threats and odds—against the officials behind a brutal military dictatorship. The public trial is supposedly the first of its kind in Latin America, a marker of true democracy that made a hero out of Julio […]
Till is a very political film. It’s charged with the kind of rage and electricity that enables thousands to mobilize for a cause. But before it explodes into something grand, it begins with the small details of everyday life. A mother admires her son as he dances to his favorite song. She buys him a […]
Through her irreverent, no-bullshit point of view, Chinese documentarian Christine Choy balances out The Exiles’ painful reckoning with a traumatic event that shaped a generation of Chinese immigrants: the student-led protests and subsequent massacre of civilians in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989. As Choy reconnects with the subjects of a documentary she stopped making 30 […]
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Retrograde takes place in early 2021 and captures the exact moment when the US troops exited Afghanistan, effectively leading to the Taliban takeover. With a fly-on-the-look approach, director Matthew Heineman reveals the cruel consequences of this sudden exit as the Afghan people (led by the charismatic General Sammi Sadat) scramble to defend themselves despite limited […]
Based on the 1992 classic of the same name, A League of Their Own tells the story of the Rockford Peaches—how the women’s baseball team came to be, who its eccentric members are, and what life was like in wartime America, especially for driven women with unconventional goals. More than a remake, 2022’s A League […]
When a girls soccer team is left stranded in the wilderness, things quickly descend from worrisome to outright, delightful, and sometimes unbearably weird. It’s a classic tale of survival injected with fresh mystery and drama, and as you watch these girls navigate humanity in all its extremes—from the primal urge to live to the existential […]
Despite being based on a 19th-century serial novel, Lost Illusions feels remarkably close to contemporary concerns about fake news and the devaluing of art for profit. But as the story is also, obviously, set in the 19th century, all this bribery and these backdoor dealings are done entirely through the written word and by sending […]
Even before its characters get to Europe, Bawaal sets itself up as a truly ludicrous romantic comedy, completely unmoored from any common sense or internal logic, and with the most cartoonishly awful protagonist at its center. There isn’t a single convincing story idea here, from the way Ajay’s students learn from and idolize him despite […]
Escape from Mogadishu follows diplomats from the North and South Korean embassies as they put aside their differences and work together to escape from an outbreak of civil war in Mogadishu, Somalia. Director Ryoo Seung-wan provides thrilling, high-budget action, especially intense car chases and suspenseful escape scenes that pump you with adrenaline and leave you […]
As is only appropriate for a limited series about such a horrific period in human history, The Underground Railroad isn’t meant to be easy viewing. Thanks to uncompromising direction from Barry Jenkins (the director of the Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight) and unforgettable images from cinematographer James Laxton, this approaches a level of confrontational storytelling […]
This Swedish movie is the story of Astrid Lindgren, one of the most translated children book writers of all time. Her work of over 100 books includes Pippi Longstocking and The Brothers Lionheart. Away from the quiet existence of the characters she would later create, Astrid had a turbulent life. Her troubles start when she […]
A quiet documentary that was released to celebrate the British Royal Air Force’s centenary, Spitfire tells the story of the famous plane that younger audiences might only recognize from movies like Dunkirk or Darkest Hour. It features gorgeous footage of the last remaining planes in service flying over the British coast, testimonies from pilots who […]
The work of two people stand out here: the actor Christian Bale and the cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (Silver Linings Playbook, Warrior, The Grey, Spotlight, etc.) Bale plays an Army Captain who agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family through treacherous lands. The general and the chief, being old enemies, embark on a […]
A cynical down-on-his-luck Seoul taxi driver is hired by a German journalist to go to another town called Gwangju. What seemed like an easy and overcompensated journey at first takes him into the heart of a city under siege by the military. This is in fact the student uprising that will be a very important […]
It’s always fun to watch something that makes you second guess each move, that shifts seamlessly from one thing to another. Frantz is that kind of film, and as the deceptively simple premise unfolds—a widow befriends her late husband’s friend—you’re never really sure if what you’re watching is a romance, a mystery, or a sly […]
When depicting war and faith, it seems like men are the only ones that have to undertake these challenges, at least it seems, in the stories made available about these topics. But that simply isn’t true. The Innocents is one of the few reminders that, while women might have been kept from the front lines, […]
Prior to being defined by that fateful bombing in 1945, Hiroshima was like any other city outside of Tokyo; small but full, quiet but busy, and in the midst of a slow-but-sure journey to modernization. We experience the rich and intimate details of this life through the kind-hearted Suzu, who herself is stuck between the […]
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While best known for his Western work, including directing the second Mission Impossible, John Woo made his start in China, returning more than a decade later to film this historical war epic. Based on the Battle of the Red Cliffs, the film may not be 100% factual, but Woo is clearly more at home here, […]
You know Anthony Hopkins as the evil Hannibal Lecter, but in this film he gives a warm and heartfelt performance portraying real life New Zealand motorcycle legend Burt Munro who set a land speed record in 1967 on a hand-built 1920 Indian. It’s a story of never giving up on your dream even in the […]
At first, The Tracker seemed to be a straightforward Australian Western with three white men tracking down a murderer, with the help of an Aboriginal man more familiar with the Outback. But The Tracker takes unexpected paths. First, no one is given an actual name– they’re referred to in the credits by titles (e.g. The […]
