The Best Movies & Shows Released in 2022 on Amazon Prime
Find the best movies and show to watch from the year 2022. These handpicked recommendations are highly-rated by viewers and critics.
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What if the UK’s MI5 was run not by sleek secret agents, but rather, a bunch of second-rate, hand-me-down spies? Slow Horses gives us a taste of that as it centers on Slough House, a division of MI5 that serves as a detention center for their smart but hopelessly damaged goods. In this six-part miniseries, […]
Despite being released amid a deluge of period dramas and biopics, Starz’s The Serpent Queen, which follows Catherine de’ Medici’s rise from Italian servant to Queen of France, is a strong standout in today’s streaming fare. By balancing modern storytelling (expect poppy needle drops and fourth-wall breaks a la Fleabag) and historical realism (the costume […]
As We See It centers on the perspectives of its three leads: Jack, Violet, and Harrison, twenty-something roommates who happen to be on the autism spectrum. Along with their caretaker Mandy and a small but loving group of friends and family, they embark on a journey of self-improvement that is sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, but always […]
Not much happens in Women Talking, but what it lacks in action it more than makes up for in message. As the wronged women of an insular Christian colony decide whether they should leave or stay in their community, valuable points on each side are raised and debated fiercely. Are the men at fault or […]
Like many coming-of-age films about films, it’s easy to assume that Last Film Show would be a derivative of all-time film classic Cinema Paradiso. Both films from opposite corners of the world, separated by more than three decades, do share that awe of cinema from a projection booth. However, unlike Paradiso, the awe of Last […]
When he’s accepted into the prestigious Islamic university Al-Azhar, fisherman’s son Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) gets an eye-opening education — but not the kind he expected. A place associated with notions of purity is imagined as a hotbed of hypocrisy and corruption here, as naive young Adam finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a state plot to […]
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 […]
Undone is a rotoscoped, genre-bending fever dream of a show. It’s a mystery in that the lead Alma is tasked to discover the truth about her father’s death, but also a fantasy in that she bends the limitless possibilities of time and space to achieve her goal. It’s a surreal adventure bolstered by daring animation, […]
In BBC’s The Capture, a young soldier’s murder conviction is overturned thanks to submitted video evidence. But before he can enjoy his newfound freedom, a different video—this time live CCTV footage—places him at the scene of a new crime. The proof seems damning, but the deeper Detective Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) digs into the case, […]
Part police-procedural and part supernatural thriller, The Devil’s Hour is the perfect show to binge if you love solving complicated puzzles and don’t mind being spooked by the occasional jump scare. It’s also co-produced by Steven Moffat, who was the brain behind equally mind-bending thrillers Sherlock (BBC) and Doctor Who. The six-parter follows social worker […]
There is no shortage of craft and ambition in The English, a miniseries that employs tropes of classic Westerns, like the soulful anti-hero and the loyal sidekick, but also twists them enough to make them feel fresh. For instance, instead of typical cowboys, we have as our leads Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), an aristocratic Englishwoman, […]
Saying that the program I Love Lucy paved the way for television would be an understatement. Lucille Ball inspired a generation of female comedians, Desi Arnez blazed a trail for Latinos making it in America, and the show that they starred in broke records upon records, redefining what sitcoms could be at a time when […]
Thirteen Lives is a taut, no-nonsense film that smartly forgoes dramatizing an already well-known case and, instead, hones in on the excruciating but impressive ordeal that is rescue diving. The divers are played by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, both of whom are convincing in their expertise and heroism. But this isn’t to say this […]
Stills and synopses of The Summer I Turned Pretty make it seem like typical teenage fluff. It isn’t. Sure, it starts off cheesy and predictable, but it quickly blossoms into something rich and earnest and far more significant than the sum of its parts. The love triangle is merely a jumping-off point to better understand […]
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 […]
In 2003, NASA launched twin rovers Oppy (short for Opportunity) and Spirit into Mars expecting them to last for only 90 days. But equipped with almost human-like perseverance and personality, the rovers lasted for years, tracing terrain and reporting extraterrestrial findings back to Earth until Oppy’s final goodbye in 2018. Good Night Oppy follows the […]
If you’re a fan of slow-burn mysteries and genre blends, you might enjoy Outer Range, a carefully paced mix of Western, sci-fi, and family drama. Josh Brolin stars as the patriarch Royal Abbott, who, while defending his ranch from a neighboring family, also discovers a strange void in his pasture. The void leads to even […]
Structured more like a network procedural than a gritty streaming miniseries, the TV adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer feels easy, even nostalgic, to watch. The formula is simple: in every episode, Mickey handles a new case (most of them wrongful convictions against people on the fringe), all while dealing with a larger, more complicated case […]
Set in the seemingly idyllic town of Three Pines in Quebec, Canada, Three Pines the series follows Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (Alfred Molina) as he attempts to solve a string of murders and disappearances in the area. It’s a classic whodunnit that doesn’t try too hard to be twisty and complicated; instead, it lays out […]
As is sometimes the case with multi-genre shows, Paper Girls starts off slow and gives us a lot to process at the onset. But if you give it some time, the eight-episode series delivers both on the sci-fi and drama fronts. Sure, it could benefit from a bigger CGI budget, but the world it imagines […]
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 […]
Set in 2032, The Peripheral finds a protagonist in Flynne Fisher (Chloe Grace Moretz), a cash-strapped but ambitious woman who gets stuck between alternate timelines and realities after testing out an experimental gaming device. She stays for the money and safety promised to her, but quickly finds out that she’s getting more than what she […]
Riches follows the spoiled children of an industry tycoon battling to secure their share of the family empire. In some ways, it’s Britain’s answer to Succession, but in many other ways, Riches is its own thing: riveting, penetrating, and authentic to the Black experience. Riches can get soapy at times, but the high stakes and […]
Sprung follows a group of newly released convicts who return to a life of petty thievery after realizing they’re up against an emerging global pandemic. It’s an amusing snapshot of the ridiculous lengths we went through in the horror year that is 2020, but it’s also filled with the good old sentiment that grounds funny […]
Night Sky has an intriguing premise—underground, an elderly couple visits a portal to another world, while aboveground they go through the trials and tribulations of marriage and old age. You would think that the sci-fi element would overpower everything else in this story, but on the contrary, it’s the slice-of-life chemistry between Franklin and Irene […]
A fascinating kernel of certainty is padded out with giddy speculation in this documentary about a pair of unlikely art thieves. The facts are as such: 32 years after a $160 million painting by abstract artist Willem de Kooning was crudely cut from its frame in an Arizona gallery, a trio of small-town antique dealers […]
Kevin Can F*** Himself takes on big risks by going back and forth between genres, but the move pays off. The switch from multi-cam sitcom (complete with canned laughter and too-bright colors) to single-cam drama (necessarily gritty and low-lit) is more than just some gimmick, it’s a technical feat that doubles as a precise critique […]
x1You can tell that Blaze director Del Kathryn Barton is an award-winning visual artist first and foremost. The images that she puts together in this film are frequently stunning—making use of the camera in fascinating, freeing ways, and with lots of practical and computer-generated/animated effects that paint her young protagonist Blaze’s world in glitter and […]
This satire takes place in the year 2033 when it’s possible to “upload” oneself to a specific software-powered afterlife. In the variety of afterlives possible, there is no heaven or hell. Instead, class struggles persist: ads are everywhere, you have to pay for data, and there are many levels of luxury available. Created by Greg […]
From the producers of Superbad and Pineapple Express, stoner filmmakers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, comes a deft deconstruction of the ubiquitous superhero genre on Amazon Prime. Based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, it is set in a world where god-like superheroes, or Supes, are recognized […]
Fans of sketch comedy, documentaries, and the always-hilarious duo of Bill Hader and Fred Armisen are in for a treat with Documentary Now!, a delightful miniseries that both satirizes and pays tribute to the non-fiction format. Each episode parodies a particular documentary and tone, bringing the comedians and their ever-revolving roster of guest stars to […]
