Credit: Lucas Oliveira de Gouveia/How-To GeekOver on Prime Video this week, a couple of interesting things are afoot. Season 4 of Alan Ritchson and his chiseled jaw are at the top of the TV chart with Reacher, and Masters of the Universe—which didn’t come anywhere near recouping its $170 million budget in theaters—is enjoying the top spot on Prime’s movie charts. Indeed, streaming is a great equalizer.
But you’re not here for all of that; you want some movie suggestions that U.S. subscribers can watch. To tie into the new FX/Hulu drama The Shards, the iconic writer’s twisted Wall Street murderer masterpiece is streaming. There’s also a laugh-out-loud comedy with Ice Cube and, my top pick this week, a sexy art-heist thriller with Pierce Brosnan.
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American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis’s Wall Street killer, unrated
Controversial novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis, whose stories of drug-fueled, hyper-materialistic American youth include Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction, is back in the spotlight thanks to The Shards, a new FX/Hulu series based on his 2023 novel of the same name. But the book/film that arguably secured his place in pop culture is American Psycho, and now is the perfect time to revisit it.
Drawing from Ellis’s notorious 1991 book, American Psycho follows Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a demented, narcissistic Manhattan investment bro in the late ’80s, obsessed with his skincare regimen, restaurant reservations, and having a flawless business card—Silian Rail font on bone paper. Bale completely squashes any remnants of his child-actor, Empire of the Sun years with Bateman, in another career-defining performance. His fiancée, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), barely notices him; he literally axes his colleague Paul Allen (Jared Leto) to death while extolling the virtues of Huey Lewis and the News; and he inner-monologues it all. He’s a psychopath. He’s a killer.
As Bateman continues his spree, Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe) is hot on the trail. The dark, dark comedy from 2000 might have just a 69% critics’ rating, but the audience score sits at a more appropriate 85%. Prime Video currently has the unrated version available, which includes an additional four minutes. Watch this, then hop over to The Shards and compare.
Cast
Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux, Christian Bale
Runtime
101 minutes
Director
Mary Harron
Writers
Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Budget
$7 million
Studio(s)
Lionsgate
Distributor(s)
Lionsgate
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Barbershop: The Next Cut
Ice Cube’s sequel is funnier than the first
To be clear, all four movies in the popular Barbershop franchise (including the panned spinoff, Beauty Shop) are available to stream on Prime Video right now. But for my money (or, er, free with my Prime sub), and as far as Rotten Tomatoes is concerned, it’s the fourth film, Barbershop: The Next Cut, that’s a cut above (sorry).
Quiz
Name that iconic comedy movie
Trivia challenge
From fake rockumentaries to time loops — can you identify these classic
comedies from a single clue?
Cult ClassicsCharactersPlot CluesQuotesDirectors
Plot Clues
A bumbling TV news anchor in San Diego loses his job after a disastrous on-air
incident, then must win back his career — and the woman he loves. What movie is this?
Ferrell’s big-screen comedy career and gave us the unforgettable Ron Burgundy. The film became a cult
classic and spawned a 2013 sequel.
Burgundy, a pompous 1970s TV newsman whose world is turned upside down when Veronica Corningstone,
played by Christina Applegate, joins his team.
Quotes
Which film features the iconic line: ‘I’m not even supposed to be here today!’?
white on a shoestring budget of around $27,000. Dante Hicks delivers that classic line repeatedly
throughout the day he wasn’t supposed to work.
debut feature. Dante Hicks, who works at a convenience store on his day off, repeats the phrase like a
mantra throughout his increasingly chaotic shift.
Cult Classics
A hapless office worker discovers his life is literally a television show watched by
millions, and begins to question everything around him. Which comedy-drama is this?
man who has unknowingly lived his entire life on a giant TV set. Directed by Peter Weir, the film was
both a critical and commercial hit.
Truman Burbank, whose entire existence has been broadcast live since birth. EdTV came out just a year
later with a similar premise but far less impact.
Directors
This mockumentary follows a fictional heavy metal band on a disastrous US tour,
featuring an amp that ‘goes to eleven.’ Which film is it?
largely improvised by its cast. It essentially invented the mockumentary genre and remains one of the
most quoted comedies ever made.
this pitch-perfect parody of rock excess, and the ‘goes to eleven’ scene became one of cinema’s most
beloved comic moments.
Characters
In which comedy does a man relive the same day over and over again while stuck in a
small town covering a weather event he despises?
Phil Connors, trapped in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Directed by Harold Ramis, the film has since become
a philosophical touchstone about self-improvement.
Connors, a grumpy TV weatherman stuck in a time loop in Punxsutawney. The concept was so culturally
impactful that ‘Groundhog Day’ is now a common phrase.
Plot Clues
An airline flight descends into chaos when food poisoning strikes the crew, leaving
a nervous wreck of a former pilot as the only person who can land the plane. Name that movie.
team and is widely considered one of the funniest films ever made. It relentlessly parodies disaster
films and packs in more jokes per minute than almost any other comedy.
written and directed by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker. It launched Leslie Nielsen’s
second career as a deadpan comedy icon.
Quotes
Which film includes the line: ‘We’re on a mission from God,’ spoken by two brothers
reuniting a blues band to save an orphanage?
Jake and Elwood Blues. Directed by John Landis, the film features an all-star musical cast and one of
the most elaborate car chase sequences in comedy history.
and Dan Aykroyd play Jake and Elwood, who use their divine mission as justification for a spectacular
trail of mayhem across Chicago.
Cult Classics
A group of medieval English knights embark on a ridiculous quest, battling killer
rabbits and taunting Frenchmen along the way. What is this film?
budget with coconut shells standing in for horses. It remains one of the most quoted comedies in history
and launched the Monty Python troupe to international fame.
by the legendary British comedy group, the film parodies Arthurian legend with absurdist brilliance.
Jabberwocky was also a Terry Gilliam medieval comedy, which makes it a sneaky wrong answer!
Your Score
Thanks for playing!
It might have taken twelve years to follow 2004’s middling sequel Back in Business, but it was worth the wait. The same sharp, rapid-fire banter and scathing, unapologetic honesty the movies are known for is all there in The Next Cut, but with a unique new story that puts everyone we love in the same room. Tough times have fallen on Chicago’s South Side, so Calvin (Ice Cube) makes the decision to merge the barbershop with Angie’s (Regina Hall) salon to survive.
If you thought the quips were clever in the barbershop, when the personalities of the old crew—including Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) and Terri (Eve)—clash with the newcomers—including Angie, One-Stop (J.B. Smoove), and Draya (Nicki Minaj)—chaos ensues, and the gossip is relentless. And if that wasn’t enough, Calvin also struggles to keep his son Jalen (Michael Rainey Jr.) safe from the neighborhood’s escalating violence—but the shop has a few ideas up its sleeve for that.
Cast
Cedric the Entertainer, Ice Cube, Regina Hall, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve, Nicki Minaj, Anthony Anderson, Common, Jazsmin Lewis, Troy Garity, J.B. Smoove, Lamorne Morris, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Margot Bingham, Deon Cole, Tyga, DeRay Davis, Jamal Woolard, Deborah Ayorinde, Michael Rainey Jr., Diallo Thompson, Renell Gibbs, Felicia O’Dell, Elizabeth Dozier, Anthony Davis
Runtime
112 minutes
Director
Malcolm D. Lee
Writers
Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Producers
George Tillman Jr., Ice Cube, Robert Teitel
Budget
$20 million
Studio(s)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Distributor(s)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Executive Producer(s)
Becki Cross Trujillo, Jeff Kwatinetz, Malcolm D. Lee, Ronald G. Muhammad
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The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
A Monet, a bowler hat, and Pierce Brosnan
Sure, heist movies like Ocean’s Eleven, The Italian Job, and Now You See Me are fantastic, but as a twentysomething movie nut in 1999, I’d never (and still haven’t) seen anything as clever, stylish, and sexy as John McTiernan’s (Die Hard) remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.
The only sequence in the film as mesmerizing as art thief Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan at the peak of his Bond powers), lifting Monet’s San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk from under the noses of the confused guards at The Met, is the ballet-like shuffling of bowler-hat-wearing accomplices he uses to return it. But the film isn’t all about stealing art; it’s a cat-and-mouse love story about a bored billionaire who meets his match in Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), the sultry insurance investigator hired to take Crown down.
While hot-under-the-collar detective McCann (the perfectly cast Denis Leary) is driven crazy by the steamy couple as they circle each other, the master thief is always one step ahead. Norman Jewison’s 1968 original is also on Prime Video, and a Michael B. Jordan version is due in 2027.
Cast
Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary, Frankie Faison, Faye Dunaway, Esther Cañadas, James Saito, Michael Lombard, Fritz Weaver, Charles Keating, Mark Margolis, Ben Gazzara, Bill Ambrozy, Mischa Hausserman, Daniel Oreskes, Dominic Chianese Jr., Ritchie Coster, Gregg Bello, John P. McCann, Gino Lucci, George Christy, Mike Danner, Michael Bahr, Robert D. Novak, Joe H. Lamb
Runtime
113 minutes
Director
John McTiernan
Writers
Kurt Wimmer, Leslie Dixon
Producers
Beau St. Clair, Pierce Brosnan
Main Genre
Thriller
Budget
$48 Million
Studio(s)
United Artists, Irish DreamTime
Distributor(s)
MGM Distribution Co.
Executive Producer(s)
Michael Tadross
Prime Video is kind of an endless well
The world’s second-largest streaming service (by subscribers) has more than enough content to keep your watchlist refreshed indefinitely. You should, however, make sure you’re taking full advantage of its features beyond just streaming—you’re paying for it, you should learn how to use it.
Subscription with ads
Yes, via Prime membership or $9/month
Simultaneous streams
3
Live TV
No
Price
Included with Amazon Prime subscription ($15/month or $139/year) or $9/month standalone
