You don’t have to leave your house to experience a true cinema masterpiece.
Streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video play host to a plethora of amazing movies, running the gamut on genre, decade and country.
This April, Watch With Us looks to Prime Video for three recently added movies that we believe are true-blue masterpieces.
Our first pick is The Aviator, Martin Scorsese‘s epic biographical drama about the unconventional life of early 20th-century aviation tycoon Howard Hughes.
The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and John C. Reilly.
‘The Aviator’ (2004)
Martin Scorsese directs this ambitious biographical drama about the complicated life of billionaire Howard Hughes (DiCaprio). Hughes was a pioneer in aviation, in addition to being a movie director of films like Hell’s Angels, and The Aviator chiefly takes place between the years of 1927 and 1947. While Hughes succeeds as a film producer and aviation magnate — in addition to being the lover of Hollywood icons like Katharine Hepburn (Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) — he privately battles increasingly all-consuming mental health issues like paranoia and depression.
The Aviator is an absorbing chronicle of a tormented and fascinating man from American history, played to perfection by DiCaprio in his second collaboration with Scorsese. The dynamic direction from the master filmmaker helps to make this unwieldy epic into a kinetic and fast-moving narrative that is simultaneously an intimate character study. Additionally, the detailed period production design and Technicolor cinematography simulation allow The Aviator to be a richly immersive experience.
‘The Game’ (1997)
Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) allows little time for anything other than his work as a successful banker, which hasn’t gone unnoticed by his estranged younger brother, Conrad (Sean Penn). As a way to reconnect with his older brother, Conrad gifts Nicholas a strange present for his 48th birthday — a date that carries negative significance as the age their father killed himself. Conrad gives Nicholas participation in a strange, personalized game experience like no other. Nicholas reluctantly accepts, but he soon finds himself increasingly unable to discern where the game ends and his real life begins.
The Game is kind of like A Christmas Carol, if Ebenezer Scrooge wasn’t visited by three ghosts in order to change his outlook on life, but instead was forced to play an elaborate, life-altering game that blurs the lines between reality and fiction. If you watch the movie, you’ll see what we mean. The Game is one of David Fincher‘s more ludicrous films, but it’s got a constantly entertaining narrative and a great performance from Douglas, who excels both as a stuffy banker and a fearful pawn in a state of paranoia.
‘The Poughkeepsie Tapes’ (2007)
The found footage horror film The Poughkeepsie Tapes is presented as a documentary utilizing interviews with police, FBI officials and a serial killer’s own video evidence of his many horrific crimes. After raiding a house in Poughkeepsie, New York, law enforcement uncovers what amounts to more than 800 videotapes put together by a serial killer named Edward Carver (Ben Messmer). The videos serve as a record of Carver’s crimes, from abduction all the way to post-mortem mutilations. However, Carver is careful not to reveal his appearance on camera.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a deeply disturbing film, with realism from the documentary and found footage styles alongside naturalistic acting that allows the film’s grisly sequences to feel even more chilling. Though the movie features several upsetting scenes, they wouldn’t be quite so scary without the embrace of slow-burn psychological horror. The movie creates an all-too-believable “snuff film” aesthetic that makes the audience feel as if they are watching something that they shouldn’t be.
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