This weekend, Disney’s big-budget live-action Snow White remake whistles into theaters nationwide. The Rachel Zegler–Gal Gadot movie is aimed primarily at kids, so adults looking for more mature fare may need to stay home to find something that will satisfy them.
Amazon Prime Video has plenty of movies at its disposal. From a rom-com featuring a Saturday Night Live vet and MCU hero to a drama starring one of 2024’s best actresses, these three movies are a bit underrated but still worth streaming.
‘Admission’ (2013)
Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) is an Admissions Officer at Princeton University who has a life that is relatively free of drama. But when she runs into former classmate John Pressman (Paul Rudd) during a recruiting assignment, her life begins to fall apart in the best way possible. Her growing attraction to John causes her to ditch her dead relationship and confront a secret she’s long buried. Can John help her deal with her past while also convincing her their relationship has a future?
Admission isn’t your standard rom-com; things get a bit serious in the third act, and the two leads aren’t who you usually see in a movie like this. But that’s why Admission is worth watching–it’s just different enough to stand out from the crowd.
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It helps that Fey and Rudd have great chemistry as old classmates who still harbor feelings for each other. They make a great pair, and you want them to have their happy ending.
Admission is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
‘Margin Call’ (2011)
Demi Moore staged a great comeback in 2024 with The Substance, but the actress has been quietly killing it for decades. One of her best recent films is Margin Call, an ensemble drama set just as the 2008 financial crisis is about to begin.
Moore plays Sarah Robertson, a risk management officer at an unnamed investment bank in NYC that is about to collapse. It seems the bank is riddled with debt, and any attempt to solve the problem may harm the world’s economy. In a series of frantic, late-night meetings, Sarah and her colleagues must figure out a way out of this mess and how to avoid the inevitable blame and fallout that is about to occur.
With an excellent cast that includes Zachary Quinto, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, and Penn Badgley, Margin Call is the rare thriller that is set in sterile corporate offices and empty Manhattan streets. The financial subject matter can be intimidating, but the film clearly outlines what’s at stake, and why everyone is panicking. The movie offers a fascinating snapshot of a specific time when the world stopped for a brief moment and lives were forever changed as a result.
Margin Call is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
‘Sliding Doors’ (1998)
Have you ever missed a bus or train and wondered what would happen if you caught it just in time? Would your life dramatically change? Would you meet your true love or encounter an untimely end?
Those are the questions that drive Sliding Doors, a romantic fantasy that splits in two as it chronicles what would happen to its protagonist, chic Londoner Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow), if she made her local subway train and if she missed it. In one timeline, she breaks up with her caddish boyfriend, gets a stylish hairdo, and begins a relationship with kindhearted James (John Hannah). In the other timeline, she remains with the cad and never meets James.
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Sliding Doors explores all the possibilities of paths taken and not, and reveals how these two timelines are different and similar to each other. One path is not necessarily better than the other, and the movie seems to argue that no matter what you do, it’s hard to avoid the inevitable.
As Helen, Paltrow is at her ‘90s best, convincingly playing the same woman faced with two different sets of circumstances. The story takes several leaps of faith, but the timeline gimmick works, and the movie ends on just the right note.
Sliding Doors is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
