How does Prime Video do it?
Amazon’s streamer keeps expanding its already impressive digital library by adding one hit after another. The online platform is now home to the six-time Oscar-winning action-drama One Battle After Another, which is scheduled to be added on Saturday, May 23.
That Leonardo DiCaprio-starring movie is already a masterpiece, but Watch With Us has found a couple of other modern classics that are worth adding to your queue.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is just as potent now as it was when it sparked a firestorm of conversation in 1989, while the gory horror classic The Return of the Living Dead might make you swear off meat for the rest of your life.
‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
Is it possible for a movie to already be considered a “masterpiece” only eight months after it was released? In One Battle After Another’s case, the answer is a resounding yes. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, a burned-out former revolutionary who has been hiding from the authorities for nearly two decades. When his 16-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), becomes the target of an old adversary, Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), Bob has to reunite his anti-establishment buddies, the French 75, to stop Lockjaw and save Willa from being killed.
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Loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie imagines an America ruled by secret societies and a fascist government. Mixing action, satire and drama, the movie paints a rich portrait of a country still divided by class warfare and racial tensions, yet populated with citizens who hope and work for a better future. Anderson’s direction is superb, with the car chase in Borrego Springs, California, already a classic worthy of comparison to Bullitt and The French Connection, while the performances from Penn, Infini, and three-time Oscar winner Penn are vivid and heartbreaking. Years from now, when people want to see what 2025 looked and felt like, they’ll watch One Battle After Another.
‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)
It’s summertime in Brooklyn, and it’s already too hot for Mookie (Spike Lee). He’s a twentysomething pizza deliveryman for Sal (Danny Aiello), an Italian American whose clientele is mostly Black. That doesn’t prevent him and his son, Pino (John Turturro), from showing contempt for the community that helps them thrive. As the temperature rises, so do the uneasy tensions between the diverse communities that live side-by-side. When a shocking act of violence sends everyone over the edge, Mookie, Sal and the rest of the neighborhood will never be the same again.
Do the Right Thing was recently named the best movie of the 1980s, and we won’t argue with that. Dramatic, funny, thrilling, shocking and sad, it’s the rare movie that transcends all genres and perfectly captures a moment in time that we’re still experiencing today. In addition to the fantastic writing and directing by Lee, the movie boasts knockout performances from Aiello, Bill Nunn, Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez as Mookie’s live-wire baby mama. Do the Right Thing is the rare masterpiece that feels alive every time you watch it.
‘The Return of the Living Dead’ (1985)
When toxic gas is accidentally released from an old Army canister in Louisville, Kentucky, all hell breaks loose — and the dead rise from their graves to feast on brains, brains and more brains. A group of teens is stuck in a cemetery when these zombies come a-calling, and they have to survive the night with few resources, an acid rain storm and a growing horde of the undead chasing them. How do you kill what’s already dead? That’s the question they’ll all have to answer if they’re going to make it out alive.
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The Return of the Living Dead has nothing to do with George A. Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead franchise, save for some slow-moving zombies and some snarky social commentary. This homage is more violent, though, with some pretty gnarly kills and all sorts of decomposed bodies on display. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially when that organ and others are consumed so vociferously — and so graphically. I can’t think of another horror film that mixes such macabre humor, shocking violence and blunt nihilism as The Return of the Living Dead, which makes it the rare masterpiece you probably never want to watch ever again.
