11 movies to check out on Prime Video this July

Ridley Scott’s 2000 sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator won the Oscar for Best Picture while Russell Crowe took home the Academy Award for Best Actor, playing General Maximus Decimus Meridius. A long-planned sequel, scheduled for release in November 2024, co-stars Connie Nielsen, who played Maximus’ former lover and the mother of Lucius in Gladiator. Keep an eye on her as you refresh your memory with a return to the Colosseum circa 180 A.D.

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Cool Hand Luke stars Paul Newman as Luke Jackson, a decorated World War II veteran who drunkenly knocks the tops off a few parking meters and ends up in a prison camp. George Kennedy won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Clarence “Dragline” Slidell. The movie just made its 4K UHD debut in April and it looks extraordinary on disc, so here’s hoping that Amazon streams the new 4K remaster on Prime Video this month. Pro tip: you can check the best available quality of any Prime Video title in the info caption before you click play.

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The neo-Western crime thriller No Country For Old Men, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Josh Brolin plays a Vietnam War vet who finds a large sum of money in the desert, Tommy Lee Jones plays a sheriff, Woody Harrelson plays a bounty hunter, and Javier Bardem is unforgettable (and still unsettling) as a hit man whose weapon of choice is an air-powered bolt pistol.

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James Dean only made three movies during his short but legendary career, so the addition of the classic teen-angst film Rebel Without A Cause costarring Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo to Prime Video is most welcome. The 1955 drama just made its 4K UHD debut in April, so we are optimistic that Prime Video will also stream the new 4K restoration with HDR. If not, that’s no excuse to skip this classic story of teenage alienation that proved it’s tough being a kid in any American decade—even though Dean suffered in iconic, leather-clad style.

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Brian De Palma’s Scarface, starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, turns 40 years old this year. The loose remake of the 1932 film of the same name is about the rise of Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Pacino), who becomes a powerful cocaine kingpin in Miami in the early 1980s. The Oliver Stone-written movie has become a cult classic, is frequently referenced in hip-hop culture, and is now considered one of the greatest gangster movies of all time. “Rush Rush” to stream it on its 40th anniversary and check out Pfeiffer’s iconic style and dance moves, which both still hold up.

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People like to debate which Stephen King adaptation is the best, but there is no argument that The Shawshank Redemption received more Oscar nominations than any other King book-turned-film. Frank Darabont directed the 1994 drama about two convicts (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) who become friends and develop a powerful bond while in prison. Although The Shawshank Redemption didn’t clean up at the box office during its initial run, it has since climbed to near the top of many people’s most-beloved-films-of-all-time list.

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As with Scarface, we’re, like, so stoked that Valley Girl, the 1983 teen rom-com directed by Martha Coolidge, is totally celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Loosely based on Bill Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, Valley Girl stars Deborah Foreman as Julie, the titular rich girl from the San Fernando Valley who starts dating a punk guy (Nicolas Cage) from Hollywood despite the protests of her friends. This rad movie contains New Wave and punk songs from the era and—for better or worse—helped perpetuate uniquely Californian Valley speak across the nation. If nothing else, watch it in tribute to Frederic Forrest, as Julie’s hippie father, who passed away on June 23.

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Do you miss The Golden Girls? Perhaps 80 For Brady will fulfill the need you never knew you had to see four lifelong senior friends (Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field) travel to watch Tom Brady and the New England Patriots play in Super Bowl LI in 2017. Audiences rated the sports comedy directed by Kyle Marvin—in his film directing debut—and written by Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern—who wrote the awesome Booksmart—much higher than critics. So you probably already know if 80 For Brady will be a touchdown on movie night in your home.

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The Portable Door is a fantasy-adventure movie based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Tom Holt, who wrote the J.W. Wells & Co. series. Patrick Gibson plays an intern at the mysterious London firm J.W. Wells & Co., which is headed by a devilish CEO, Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz), who disrupts the ancient magical world by applying modern corporate practices. Summer-movie favorite Sam Neill plays middle manager Dennis Tanner, who helps his boss conjure up trouble. The Portable Door was released theatrically in Australia earlier this year—where it received terrific reviews—and is now available on Prime Video.

Unseen is the directorial debut of Yoko Okumura and stars Jolene Purdy as a gas station clerk named Sam who receives a call from a nearly blind woman named Emily (Midori Francis), who is running from her killer ex-boyfriend in the woods. Emily needs Sam’s eyes while on a video call as she tries to navigate her surroundings and escape her ex in this horror-thriller executive produced by Jason Blum. Unseen is only 76 minutes long, which is a welcome departure from the bloated blockbusters now in theaters.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock At The Cabin stars Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, and Nikki Amuka-Bird. The thriller about a family taken hostage in their vacation cabin by a group of strangers with an apocalyptic mission is one of the better recent additions to Shyamalan’s filmography. Knock At The Cabin was released on disc in May and has been making the rounds on various streaming services before knocking on Prime Video’s door this July.