5 Best Amazon Original Movies To Watch On Prime Video After Project Hail Mary

Phil Lord and Chris Miller's "Project Hail Mary" is the biggest theatrical success Amazon has had since the company entered Hollywood. Thanks to the film's robust marketing campaign, blockbuster status, and exceptionally high quality — we called it one of the best sci-fi movies ever in our review — many people have been checking it out at home now that it's available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. If you're one of the people who's still riding that high after watching the movie and looking to keep things going on that same platform, you'll appreciate this list.

Amazon has released dozens of original movies over the past several years, but as is often the case with streamers, you have to dig through a bunch of sludge to find the good stuff. That's where we come in. Instead of keeping you limited to science fiction, we're expanding the scope and providing five great movies from multiple genres that you should check out on Prime Video after you give "Project Hail Mary" a whirl. Whether you're looking for a new Dad Cinema classic, an achingly beautiful romance, or anything in between, this list has you covered.

When I first heard about "Air," I remember thinking, "Really? A movie about the creation of a shoe? How good could this possibly be?" The answer: Pretty darn good! Ben Affleck, who directs and also plays Nike co-founder Phil Knight (in highly entertaining fashion, by the way), crafts a flashy, compelling underdog story about Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), the dying shoe company's basketball talent scout who spots Michael Jordan early and desperately tries to convince him to lend his name to Nike for a new sneaker.

On one level, it feels a little silly for a movie to ask you to root for a corporate behemoth like Nike and a mega-celebrity like Michael Jordan (who is, wisely, barely seen on screen) to sign a contract to work together. But to the film's credit, Damon gives the movie so much heart and heft that you get sucked into the story — his big climactic monologue could go very wrong in another actor's hands, but Damon is able to imbue the speech with an earnestness that really makes you believe it. Plus, the movie manages to tap into some universal truths about knowing your worth along the way, and Viola Davis adds another level of gravitas as Jordan's mother, who is not about to let her son get taken advantage of.

In some ways, George Clooney feels like a movie star from a bygone era. So perhaps it's fitting that he's directed a pair of period-piece sports films that also feel like they're from a time long past. His 2008 football movie "Leatherheads" didn't connect with audiences, but I think 2023's "The Boys in the Boat" is a new classic in the Dad Cinema canon. Though it was made for Amazon, this is the type of movie that would have been running non-stop on TNT or TBS in the 1990s and early 2000s, before streaming upended the way we consume entertainment. There's a classical, meat-and-potatoes approach to the storytelling here — no frills, no excess, just functional storytelling from beginning to end.

The movie tells the true story of the junior varsity crew team from the University of Washington as they embark on an unlikely journey to represent the United States at the 1936 Olympics.

"What I loved about this film is it has such an old school film quality to it," star Joel Edgerton told me when I spoke with him and Clooney about it at the time. "Not just in the way it looks, beautiful cinematography, and some of the story elements and the romance is very old Hollywood movie romance, but even in the cadence of the dialogue. One of the things we talked about early on is taking away a lot of the air and things out of these exchanges so there's a real rhythm to it that conjures up that feeling of watching an old movie, too."

Regina King, who won an Oscar for her heart-wrenching performance in Barry Jenkins' modern classic "If Beale Street Could Talk," stepped behind the camera soon afterward to direct this movie, which is based on "Soul" director Kemp Powers' 2013 stage play. The story is a fictionalized version of the time when cultural titans Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) hole up to celebrate in a Miami hotel room after one of Ali's boxing victories in 1964, and in this version of events, their easygoing hang-out session eventually transforms into a debate about how they can make the most impact in the civil rights movement.

That's heavy subject matter, but it's not all doom and gloom. There's a jubilance to some of their interactions amid moments where it feels like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, and while the movie does show contentious arguments, it's clear these men all respect each other a great deal. And holy cow, some of these performances are absolute stunners. Years later, I still think about Leslie Odom Jr.'s moving, powerhouse rendition of "A Change is Gonna Come." Pretty impressive for a feature directorial debut.

If you missed this movie during the early days of the pandemic, now's a good time to catch up with it. Riz Ahmed, who has been fantastic in everything from "Nightcrawler" to "Rogue One," is next-level great here as Ruben Stone, a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing and has to learn how to live his life in a totally different way than he anticipated. It's a movie about rebuilding, self-acceptance, and self-love — themes at the core of the human experience that will resonate forever. 

Paul Raci is wonderful as Ruben's patient and kind-hearted guide into the world of American Sign Language, and Olivia Cooke, who has since blown up thanks to her work on HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel series "House of the Dragon," plays Ruben's co-dependent girlfriend, who makes a tough decision that she knows will ultimately be the best thing for him. And from a technical perspective, this movie is astonishing; the way it utilizes sound design to put you in Ruben's perspective results in a wholly immersive experience that gives you a stylized glimpse of what this situation might actually be like.

"Sylvie's Love" is another entry on this list that's so classical, it feels like it comes from another era. Released in 2020 but set in the late 1950s and early 1960s in New York City, the story follows an aspiring TV producer named Sylvie (the always-great Tessa Thompson) as she falls in love with an up-and-coming saxophone player named Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha). The two actors have legitimately sexy chemistry together, which sadly is a rarity these days, and their passion and longing for one another is so hot, the screen practically sizzles. The lush cinematography and quietly confident filmmaking from director Eugene Ashe make the experience of watching this a full-blown pleasure, even when the story occasionally stumbles.

Over the past six years, as I've been watching Turner Classic Movies and catching up with a swooning Ingrid Bergman romance or a yearning Cary Grant love story, I've been tempted to trot out the familiar old saying, "They don't make 'em like this anymore." But "Sylvie's Love" proves that sentiment wrong — they actually do still make 'em like that, but you may just have to dig a little further than usual to find them.