3 great Amazon Prime Video movies to watch instead of the 2024 Oscars

Jason Struss
·3 min read
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People stand around a table in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honors Among Thieves."
Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures / Paramount Pictures

You can be a movie fan and not want to watch the 2024 Oscars. It’s been a long awards season, and you probably have a good idea by now who is going to win and don’t care what they wear on the red carpet.

If that’s the case, and you’re looking for some good movies to watch, just head over to Amazon Prime Video. It has tons of movies, but we’ve selected three that are guaranteed to be a good time. None of them are past Oscar nominees, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth a watch.

Need more Oscar recommendations? Check out how to watch the 2024 Oscars for free, 2024 Oscar predictions, 10 biggest Oscar snubs ever, 10 best Oscar-winning movies ever, 10 most Oscar-nominated movies ever, and 5 great Oscar-winning movies on Amazon Prime Video.

Five Nights At Freddy’s (2023)

$ animals look on in Five Nights at Freddy's.
Patti Perret / Universal Pictures

Last fall’s surprise hit is now Amazon Prime Video’s biggest licensed movie in March 2023. Five Nights At Freddy’s introduced non-gamers and the TikTok generation to Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, murderous animatronic creations that are inactive for most of the day, but come alive — and kill — after midnight.

Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), the guy who was just hired as a security guard for the overnight shift at the defunct restaurant, has to deal with all this mayhem until the sun rises. Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t the best movie ever made, but as a PG-13 horror movie, it’s pretty decent. It’s about as far as you can get from the 2024 Oscars.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

A female and male character duck for cover in a scene from "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves."
Aidan Monoghan / Paramount

Yes, even big-budget fantasy epics can become instant cult classics if they are wrongly ignored in movie theaters. That’s what happened to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which didn’t get all the love it deserved last year. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez star as a pair of close friends, Edgin and Holga, who are betrayed by their former associate, Forge Fitzwilliam (Wonka‘s Hugh Grant). After escaping prison, Edgin and Holga team up with amateur sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), Holga, and wide-eyed Doric (Sophia Lillis) to stop Fitzwilliam and his quest for power.

Honor Among Thieves sports a big budget and nifty special effects, but it’s the charming camaraderie between the cast, particularly Pine and Rodriguez, that makes the movie so winning. Just don’t expect a sequel anytime soon.

Memento (2000)

Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby showing a polaroid to the camera in Memento.
Summit Entertainment

Memento may be almost a quarter-of-a-century old, but it still packs a visceral punch. Christopher Nolan‘s brilliantly twisted story is told out of order to mimic the short-term amnesia of the movie’s haunted lead protagonist, Leonard Shelby. Leonard is out to avenge the murder of his wife, which proves to be difficult for a number of reasons. The main problem is that Leonard can’t make any new long-term memories, which is why his body is covered with tattoos designed to lead him to his wife’s killer.

Because Leonard’s short-term memory is constantly resetting itself, each time he meets Natalie (The Matrix‘s Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), two people who may hold the clues to his wife’s murder, he’s unsure of who he can trust. Leonard can’t even trust himself, as his memories may be playing tricks on him. Is his wife really dead? And if so, what part did he have to play in it? Memento constantly keeps you guessing, and the ending remains haunting even in 2024.