I recently signed up to Amazon Prime and as I’d rather not pay anything above the monthly price, I’ve been trawling through the Prime movies and TV on offer. There’s a number of blockbuster and better-known films on the service but if you’re anything like me you’ve probably seen most, if not all of them.

So I figured that it might be useful to start compiling a list of good films to watch on Amazon Prime, ones that come with the basic service. There are loads but to find them you have to really seek them out. Here are some of my finds, and I’m likely to write some more detailed reviews in the future.

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

This is a comic documentary that sees Chris Waitt attempt to interview his ex-girlfriends to find out why they dumped him. It’s an unruly film that never quite delivers but there are some really funny moments that make it a film worth watching.

101 Reykjavik

This black comedy hails from Iceland and follows the story of Hlynur, set within Reykjavik’s vibrant nightlife. Things become complicated when he discovers that he has impregnated a woman – who may be his mother’s lesbian lover.

The Chaser

An ex-cop turned pimp starts to lose all of his girls and he has no idea why. After he sends his last girl Mi-jin on a job he discovers that it was the same place that all the missing girls were sent. Now he has few clues and only twelve hours to find the killer before the killer kills Mi-jin.

Joint Security Area

Directed by Park Chan-wook of Oldboy fame, JSA is a brooding investigative drama set in Korea. A shoot out’s occurred at a North Korean outpost involving a South Korean marine. This threatens peace in the region and a young investigator from a neutral advisory council is sent in to find out the truth. This is a tense military thriller that raises some interesting political points about the nature of the Korean political divide.

Sky Blue

Sky Blue is an anime film set in a troubled future. Conflict threatens to break out on a mining platform between the miners and the company security staff. Set in 2142 the world is divided into two camps. The privileged live Ecoban, a thriving city with clean healthy air. The rest, deemed unworthy of Ecoban live outside, forced to work as diggers.

The atmosphere outside of the city is poisonous and the diggers maintain the healthy eco system in the city by mining carbon toxins that keep the city running. The diggers however are unhappy and threaten a revolution that will destroy Ecoban.

Love Liza

Love Liza is a gentle film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman plays Wilson, a man overcome by grief after his wife’s suicide. This is a touching and heartfelt film with a sombre tone. Wilson is addicted to inhaling petrol fumes – an addiction that causes him more and more pain.

Broken Circle Breakdown

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a film about differences. Elise and Didier fall in love the first time they meet despite the fact that they see the world very differently. Didier likes to talk and Elise prefers to listen but it’s their religious differences that make their romance so intriguing. He’s an atheist and she’s religious and these differences are severely tested when their daughter becomes very ill.

TV

Vikings

Vikings is an action packed TV show about the mythical Ragnar Lothbrok. He leads a powerful group of warrior’s hell bent on raiding England’s relatively undefended lands. This is the History channels first hour-long drama series and the attention to detail marks it out from many TV shows in a similar genre. Part Game of Thrones, Viking’s is exhilarating, and sometimes brutal, TV.

Amazon releases the new episodes as they air so you can keep up to date easily.

The Shield

The Shield is a TV show from the mid noughties based roughly on the LA Rampart Scandal. The narrative follows a group of bent cops that eke out their own form of justice, policing the gangs in a manner lucrative to them. However the further they go down that road the harder it becomes to hide their illegal activities, and the greater the eventual consequences.

The Shield is riveting TV and all six of its seasons are on Amazon Prime.

Californication

Starring David Duchovony (Mulder in the X Files) Californication is a comedy about a writer who always runs into trouble. This comes in many forms; from sex, drugs, or women to a combination of the three. Based loosely on writer Charles Bukowski, Calfornication is a hedonistic trip into the life of one very shallow writer.