There are so many movies on Amazon Prime Video that it’s tough to cut through the noise. What’s more, you might see one that looks enticing, select it, and discover that you need an add-on channel to watch it. So frustrating! To help you find movies that are worth watching and are available with a base Amazon Prime or Amazon Prime Video subscription, we are constantly doing the research so you don’t have to.
Right now, if you’re in the mood for sci-fi, we have discovered three sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime Video you need to watch in August. There are high-profile movies on this list from both recent years and decades past.
Looper (2012)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has never been better than in this sci-fi action-thriller hailing from Knives Out director Rian Johnson. Also starring Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt, Looper is about contract killers in the present day who travel through time to the future to bring a crime syndicate’s enemies back and have them killed. Why? Thanks to future technology, it’s effectively impossible to kill someone and get rid of the body without being detected. The catch? If a looper happens to survive until 2074, they have to go back in time and allow their younger self to kill them. It’s the only way to keep the syndicate’s operations running.
A mind-bending, captivating movie with an incredible cast, Looper features Gordon-Levitt as the younger version of Joe and Willis as his older self. On its 10th anniversary back in 2022, our writer called Looper one of “the best sci-fi movies in the last 10 years.” He notes that while you need to pay close attention to understand the world-building aspect, it’s “basic enough to be palatable, yet refreshing enough to be enticing.”
Stream Looper on Amazon Prime Video.
Face/Off (1997)
Despite the premise being downright ridiculous and utterly unbelievable, there’s something about John Woo’s Face/Off that just works. That’s largely thanks to the two leads, powerhouse actors from that decade (and beyond) who draw you into the strange yet exciting plot. John Travolta is FBI Special Agent Sean Archer, who gets into a heated situation with terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy (Longlegs‘ Nicolas Cage).
When Castor reveals there’s a bomb in an undisclosed location in Los Angeles that will explode in a few days, then is knocked out and put into a coma, this is where the plot goes beautifully haywire. Sean undergoes an experimental face transplant that gives him Castor’s face and voice so he can try and infiltrate the operation, then locate and stop the bomb from detonating. But wait, it gets even stranger. Troy suddenly awakens with no face and forces the doctor to perform the same surgery on him, giving him Sean’s visage.
Yes, Face/Off is totally weird, but the actors truly embody their characters (plural) as they take on one persona after the other. Face/Off is one of those movies that asks you to truly suspend all belief and just fall right into the story. Cage and Travolta are so good in the lead roles, in fact, that the movie managed to impress critics, something a concept like this might not have been able to pull off had it been any other two actors as the leads. Slant Magazine’s Jake Cole puts it best, noting that Face/Off “immediately dials in on the operatic lunacy of its two leading men.”
Stream Face/Off on Amazon Prime Video.
Night Raiders (2021)
The setting is the year 2044 and it’s a dystopian version of North America. A Cree woman named Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) is trying to save her 11-year-old daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) from the stronghold of the authoritarian military government known as the Regime. So, she joins a resistance movement in hopes that the others can help. But with her daughter seriously injured and running out of time, Niska is racing against the clock. She’s hoping she won’t have to surrender her child as the only means of keeping her alive.
Co-produced in Canada and New Zealand by Taika Waititi, Night Raiders is not just entertainment — it’s also an important allegory of the Indian residential school system. Jason Asenap of Esquire Magazine praises the film and its writer-director Danis Goulet for shining “a light on a raw wound from which Indigenous cultures are still healing.”
Stream Night Raiders on Amazon Prime Video.
