It’s time to say goodbye to 2024. Whether your year was good or bad, you should ring in 2025 on the right note. While some prefer to attend parties or go out, there are others who want to stay in and watch a good movie or two.
I’m one of those people, and if you’re like me, then you’re reading the right article. The following list contains five wildly different movies that have two things in common: They’re fun to watch and are all on Amazon Prime Video. So sit back, relax, and welcome the new year with Hercule Poirot, James Bond, and a team of monster-hunting kids.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
Sometimes, you want to watch a movie set in an exotic locale to escape whatever place you’re currently in. Usually, I turn to two kinds of movies that do this: James Bond action flicks and Agatha Christie mysteries. The latter has seen a revival of late, with Kenneth Branagh helming relatively successful adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. His latest, A Haunting in Venice, is perhaps his best yet, and is a great way to say goodbye to 2024.
Master detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is lured out of retirement by the strange case of Rowena Drake, who is hosting a séance at her lush Venetian palazzo to communicate with her dead daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson). When Joyce Reynolds (Wicked star Michelle Yeoh), the medium conducting the séance, turns up dead, Poirot must find out who among the seance’s guests had the motive and means to commit such a brutal crime.
In addition, Poirot must face the possibility that Alicia is actually haunting her mother and the other guests. What’s real, and what’s simply an illusion? Watch A Haunting in Venice and find out for yourself.
Skyfall (2012)
Some have made the case that Skyfall is the best James Bond movie ever. I’m not one of those people; I’d rank Casino Royale, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Goldfinger higher, and I’d even place The Spy Who Loved Me, Goldeneye, and From Russia with Love over Sam Mendes’ acclaimed, Oscar-winning spy film. (As for Bond films like The Man with the Golden Gun, they are best left unwatched and forgotten.)
But that doesn’t make Skyfall any less impressive; indeed, it’s one of the best action movies of the 2010s, and it’s a testament to the durability of the Bond franchise that it can be so good and still rank seventh on my list of best Bonds. It’s one of the best looking and best acted Bond movies ever, and its action set pieces like the chase in the London Underground are truly amazing to watch.
Daniel Craig is 007, and he’s in a bit of a mood this time around. Presumed dead after a botched mission, he begrudgingly returns to his old job to combat the threat of cyberterrorist Raoul Silva, a former MI6 agent. Unlike most Bond villains, he’s not after James but rather M (Judi Dench), whom he thinks betrayed him by leaving him to die in a mission years ago. Now, Bond must protect M and somehow find a way to track down Silva and capture him before it’s too late.
Quick Change (1990)
Everyone knows Bill Murray is funny, but chances are, most people haven’t seen one of his funniest films. That’s Quick Change, a 1990 black comedy that quickly died at the box office and hasn’t been referenced much since then. Murray stars as Grimm, a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who decides to dress up as a clown and rob a midtown Manhattan bank. Aided by his girlfriend Phyllis (Geena Davis) and best friend Loomis (Randy Quaid), Grimm keeps the police at bay by kidnapping two hostages, who are Phyllis and Loomis in disguise, and escaping with a bag full of cash.
Turns out, robbing the bank was the easy part; it’s getting out of the city that proves to be the problem. The rest of the movie chronicles the trio’s increasingly desperate, and frequently hilarious, attempts to get to the airport and evade the police. Murray, Davis, and Quaid are all in top form here, and the stacked supporting cast featuring Jason Robards, Phil Hartman, Tony Shalhoub, and Stanley Tucci (Conclave) help make Quick Change a memorable comedy of errors.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
When you think of action-adventures heroes, you probably don’t think of Chevy Chase. The Saturday Night Live vet closed out the ’80s on a high note with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and began the next decade with a role that Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson would’ve normally played. In Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Chase plays Nick Halloway, a bored stock analyst in San Francisco whose life is upended when he’s caught in a bizarre accident at a science laboratory.
Now permanently invisible, most people think he’s dead and, much to his dismay, they don’t seem to miss him all that much. The few people who know he’s still alive are Alice Monroe (Blade Runner‘s Darryl Hannah), a love interest who helps him in his quest to find an antidote, and David Jenkins (Jurassic Park‘s Sam Neill), a CIA agent who wants to study Nick and use him as a weapon against foreign adversaries. If Nick resists, David will kill him and dissect his remains.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man was a huge bomb when it was released in 1992, but it deserves a second chance in 2025. Chase is surprisingly effective as a romantic hero with a sarcastic edge, and Hannah is charismatic and winsome as Alice. The movie is directed by John Carpenter, and he shows the same skill at blending sci-fi and action that he used so well in The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China.
The Monster Squad (1987)
Old-school movie monsters are all the rage these days. Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’ moody re-imagining of the Dracula story, is out now in theaters, and Wolf Man will soon be scaring moviegoers in 2025. One movie brought both of those characters together, along with the Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and that was The Monster Squad, a comedy-adventure that owes a big debt to The Goonies.
Young teen Sean Crenshaw forms The Monster Club with his friends Patrick and Horace, rebellious Rudy, adolescent Eugene, and Sean’s kid sister Phoebe to stop Dracula from bringing back monsters from Limbo to take over the world. Some of them break through, but one, Frankenstein’s monster, befriends Phoebe and aids in their quest to stop Dracula and his minions.
The Monster Squad isn’t a serious movie but it is a fun one, and if you’ve ever pretended to slay monsters when you were a kid, you’ll like this movie. It has the very best elements of mid-to-late ’80s kid cinema, with inventive practical effects, a cast full of relatable protagonists, and a sophomoric sense of humor that now comes across as endearing. “Wolfman’s got nards!” indeed.
