If you’re someone who loves the Oscars, then you’re likely to also be someone who often finds them frustrating. Even the Academy’s most ardent supporters know that this august body does not always get things right, and sometimes they get things very, very wrong.
Thankfully, though, the Academy doesn’t always get things wrong, either. They’ve nominated and awarded plenty of worthy titles over the years, and many of those titles are now available to stream on one platform or another. For this list, we’ve gathered five of the best Oscar-winning films that are available to stream on Amazon Prime for your viewing pleasure.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
You might think that a film about race released in 1967 would feel dated or out of touch, but In the Heat of the Night is anything but. The film follows Sidney Poitier as a Black police detective from Philadelphia who is arrested for murder while in the Deep South. After he proves that he is not the killer, he and the racist sheriff team up to find out who actually committed the crime.
As they do so, they disrupt the hierarchies at work in a small Mississippi town, and offer a vivid portrait of how racial prejudice had infected every part of life in the dDeep South by the mid-1960s.
Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele’s debut feature signaled the emergence of a major new director, and his follow-ups have proven that to be the case. In case you somehow missed it when it came out, Get Out tells the story of Chris, a Black man who visits his white girlfriend’s family for the weekend.
Things seem weird almost immediately, but as Chris’s visit continues to get stranger, he begins to suspect that everything is not what it seems in this ostensibly progressive family. In addition to signaling Peele’s singular voice as a director, Get Out also proved that Daniel Kaluuya (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) was a major talent.
The Untouchables (1987)
Brian De Palma’s retelling of the story of Elliot Ness, the prohibition agent who took down Al Capone, The Untouchables is like an elevated version of every great “team” movie ever made. At its core, the film is about a group of men (led by a pre-Yellowstone Kevin Costner) battling both the considerable power that Capone had amassed and corruption within their own ranks in order to bring a flagrant criminal to justice.
The film’s most famous sequence is undoubtedly the staircase shootout that famously references Battleship Potemkin. Less widely discussed, though, is Sean Connery’s stellar work in a supporting role, for which he won an Oscar.
Women Talking (2022)
A brilliant act of imagination that’s both beautifully performed and remarkably well-written, Women Talking tells the story of a group of women living in a remote religious colony who discover that the men in their community have been sexually assaulting them for years.
After making this discovery, these women are left with a stark choice about how to respond: They can leave the colony, stay and fight, or simply choose to forgive. The conversations that these women have as they move toward a decision are utterly compelling, thanks in large part to a remarkable ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Jessie Buckley.
Witness (1985)
A brilliant movie that has aged like fine wine, Witness follows a Philadelphia detective who must temporarily take shelter in an Amish community in order to protect a young Amish boy who was witness to a murder. The movie’s triumph comes in large part because of the respect it shows for the Amish in terms of both their steadfast beliefs and their basic humanity.
The movie is also aided by one of the best performances of Harrison Ford‘s career in the lead role, and by Peter Weir’s incredible direction. Witness may seem like a strange concept for a movie, but in Ford and Weir’s hands, it’s an all-time classic.
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