If you’ve ever found yourself browsing through Amazon and wondering which titles you should be prioritizing, you’re not alone. Even if you know that there are 15 things you want to watch, deciding which one to check out first can be a major challenge. One way to prioritize all of those movies, though, is to determine which ones will become unavailable soon.
Past Lives is set to leave Amazon Prime at the end of April, and it’s worth taking the time to check it out if you haven’t already. The movie follows two Korean children who, over the course of decades, grow apart in spite of having a close bond when they were kids. When they reunite in New York, they begin to reckon with all the ways their lives have pulled them apart. Here are three reasons you should watch it:
It’s a great introduction to its star and director
Past Lives was written and directed by Celine Song, and the movie is remarkably assured given that it’s a first-time feature. Song is someone who will hopefully have a long career ahead of her, and few debuts have been more promising in recent years than this one is.
The same is true of Greta Lee, the film’s star, who is not a fresh face, exactly, but got an opportunity here to show what she’s capable of. As Nora, Lee is heartbreaking and fully realized, a woman who understands that life is full of choices and that each choice forecloses another path.
It’s delicate without ever feeling slow
Past Lives was a breakout hit at Sundance, and with good reason. The film definitely feels like an indie, but it’s absent many of the things that can make Sundance movies feel pretentious or dull.
This is a movie that zooms through its story, following characters across decades and through a number of intimate, revealing conversations. It’s a movie that you want to crawl inside of and live in, filled with carefully cultivated atmosphere. The movie’s second half, which is set almost entirely in New York, feels like the rare movie that loves the modern iteration of the city.
The movie ends at exactly the right moment
Another thing that those annoying indie Sundance movies almost always struggle to do is end at the right time. Past Lives doesn’t have that problem in the slightest.
The movie ends at a moment of utter devastation, but one that also feels like the perfect culmination of the story it’s been telling the whole time. We understand that these two people have deep feelings for one another, but also that they’re not meant to be together, as tragic as that might be.
Stream Past Lives on Prime Video.