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This year, indie filmmaking found itself enthralled with a 17th century witch, a strange dystopic future where people get turned into animals, and the farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. This fall, it’ll be Shia LaBeouf’s rattail, Annette Bening as a 1970s feminist, and what may end up being the most critically acclaimed movie of the year. What ends up binding together movies like The Witch, The Lobster, Swiss Army Man, Moonlight, 20th Century Women, and American Honey? That’d be independent film studio A24, which is currently making the kinds of waves that we last saw during the ’90s run of Miramax. In other words, they’re making the most exciting movies in the indie game; the A24 label is becoming the closest thing to a seal of quality that exists in the industry.
At last year’s Academy Awards, Room became the first A24 movie to get a Best Picture nomination, and with the Best Actress win for Brie Larson, a Best Visual Effects victory for Ex Machina, and a Best Documentary Feature win for Amy, it took home more Oscars than any studio that wasn’t Fox or Warner Bros., and they were the only studio to have three separate films win awards.
In its four years of existence, A24 has created the strongest brand in independent film, announcing its presence as loudly as possible with Spring Breakers at the fall festivals in 2012. From that point on, A24 built up a roster of filmmaker-driven indies, drawing established indie successes like Sofia Coppola, Sally Potter, and Noah Baumbach, while at the same time cultivating some of the most exciting new filmmakers of this decade: James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now; The End of the Tour), Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room), Alex Garland (Ex Machina).
This month, A24 is releasing American Honey, the Andrea Arnold-directed, Shia LaBeouf-starring road drama; and Moonlight, the Barry Jenkins-directed movie tracking the coming of age of a young, gay black man. Both of those movies just happen to be among the very best of 2016, with the latter holding an outside chance at Oscar nominations. They’ve also got 20th Century Women, from Beginners director Mike Mills, and in 2017, the action-shootout Free Fire from director Ben Wheatley (High Rise) and starring A24’s Oscar-winning leading lady Brie Larson.
Even better, nearly all of A24’s movies since they started in 2013, are streaming for free on Amazon Prime. And since A24’s entire brand essentially boils down to “quality, daring, exciting independent film,” it makes for a heck of an at-home film festival.
Here’s a quick guide to what A24 has to offer:
Available to Stream for Free on Prime Video:
Under the Skin (2014, director: Jonathan Glazer): Moody, sexy, street-level sci-fi with Scarlett Johansson. [Stream on Prime Video]
Locke (2014, director: Steven Knight): Tom Hardy in a one-man acting showcase. [Stream on Prime Video]
Obvious Child (2014, director: Gillian Robespierre): Jenny Slate romantic-comedy showcase. [Stream on Prime Video]
The Rover (2014, director: David Michod): Post-apocalyptic trek with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson. [Stream on Prime Video]
Life After Beth (2014, director: Jeff Baena): Zombie comedy starring Aubrey Plaza. [Stream on Prime Video]
The Captive (2014, director: Atom Egoyan): Ryan Reynolds and Rosario Dawson in a missing-child thriller. [Stream on Prime Video]
Tusk (2014, director: Kevin Smith): Bizarre creature horror-comedy with Justin Long. [Stream on Prime Video]
Son of a Gun (2014, director: Julius Avery): Crime drama with Ewan McGregor. [Stream on Prime Video]
A Most Violent Year (2014, director: J.C. Chandor): Oscar Isaac in a 1980s crime drama, co-starring Jessica Chastain and David Oyelowo. [Stream on Prime Video]
While We’re Young (2015, director: Noah Baumbach): Intergenerational comedy with Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, and Amanda Seyfried. [Stream on Prime Video]
Ex Machina (2015, director: Alex Garland): Smart and sinister sci-fi, starring Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, and Domhnall Gleeson. [Stream on Prime Video]
Barely Lethal (2015, director: Kyle Newman): Teen spy flick starring Jaime King and Samuel L. Jackson. [Stream on Prime Video]
Slow West (2015, director: John Maclean): Gorgeously photographed western, starring Michael Fassbender. [Stream on Prime Video]
Amy (2015, director: Asif Kapadia): Documentary about Amy Winehouse, her quick rise and sad fall. [Stream on Prime Video]
The End of the Tour (2015, director: James Ponsoldt): Slice-of-real-life biopic of author David Foster Wallace, starring Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg. [Stream on Prime Video]
Dark Places (2015, director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner): Thriller adaptation of another novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, starring Charlize Theron. [Stream on Prime Video]
Mississippi Grind (2015, directors: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck): Road trip/poker movie, starring Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds. [Stream on Prime Video]
Room (2015, director: Lenny Abrahamson): Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son trapped in a single room for years. [Stream on Prime Video]
The Witch (2016, director: Robert Eggers): Puritans get driven out of their community, then tormented by sinister creatures in the woods. [Stream on Prime Video]
The Adderall Diaries (2016, director: Pamela Romanowsky): James Franco as a drugged-out author. [Stream on Prime Video]
Available to Stream for Free on Prime Video with a Showtime Subscription:
Ginger & Rosa (2013, director: Sally Potter): Elle Fanning and Alice Englert as best friends growing in heady 1960s London. [Stream on Prime Video]
Spring Breakers (2013, director: Harmony Korine): Trash paradise, as partying co-eds get caught up in a drugs-and-guns scheme, with James Franco in a show-offy star turn. [Stream on Prime Video]
Available to Rent on Amazon Video:
The Bling Ring (2013, director: Sofia Coppola): Incredible real-life tale of teen burglars, starring Emma Watson. [Rent on Amazon Video]
The Spectacular Now (2013, director: James Ponsoldt): Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley in an incredibly well-drawn teen romance. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Enemy (2014, director: Denis Villeneuve): Jake Gyllenhaal in a brooding mindfuck of a movie, as he’s menaced by what seems to be his doppelganger. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Laggies (2014, director: Lynn Shelton): Keira Knightley gets super aimless and befriends the younger Chloe Grace Moretz. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Krisha (2016, director: Trey Edward Shults): Family drama taken to riveting extremes. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Green Room (2016, director: Jeremy Saulnier): A punk band must fight their way out of a white-supremacist compound, starring the late Anton Yelchin. [Rent on Amazon Video]
The Lobster (2016, director: Yorgos Lanthimos): In a bizarre near-future, single people must find a mate or else get turned into an animal, starring Colin Farrell. [Rent on Amazon Video]
De Palma (2016, directors: Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow): Visionary film director Brian De Palma on his films and career. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Swiss Army Man (2016, directors: Daniels): Paul Dano gets stranded on an island and befriends a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Equals (2016, director: Drake Doremus): Dystopic future where emotions are outlawed, starring Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Into the Forest (2016, director: Patricia Rozema): In the aftermath of a disaster of unspecified origin, sisters Evan Rachel Wood and Ellen Page must survive in isolation. [Rent on Amazon Video]
Morris From America (2016, director: Chad Hartigan): Craig Robinson plays a dad trying to raise a fish-out-of-water son in Germany. [Rent on Amazon Video]
The Sea of Trees (2016, director: Gus Van Sant): The film that received a vocal reception at the Cannes Film Festival, starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts. [Rent on Amazon Video]
