We showed you the new content at Netflix earlier, and now it’s time to turn our focus to Amazon Prime. As November changes to December and 2015 sprints to an end, what fresh treats has the Bezos streaming empire saw fit to offer? The answer: A second season of what might be the best original streaming sitcom yet made, a mob classic, a terrific civil rights biopic, and a quirky art documentary. Check out our featured recommendations, and read on for the full list of this month’s new offerings.
(Also check out what’s new on Hulu this month.)
Selma
Year: 2014
Director: Ava DuVernay
Available: Dec. 19
If Selma can be described in one word, it’s “fiery.” Biopics are typically such rote, thankless exercises in filmmaking that the idea anybody could make one colored with brushstrokes this passionate feels contrary. But there’s no better way to characterize what Ava DuVernay has accomplished in her dramatic chronicle of the 1965 voting rights marches than with flame. Selma burns brightly, succeeding where other films of its type fail by focusing on a moment rather than comporting itself like an origin story. In doing so, it becomes timeless rather than a relic. —Andy Crump
Hoffa
Year: 1992
Director: Danny DeVito
Available: Dec. 1
Here, DeVito shows very little of Jimmy Hoffa’s (Jack Nicholson) undoubtedly complicated internal life. Instead, David Mamet’s script shears all frills from the Teamster President, building his background as an act of myth-making, letting Nicholson’s frightening charm imbue the historic character with enough confidence and grit to make his rise to figurehead believable. With that, Hoffa is a masterclass in tone and narrative economy, translating an impossibly complex series of backroom dealings and class politics into the fairy tales that now inhabit the gray areas of Detroit legend.—Dom Sinacola
Transparent: Season Two
Year: 2015
Creator: Jill Soloway
Available: Dec. 11
This is the incredible story of the Pfefferman clan, led by Maura, formerly Mort (Jeffrey Tambor). After being outed by her eldest daughter, Maura explains that she has spent her entire life dressing up like a man. The series follows her transition into life as a woman, under the gaze of her three adult children—all of whom experience their own emotional changes. With bizarre yet identifiable characters and an incredible storyline, Transparent takes on the institutions of marriage and sexuality, death, race, sex abuse, feminism and religion in the best and most entertaining way possible.—Shannon Houston
Cutie and the Boxer
Year: 2013
Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Available: Dec. 15
Great artists are often forgiven for personal flaws, but such forgiveness usually hinges on success. Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling’s fascinating documentary about Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko, studies the life of an old man who still dreams like he’s 20—and may be either an important mind or a bum. Ushio, who spear-headed the Neo Dadaist movement in the ’60s, is best known for his “boxing paintings,” created by punching the canvas with paint-soaked boxing gloves. Heinzerling combines Noriko’s drawings with contemporary footage to create an honest love story. —Jeremy Mathews
December 1
Something’s Gotta Give
Bedazzled
Hoffa
River of No Return
The Details (2012)
December 9
Meet Me in Montenegro
December 11
Transparent: Season 2
December 12
Interstellar
Tumble Leaf: Season 2
December 15
Cutie and the Boxer
December 19
Selma
December 26
The Gambler
December 27
Pusher (2012)
Stick Man
December 30
Black Beauty (1994)
Curly Sue
Free Willy
Mozart in the Jungle: Season 2