This April, Watch With Us knows the best of the best when it comes to thrillers.
Whether you’re in the mood for a crime procedural, a courtroom drama or a twisty serial killer mystery, you can find exactly what you’re looking for on platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and HBO Max.
We’ve rounded up our top three picks for the best thrillers you can stream right now.
Our first selection is Crime 101, a recently released crime flick starring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Halle Berry.
LA-based jewel thief Mike (Hemsworth) is the best at what he does and always manages to evade capture by the authorities, carrying out heists and escaping by way of the California 101 freeway. While he’s relentlessly pursued by LAPD Detective Lou Lubesnick (Ruffalo), Mike ends up teaming up with a frustrated insurance broker named Sharon (Berry) after his fence, Money (Nick Nolte), replaces Mike with a volatile young criminal named Ormon (Barry Keoghan). But soon Mike finds himself hunted by both Lubesnick and Ormon.
Taking inspiration from LA noir classics like To Live and Die in LA and Heat, Crime 101 is a worthy successor to these great films and has taken all the right cues to create something of its own. The action set pieces are riveting and the rich characterization keeps you hooked until the very end. Ultimately, Crime 101 is the kind of sleek, well-made and intelligent action film that just doesn’t get made anymore.
German author Sandra (Sandra Hüller) has lived with her French husband Sam (Samuel Theis) and their visually impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) at a secluded chalet in the French Alps for a year. When a series of ambiguous incidents leads to Sam being found dead in the snow, having apparently fallen — or jumped — from the top floor, the police question whether Sam’s death was just an accident, a suicide, or if he was killed by his own wife. Sandra is thus taken to court and endures a brutal examination of her troubled marriage and the months that led up to Samuel’s death.
Sharp and precise as the edge of a blade, Anatomy of a Fall is a restrained yet riveting courtroom thriller and family drama that examines marriage, the ambiguity of truth, jealousy and the performance of gender roles. The straightforward yet elegant style of Justine Triet‘s direction is elevated further by Hüller’s completely revelatory performance — together, these two women are working at the top of their game.
If you love the artistic maelstrom of high-stakes gambling in Uncut Gems, then you have to take it all the way back to one of the movie’s primary influences: John Cassavetes‘ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. The film follows low-rent Hollywood cabaret owner Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara), who is as addicted to gambling as he is to having relations with his employees. When Cosmo loses big at an underground casino and can’t pay up to gangster Mort (Seymour Cassel), Mort makes Cosmo an offer: execute a hit on a bookie in exchange for alleviating Cosmo’s debts.
Independent filmmaking legend Cassavetes makes a gangster picture in the way only he knows how, by subverting the gangster genre entirely and focusing on characters over plot, couched in a highly stylized and raw filmmaking style. Cassavetes’ notoriously gritty direction paired with Gazzara’s intense performance creates a film that feels almost too authentic, immersing viewers in the pure chaos of the narrative.
