It’s about conversations that actually matter.

This isn’t a film about meaningless carousing. It’s also thoroughly entertaining, witty, and exuberant. Her adaptation of Kemp Powers’ stage play is a historical document written to presuppose what conversations these fellows might’ve had in private and away from prying ears, a compelling fiction rooted in reality.

But that doesn’t rob One Night in Miami of the “delight” clause, thanks in no small part to crackling performances by a cast comprising a cadre of exceptional young actors (Eli Goree, Leslie Odom Jr., Aldis Hodge, Kingsley Ben-Adir), and directed with cool confidence by Regina King in her feature debut. Subjects crossing the characters’ lips include, of course, boxing, and women, and rowdiness, but they’re joined by other, more important subjects like Black American identity, American identity, and how the two interact with one another. But the four men are Sam Cooke, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, and most of all Malcolm X the town is actually the Magic City and the specific evening is February 25, 1964, when heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston crossed gloves with Clay and lost his title in an upset. Stars: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom JrĪ barebones summary of One Night in Miami sounds like a dude’s delight movie: Four men out on the town, no attachments to keep them in line, and a limit to their evening revelry that extends skyward. Here are the 50 best movies on Amazon Prime right now:

Not to worry, though: There are plenty of great movies waiting to take their place…we just had to dig them up by battling Amazon’s notoriously terrible user interface. Movies come and go every month on the service, sometimes numbering in the dozens.

And that’s not to mention the counter-intuitive, migraine-inducing browsing, or the service’s penchant for dropping a title unexpectedly only for it to reappear under a different link just as unexpectedly. Amazon Prime is a teeming streaming treasure trove of some of the most esoteric, wonderful and under-seen movies of the past 80 years, though good picks can feel nearly impossible to cull from the sometimes overwhelming glut of weirdly terrible movies buried in Prime’s nether regions.

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