Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime Video NZ: February 2025

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video’s New Zealand library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top picks: TV

Clean Slate: Season 1 (February 6)

From sitcom auteur Norman Lear, this invigorating and warm new show has a big challenge ahead of itself. Laverne Cox stars as transwoman Desiree, who surprises her family by coming home to her small town post-transition, and must navigate the expectations and well-meaning bigotry of dad Henry (the effortlessly funny George Wallace). The trailer pitches the show as a perfect meeting of heartfelt, forward-thinking values and robust good humour, with none of Henry’s misgendering or confusion played for empty boomer “how many genders are there these days anyways?” laughs. Arriving in the wake of Trump rolling back protections for queer and trans people across the US, Clean Slate is brave and likeable programming for right now.

Newtopia: Season 1 (February 8)

Hollywood is never going to tire of the zombie horror subgenre, having already spliced it with every other possible flavour of entertainment. So yes, we’ve had a zom-rom-com before — but perhaps not one as interesting as this new Korean show, which sees a boyfriend and girlfriend trying to reunite in zombie-infested Seoul, after he’s been away dutifully doing his mandatory military service. My idea of a perfect arc would wind up with one part of the couple getting bitten, and the other deciding to get zombified, too, so that they can bum around as undead cuties for a few final episodes. Let’s see how it turns out!

Reacher: Season 3 (February 20)

One of Prime Video’s most popular original titles, this show’s veins are exploding with all-American machismo: following one big guy tackling big crimes. Alan Ritchson will dominate again in the third instalment of Lee Childs’ novel adaptations, this time facing off against an, um, Oriental rug importer? Most exciting, though, is the news that rug guy’s henchman will be played by actor Oliver Richters, notable for his astounding 7’2 height. How will big man Alan Reacher defeat another, somehow bigger man? I don’t need to remind fans to tune in and find out.

Top picks: Movies

The Order (February 6)

Why did we not get the chance to see this new Justin Kurzel movie in cinemas? The Aussie director tackles profoundly American themes in his latest action-thriller, starring Jude Law as a grizzled fed on the trail of Nicholas Hoult’s white supremacist. 2024 was a big one for Hoult, and Kurzel’s period piece has been hailed as his best recent effort, letting the typically modest British actor go for broke as a diabolical crook. Drawn from a 1980s text about real Klan brotherhoods, the movie might illuminate a dark chapter of US history for you. And hey, it might be a devastating and worthy double feature with the movie just below…

Nickel Boys (February 27)

Good movies encourage us to see a world from a character’s point of view: great movies plonk us right into that perspective and let us feel it ourselves. Based on a celebrated novel by Colson Whitehead, this celebrated drama is shot in a first-person perspective, making it impossible not to experience every emotional blow, every harsh glance, every redemptive smile to which our protagonists bear witness. They’re a pair of Black students destined for greatness in 1960s, Jim Crow-era Florida, who must survive the racial abuse of a brutal reform school. With supporting turns from Hamish Linklater, Daveed Diggs and the tremendous Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, the film has already racked up acclaim for its experimental method of telling a vital and important story.

All titles arriving on Prime Video in February

February 1

2 Fast 2 Furious
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fast & Furious
Fast Five
Fast & Furious 6
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The Bourne Identity
Jason Bourne
The Bourne Ultimatum
1923: Season 1