Movies That Make You Think — Part 28

Five stories about people losing control of the lives they thought they understood: a stoner whose past has been weaponized, a rich New Yorker forced out of his bubble, a true-crime friendship that turns sinister, a politician swallowed by scandal, and a commuter-train flirtation that turns into blackmail.

American Ultra (Prime Video)

Mike Howell thinks he is just a small-town stoner with panic attacks and a dead-end convenience-store job, until CIA assassins arrive and his buried training switches on. The fun is in the collision of pot comedy, spy paranoia, and a surprisingly loyal romance under government fire.

The Longest Week (Prime Video)

A forty-year-old heir gets cut off by his parents, moves in with an old friend, and immediately falls for that friend’s girlfriend. Under the polished Manhattan comedy is a sharper question about privilege, self-invention, and whether charm can survive contact with consequences.

Stolen Baby: The Murder of Heidi Broussard (Netflix)

When Heidi Broussard and her newborn daughter disappear, the search begins with fear and confusion before suspicion turns toward someone painfully close to her. Based on a real case, the movie plays as a true-crime thriller about trust, obsession, and the horror of betrayal hiding inside friendship.

The Runner (Prime Video)

In the aftermath of the BP oil spill, a Louisiana congressman tries to fight for Gulf Coast residents before a sex scandal wrecks his Senate ambitions. Nicolas Cage plays him as a politician caught between public service, private weakness, and the compromises that turn conviction into calculation.

Derailed (Prime Video)

Charles Schine’s routine commute turns dangerous when a chance meeting with Lucinda leads toward an affair, only for a violent stranger to turn their secret into leverage. The thriller keeps tightening around temptation, shame, and the cost of one bad decision becoming a trap.