The Best River Movies

What it's about: At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Cinemax), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Cinemax) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: On his way to Vienna, American Jesse meets Céline, a student returning to Paris. After long conversations forge a surprising connection between them, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him in Vienna. Since his flight to the U.S. departs the next morning and he has no money for lodging, they wander the city together, taking in the experiences of Vienna and each other.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX, HBO & Sundance Now) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: In the deep south during the 1930s, three escaped convicts search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them. On their journey they come across many comical characters and incredible situations. Based upon Homer's 'Odyssey'.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Two boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and form a pact to help him reunite with his lover and escape.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & HBO MAX) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & Starz), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Starz) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Disney+) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A lone prospector ventures into Alaska looking for gold. He gets mixed up with some burly characters and falls in love with the beautiful Georgia. He tries to win her heart with his singular charm.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (IMDb TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi, PlutoTV, PopcornFlix & 1 other), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Fandor, Kanopy & 1 other) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Following the dumping of gallons of toxic waste in the river, a giant mutated squid-like appears and begins attacking the populace. Gang-du's daughter Hyun-seo is snatched up by the creature; with his family to assist him, he sets off to find her.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Hulu, The Criterion Channel & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Cinemax), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Cinemax) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Vudu).

What it's about: Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Match Point is Woody Allen’s satire of the British High Society and the ambition of a young tennis instructor to enter into it. Yet when he must decide between two women - one assuring him his place in high society, and the other that would take him far from it - palms start to sweat and a dark psychological match in his head begins.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (Google Play, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi, PopcornFlix & Shout Factory TV), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Fandor, Kanopy & 1 other) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: The just out of college effete son of a no-nonsense steamboat captain comes to visit his father whom he's not seen since he was little.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi, PlutoTV & PopcornFlix), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Epix & Kanopy), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: A true-life drama in the 1920s, centering on British explorer Col. Percy Fawcett, who discovered evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization in the Amazon and disappeared whilst searching for it.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Sayra, a Honduran teen, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra's life collides with a pair of Mexican gangmembers who have boarded the same American-bound train.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional three thousand dollars in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game that begins in a few days, so he joins forces with a woman gambler with a marvellous southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Hulu) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: In 1981, an enthusiastic young adventurer follows his dreams into the Bolivian Amazon jungle with two friends and a guide with a mysterious past. Their journey quickly turns into a terrifying ordeal as the darkest elements of human nature and the deadliest threats of the wilderness lead to an all-out fight for survival.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: When governments fail to act on behalf of captive missionaries, ex-Green Beret John James Rambo sets aside his peaceful existence along the Salween River in a war-torn region of Thailand to take action. Although he's still haunted by violent memories of his time as a U.S. soldier during the Vietnam War, Rambo can hardly turn his back on the aid workers who so desperately need his help.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Cinemax), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Cinemax) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: A deadly airborne virus finds its way into the USA and starts killing off people at an epidemic rate. Col Sam Daniels' job is to stop the virus spreading from a small town, which must be quarantined, and to prevent an over reaction by the White House.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Philo, fuboTV & AMC Premiere), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (AMC) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Two convicts—a white racist and an angry black man—escape while chained to each other.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (Vudu).

What it's about: Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PlutoTV) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Two men in 1930s Mississippi become friends after being sentenced to life in prison together for a crime they did not commit.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & HBO) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Jim Craig has lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. The death of his father forces him to go to the low lands to earn enough money to get the farm back on its feet. Kirk Douglas plays two roles as twin brothers who haven't spoken for years, one of whom was Jim's father's best friend and the other of whom is the father of the girl he wants to marry.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Offbeat Civil War drama in which a wounded Yankee soldier, after finding refuge in an isolated girls' school in the South towards the end of the war, becomes the object of the young women's sexual fantasies. The soldier manipulates the situation for his own gratification, but when he refuses to completely comply with the girls' wishes, they make it very difficult for him to leave.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Ben Quick arrives in Frenchman's Bend, MS after being kicked out of another town for allegedly burning a barn for revenge. Will Varner owns just about everything in Frenchman's Bend and he hires Ben to work in his store. Will thinks his own son, Jody, who manages the store, lacks ambition and despairs of him getting his wife, Eula, pregnant. Will thinks his daughter, Clara, a schoolteacher, will never get married. He decides that Ben Quick might make a good husband for Clara to bring some new blood into the family

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & The Criterion Channel) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: When rogue stealth-fighter pilot Vic Deakins deliberately drops off the radar while on maneuvers, the Air Force ends up with two stolen nuclear warheads -- and Deakins's co-pilot, Riley Hale, is the military's only hope for getting them back. Traversing the deserted canyons of Utah, Hale teams with park ranger Terry Carmichael to put Deakins back in his box.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Hulu & Epix), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: A shy boy is unable to make friends in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1942, until his parents give him a terrier puppy for his ninth birthday. The dog, which he names Skip, becomes well known and loved throughout the community and enriches the life of the boy, Willie, as he grows into manhood. Based on the best-selling Mississippi memoir by the late Willie Morris.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: As bareknuckled boxing enters the modern era, brash extrovert Jim Corbett uses new rules and dazzlingly innovative footwork to rise to the top of the top of the boxing world.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: During the Second World War, Eugene enlists in the US Army during the last year of the War and is sent to basic training in Biloxi Mississippi. There he must live with a variety of fellow soldiers while enduring the whims of a mentally unstable drill sergeant.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (HBO MAX & HBO) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Young scout Breck Coleman leads a wagon train along the dangerous trail to Oregon as he tries to get the affection of the beautiful pioneer Ruth Cameron and plans his revenge on the harsh scoundrels who murdered a friend of his in the past.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Bob Muldoon and Ruth Guthrie, an impassioned young outlaw couple on an extended crime spree, are finally apprehended by lawmen after a shootout in the Texas hills. Although Ruth wounds a local officer, Bob takes the blame. But four years later, Bob escapes from prison and sets out to find Ruth and their daughter, born during his incarceration.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Kirk Douglas stars as the determined leader of a band of Tennessee fur trappers who set out to explore the uncharted Missouri river in 1830 and find them selves battling American Indians.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $1.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: While on a family vacation, rafting expert Gail takes on a pair of armed killers while navigating a spectacularly violent river.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (fuboTV & Showtime), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Showtime) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A terrifying tale of survival in the mangrove swamps of Northern Australia.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi & PlutoTV), stream on a subscription service (Hoopla) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Vudu).

What it's about: Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: A dashing Mississippi river gambler wins the affections of the daughter of the owner of the Show Boat.

Where to Watch: Available to rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: Five friends embark on a 1,200 mile journey along the US-Mexico border from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico to learn first hand what effect a border wall will have on the natural landscape and the wild animals roaming the land.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Starz), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Starz) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Three sisters with quite different personalities and lives reunite when the youngest of them, Babe, has just shot her husband. The oldest sister, Lenny, takes care of their grandfather and is turning into an old maid, while Meg, who tries to make it in Hollywood as a singer/actress, has had a wild life filled with many men. Their reunion causes much joy, but also many tensions.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play, Prime Video & 3 others). Coming soon to Hulu on January 31st, 2021 (PST).

What it's about: Chinese narco-cops take their mission to the Golden Triangle following the Mekong River massacre of innocent fishermen by the region's drug lord.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Hoopla & Hiyah) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Present days. A man and his companion go on a journey to cremate the dead body of the former beloved wife, on a riverbank in the area where they spent their honeymoon.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Fandor & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).