You don’t need to be subscribed to the best streaming services to gain access to the best movies. Sure, the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and Max offer a great selection of new movies to enjoy, but the best free streaming services boast a surprising number of older titles for your perusal.
Last week’s roundup of the best free movies to stream included Tropic Thunder, Zodiac, and Submarine, and this week’s edition is similarly varied. Below, I’ve highlighted five of the best free movies to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, Amazon Freevee, and other free streaming services in September.
Speak No Evil (Hoopla – leaving soon)
Release date: January 2022
RT Score: 84%
Length: 98 minutes
Director: Christian Tafdrup
Main cast: Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huêt, Karina Smulders
The James McAvoy-led English remake of Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 psychological horror Speak No Evil is currently playing in theaters, but with the Danish original also streaming, for free, on Hoopla right now, you needn’t pay the new film’s entry fee.
Set for the most part in rural Netherlands, this low-budget thriller centers on a Danish family who reconnect with a Dutch couple they met while vacationing in Italy. The reunion quickie turns sour, however, when the couple in question begins acting strangely. To say more would ruin the film’s biggest surprises, but rest assured that Speak No Evil is not one to watch with the kids.
Boyhood (Pluto TV)
Release date: January 2014
RT Score: 97%
Length: 165 minutes
Director: Richard Linklater
Main cast: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater
For all its critical acclaim, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood remains something of an underappreciated – or at least under-watched – cinematic achievement.
Filmed over 11 years (between 2002 and 2013), this coming-of-age drama depicts the childhood and adolescence of a fictional boy, Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane), as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Arquette and Hawke). The plot is simple, and the drama naturalistic, but that only adds to Boyhood’s emotional impact.
Sicario (Tubi – leaving soon)
Release date: May 2015
RT Score: 93%
Length: 121 minutes
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Main cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin. Daniel Kaluuya
Denis Villeneuve needs no introduction. In recent years, the Dune director has become synonymous with grandiose sci-fi epics, but his lesser-hyped 2015 thriller Sicario is no less of a masterclass in top-notch cinematography.
Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin, Sicario (which means “hitman” in Spanish) follows a principled FBI agent government (Blunt) as she accompanies a ruthless government task force on a mission to bring down a powerful Mexican drug cartel. It’s dark, it’s gritty, and it’s leaving Tubi soon, so get watching ASAP.
The Big Short (Hoopla)
Release date: November 2015
RT Score: 89%
Length: 130 minutes
Director: Adam McKay
Main cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt
Adam McKay’s excellent tragicomedy The Big Short is rightly regarded as this generation’s go-to financial crisis biopic, and it’s now streaming, for free, on Hoopla.
Starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, and many more A-listers, the film follows three separate but intertwining stories in the run-up to the 2007 housing market crash. The Big Short is an undeniably entertaining romp through mid-noughties Wall Street culture, but it’s also in equal parts educational and depressing. What more could you want from a mid-week movie?
Platoon (Amazon Freevee – leaving soon)
Release date: December 1986
RT Score: 89%
Length: 120 minutes
Director: Oliver Stone
Main cast: Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker
The first (and best) in a trilogy of Vietnam War films directed by Oliver Stone, Platoon follows a young US Army recruit (Sheen) whose Platoon Sergeant (Berenger) and Squad Leader (Dafoe) have very different ideas about morality and how to conduct a war.
Platoon won Stone his first directing Oscar (as well as Best Picture) at the 1987 Academy Awards, and it continues to rank alongside the likes of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket as one the best Vietnam War movies ever made. As with Sicario on Tubi, this one is leaving Amazon Freevee soon.
For more free streaming coverage, read our recent roundups of the five movies with over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes on Plex, the five movies with over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes on Pluto TV and the three movies on Amazon Freevee with over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.
