The 14 best movies to watch for free on YouTube right now

There are a ton of streaming companies to select from these days. There’s arguably by no means been a greater time to observe film from the consolation of your property, with platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Max, Criterion Channel, and extra providing a cornucopia of latest releases and basic titles each month.

YouTube occurs to be considered one of these. Regardless of not getting almost the identical quantity of consideration as these aforementioned companies with regards to film libraries, YouTube truly has wealth of nice motion pictures which might be accessible to (legally) stream without spending a dime.

We’ve combed via the platform’s library of accessible titles to carry you the perfect free motion pictures on YouTube. Let’s dive in and see what they’ve to supply!

10 Issues I Hate About You

Picture: Touchstone Footage

Director: Gil Junger
Forged: Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

There are excess of 10 issues to like about this quintessential teen romantic comedy. A soundtrack stuffed with earworms. Breakout roles for Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Cameos from the bands Letters to Cleo and Save Ferris. And all of it in a contemporary Shakespeare retelling.

Cameron (Gordon-Levitt) falls for Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), however her overprotective father received’t let her begin courting earlier than her proudly outcast sister, Kat (Stiles), does. Lovelorn Cameron hires secretly delicate dangerous boy Patrick (Ledger) to win Kat’s coronary heart, however what occurs when everyone within the film catches emotions? Expertise the cream of the crop of ’90s teen motion pictures and watch 10 Issues I Hate About You. —Susana Polo

The Darkish Crystal

Picture: Lions Gate Residence Leisure

Administrators: Jim Henson, Frank Oz
Forged: Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw

Jim Henson is understood for puppeteering, however to be into movie puppeteering in any respect, you’ve received to be fairly open to out-there filmmaking. It doesn’t get extra “on the market” than leaping from puppet-driven musical comedies to an unique fantasy movie the place half the forged speaks a constructed language and there aren’t any human characters in any respect. Yeah, the Skeksis language performed so poorly in check screenings that the traces have been redubbed in English, however you get the purpose.

The story of Jen the Gelfling’s quest to heal the Darkish Crystal and stop the merciless Skeksis from ruling the world perpetually was a product of Henson’s post-Muppet ambitions of proving that movie puppetry could possibly be a real medium, not merely a novelty. Is The Darkish Crystal good? That’s a sophisticated reply. Is it the product of an extremely expert manufacturing, led by a once-in-a-generation inventive expertise, that would not be made as we speak? That’s sure. —SP

Alien

Picture: twentieth Century Studios

Director: Ridley Scott
Forged: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright

Alien’s greatness most likely doesn’t have to be restated. However even when you know the way good it’s, or assume you’ve seen it loads of instances, you most likely owe this Ridley Scott masterpiece a rewatch. It’s the sort of film that miraculously builds by itself legacy with every subsequent viewing, and solely grows in impressiveness with every passing 12 months.

So rewatch Alien once more. Evaluate each aspect of the film in opposition to one thing sci-fi movies (or any style, for that matter) have completed since, and marvel at how far forward Alien comes out. Within the almost 45 years since that film was launched, no movie has come near matching how properly it communicated the thought of being trapped in area with one thing extra horrible than you knew may exist. No forged has ever had such good grizzled-trucker vitality or crackly faces. It’s straightforward to have a look at motion pictures from the Nineteen Seventies and say they don’t make ’em as we speak like they used to, and it’s true. Nevertheless it’s additionally true that nobody earlier than or since has ever made ’em like Alien, and we must always all most likely admire that slightly extra typically than we do. —Austen Goslin

Willow

Picture: Buena Vista Residence Leisure

Director: Ron Howard
Forged: Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Warwick Davis

It could appear inconceivable now, however there was a time when Star Wars was new, and Hollywood was dying to do extra stuff prefer it. Enter George Lucas and his buddy Ron Howard, who stated: Let’s do Star Wars for medieval fantasy.

The end result, Willow, is a loosely structured fantasy journey comedy with cutting-edge particular results that’s enjoyable for the entire household (give or take a few black magic scenes that completely seared into the brains of younger viewers). Star Wars’ Warwick Davis performs the titular hero — a hapless however hopeful basically-a-Hobbit — on a quest to save lots of a child from an witch, with the assistance of himbo swordsman Madmartigan, in perhaps Val Kilmer’s most pleasant function.

Willow is, frankly, phenomenally foolish, but in addition phenomenally enjoyable. There’s a magic wand and a fairy queen and a sorceress who’s been become a sort of Australian possum. Give it a watch. —SP

Silence

Picture: Paramount Residence Leisure

Director: Martin Scorsese
Forged: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano

Of all Martin Scorsese’s many terrific movies, it’s arduous to not really feel that his 2016 adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence is considered one of his most private and vital. The movie follows two Jesuit clergymen, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), on a mission to seek out one other priest who is alleged to have renounced his religion in Seventeenth-century Japan. On the time, Christians within the nation have been largely pressured into hiding on the threat of torture and dying, making the clergymen’ journey significantly troublesome.

Whereas the film serves as an enchanting take a look at this era in Japan, it’s much more affecting as a crisis-of-faith film for Rodrigues. Garfield’s efficiency is totally haunting, as we see Rodrigues slowly lose not simply his religion in God, however in the whole lot he’s ever stood for or identified himself to be. Garfield communicates all of this ache principally with out dialogue, with a relentless conflict of expressions on his face and in his eyes between his religion and his despair. All of this makes Silence really feel like Scorsese’s biggest assertion on religion but — significantly spectacular when you think about that he made it in his sixth decade as a filmmaker. —AG

Heathers

Picture: Cinemarque Leisure/Anchor Bay Leisure

Director: Michael Lehmann
Forged: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty

Michael Lehmann’s basic 1989 darkish comedy about fixing poisonous highschool dynamics by way of homicide seems much more arch, mannered, and excessive now than it did again in its day, however it’s nonetheless a ridiculously enjoyable film, stuffed with memorable one-liners, cinematography that pops off the display, and acquainted faces of their very younger days. Christian Slater’s career-long Jack Nicholson impression has by no means been extra pronounced than it’s right here. And after so a few years of Stranger Issues, it’s fascinating to revisit Winona Ryder from the period the place her signature transfer was blasé teen angst as a substitute of agonized mother angst. The dialogue has aged a bit, however the central conceits — that top faculty kinda sucked for many of us, and that folks are usually big hypocrites about how they keep in mind the lifeless — nonetheless land solidly, and with quite a lot of laughs. —Tasha Robinson

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Picture: Common Footage Residence Leisure

Administrators: Kelly Asbury, Lorna Prepare dinner
Forged: Matt Damon, James Cromwell, Daniel Studi

For those who don’t care about this film, I don’t care about you. It is perhaps a distinct segment take, however I really like an animal film that doesn’t make the animals speak with bizarre humanoid lips. Spirit is the story of a wild horse who’s taken into captivity by American settlers within the pre-1900s western U.S., and it’s liable for about one-third of my persona.

Voiced by Matt Damon, Spirit is endlessly compassionate and crammed with spunk. His journey to attempt to escape captivity and return to his horse spouse is fraught with bodily abuse that mirrors the way in which the settlers abuse the land out west, however Spirit by no means loses his drive. The movie paints the settlers as evil and oppressive, and represents the Lakota man who takes him in as secure and respectful of his wildness — aka, it’s correct.

This film got here out after I was 7 years previous, and I keep in mind sitting within the theater, quietly weeping for maybe the primary time in my life. I wasn’t having a meltdown or a mood tantrum. I used to be going via the very actual vary of feelings the film evokes — concern when Spirit will get caught for the primary time, rage when he’s branded, pleasure when he learns to like driving, deep pleasure when he’s reunited along with his horse child mama, some mix of grief and anger on the realization that this example occurred to a lot of real-life horses.

Watch it along with your youngsters or watch it alone, and simply don’t assume too arduous about how cringey the unique Hans Zimmer songs are. —Zoë Hannah

13 Hours: The Secret Troopers of Benghazi

Picture: Paramount Residence Leisure

Director: Michael Bay
Forged: John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Max Martini

Michael Bay’s Benghazi film by no means actually received a good shake. Round its launch, Republican politicians have been nonetheless utilizing the 2012 Benghazi assaults as a weapon in opposition to presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State on the time of the assaults. Due to that, the film received written off by many as a consequence of claims that it was nothing greater than Republican propaganda. Nevertheless, almost a decade faraway from that context, it’s a lot simpler to suit the superb 13 Hours into the bigger arc of themes Bay has spent his total profession chasing: Establishments of energy care extra about guidelines and norms than they do about human lives, and to save lots of lives, it’s as much as people to interrupt these guidelines.

Past the morals of the film, nevertheless, 13 Hours is simply completely terrific, thrilling filmmaking. Bay mainly turns the film into his personal private model of the John Carpenter basic Assault on Precinct 13. What which means in observe is that Bay offers us about 40 minutes of debate in regards to the politics of Benghazi, the questionable U.S. presence in Libya as a destabilizing power for its authorities, and the indefensibility of the U.S. bases there. The opposite 100-ish minutes of the film’s run time are then devoted to among the most expertly filmed firefights ever placed on movie, the place pressure comes via in waves and characterization is constructed fantastically within the temporary quiet moments between gunshots. —AG

Do the Proper Factor

Picture: Common Footage

Director: Spike Lee
Forged: Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, Giancarlo Esposito

For those who’re American, this film is required viewing. Do the Proper Factor, a Spike Lee joint, makes you are feeling the whole lot it replicates on display — the warmth gathering on the concrete of a Brooklyn avenue, the stress between a Black man and his neighborhood racists, the enjoyment of a summer time block occasion with glorious music, the perpetual grief of police violence in opposition to Black Individuals.

It’s no straightforward watch. The story facilities on racial tensions between white police, Italian neighbors, and Black neighbors in Nineteen Eighties Brooklyn, however the tone isn’t overly critical. As an alternative, Lee makes use of moments of humor and pleasure to underscore the a number of tragedies of the movie, and the ending doesn’t tie issues up properly — in actual fact, it leaves you (or me, a white individual) with a pit in your abdomen that received’t go away till you begin protesting within the streets. And that’s factor. In any case, the movie is (desperately, pleadingly) telling you to do the fitting factor.

However there’s a boatload of advantage to this movie as a movie, along with its advantage as a required textual content to understanding race relations within the U.S. Like each different Spike Lee film, the cinematography is unmatched, along with his signature high-contrast colours and wacky, wide-lens, canted-angle photographs to actually seize the vibe of the late ’80s. The performing from Lee himself, Giancarlo Esposito, and Rosie Perez stands out, and the music is known —significantly Public Enemy’s “Struggle the Energy,” which they wrote for the movie. —ZH

Godzilla

Picture: The Criterion Channel

Director: Ishirō Honda
Forged: Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata

For those who haven’t seen the unique 1954 Godzilla, it may be an actual shock how philosophical and principled it’s, and the way little of it’s dedicated to a large rubber-suit monster stomping on Tokyo. (Although there actually is a few of that!) Like so many franchise starters, the primary Godzilla is far more sophisticated and nuanced than many of the followers that targeted in on the kaiju fantasy motion. It’s properly value watching Ishirō Honda’s basic about conflict, weapons, humanity, and the value of technological progress, simply to see the place this story began, understand the way it’s mutated, and admire how completely different Japan’s model of Godzilla has all the time been from America’s model. —TR

Prepare to Busan

Picture: Nicely Go USA Leisure

Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Forged: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok

Zombies. Trains. South Korean political commentary. What else do you want from a horror-action-thriller?

Not like Snowpiercer, the different scary practice film out of South Korea, Prepare to Busan is a extremely enjoyable watch. That isn’t to say it received’t hit you within the coronary heart, although — the story follows a frankly shitty father as he makes an attempt to be much less of a shitty father by bringing his daughter to see her mom in Busan on her birthday. Sadly for them each, a zombie assaults the practice and thus begins a zombie apocalypse that performs out throughout the practice vehicles.

It’s a grasp class in locked-room storytelling, with loads of the humorous and stunning components which have grow to be endemic to Korean movie. Finally, you’ll watch the principle character develop out of his tendency to disappoint his household. Extra importantly, you’ll watch him struggle a bunch of well-CGI’d zombies. It’s a terrific first foray into Korean movie in case you’re new to it, and a basic deserving of countless rewatches in case you’ve already seen it. —ZH

Woman Chook

Picture: A24

Director: Greta Gerwig
Forged: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts

Within the wake of Greta Gerwig’s box-office buster Barbie, it’s a wonderful time to revisit her earlier, extra delicately planed, however simply as emotionally engaged work — significantly Woman Chook, her coming-of-age film starring Saoirse Ronan as an adolescent looking for her personal id amid her relationship together with her mom. Studying a point-by-point plot abstract makes Woman Chook sound mundane and scattershot, however the wistful, generally dryly hilarious, generally heartbreaking means Ronan performs the title character holds all of it collectively. This one’s a slice of life that looks like actual life — and like an arch, straight-faced comedy on the identical time. —TR

Whole Recall

Picture: Artisan Leisure

Administrators: Paul Verhoeven
Forged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone

I’ll by no means neglect the primary time I watched Whole Recall as a toddler. The sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pained expression as he wrenched an outsized monitoring system out of his nostril canal fascinated me virtually as a lot because the sight of his eyes coming out of his face on Mars haunted my sleepless childhood nights. Its macabre sensible particular results apart, Whole Recall stays an irrefutable banger of a sci-fi motion flick that also holds up greater than three many years because it was first launched.

The fact-blurring romp a couple of salt-of-the-earth building employee who might or might not be a Martian undercover agent is packed to the brim with explosive motion sequences, weird satirical world-building, and unbelievable performances. For those who haven’t seen Whole Recall but, don’t fear — you will have. You simply don’t keep in mind it; you’re truly a Martian undercover agent whose thoughts was erased since you received too near the reality. That is all a simulation. I’m speaking to you from the actual world. I’m simply kidding… or am I? —Toussaint Egan

True Grit

Picture: Paramount Residence Leisure

Administrators: The Coen brothers
Forged: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

My father likes Westerns. Loads. To this present day, I’ll typically come down the steps to seek out him watching some nondescript (to me), old-looking movie with two dudes speaking like they’ve one thing of their mouths and swinging pistols round their fingers. Whereas he succeeded in getting me into horror earlier than the age of 10, I can’t say the identical for Westerns — till we discovered ourselves watching the unique 1969 True Grit one night.

The story stars a woman — one thing I’d by no means seen in any of the John Wayne motion pictures my dad preferred — and she or he was competent, courageous, and on a mission to avenge her father’s dying. What higher film to observe along with your dad?

Nicely, the higher film to observe with my dad got here out a number of years later, when 2010’s True Grit was launched. We watched it collectively as quickly as we may, in theaters, and determined it deserved rave critiques. My opinion stands, having rewatched it a number of instances over the past 15 years. The story is similar as the unique, however this model has Jeff Bridges as a substitute of John Wayne and a 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as a substitute of a 21-year-old Kim Darby. Between the extra life like age of the main actor (the character of Mattie is 14) and the improved cinematography of the remake, the 2010 model of True Grit turned considered one of my favourite motion pictures, and a formative one at that. Whereas the 1969 model is funnier and grittier, the drama of the newer remake is compelling and related with me, a ’90s child, in a means the 1969 model related with my father, a ’60s child. Each are properly value a watch, and each are free on YouTube. —ZH