Like many things these days, going to the movies is still way too expensive. The ticket prices, the concessions, and the parking add up to make it an increasingly rare outing for most families. And the prices of streaming services also continue to go up and up.
What’s a poor soul to do? One option is to stream movies for free. Several platforms like Amazon Freevee, Tubi, and YouTube offer movies for free … as long as you don’t mind an occasional ad here and there. It’s worth it, especially for the three movies we’ve selected below.
Baby Driver (2017)
Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a hearing-impaired getaway driver working for a crew of shady criminals. Hestrikes up a romance with Debora (The Iron Claw‘s Lily James), a local waitress in Atlanta. Their relationship is tested by Baby’s criminal activities, and a climactic heist will see Baby use everything he has, particularly his excellent driving skills, to save both him and Debora.
Edgar Wright is no stranger to cool, stylized images, and in Baby Driver, the British filmmaker gets to fully showcase what he can do with a camera and apply it to the action genre. It would be unfair to label Baby Driver as a mere action movie in the mold of The Fast and the Furious movies or, even worse, Torque, but it’s so much more than that: a sweet romance; a buddy comedy; and a musical with a great soundtrack of golden oldies. Plus, it’s got a killer supporting cast, with Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Kevin Spacey giving strong performances as Baby’s ne’er-do-well associates.
Baby Driver is streaming on Amazon Freevee.
Fear (1996)
Before he started a line of mediocre hamburger restaurants and starred in Super Bowl commercials, Mark Wahlberg was a struggling actor still shaking off his Marky Mark image. Before she won an Oscar and conquered cable TV with Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon was an upcoming young actress on the cusp of breaking through. Together, they starred in Fear, a largely forgotten thriller from 1996 that deserves to be discovered. Not only is it good, but it also serves as a great way to relive the 1990s at his most charmingly grungiest.
Fear follows the burgeoning romance between Seattle teen Nicole and mysterious bad boy David, who has some anger management issues and seems to really hate Nicole’s father, Steven (William Petersen). Pops doesn’t like him either, especially when he finds out abut David’s violent past and begins to suspect he wants to replace Steven as the head of the family. Fear is a straightforward thriller that hits its marks well and gives an early glimpse of Witherspoon’s star power, which would shine a year later with the trashy revenge flick Freeway.
Wildlife (2018)
Paul Dano is better known as an actor for his work in Love & Mercy, The Batman, and more recently, Dumb Money, but he’s also a director. He made his debut in 2018 with the underrated gem Wildlife, a contemplative drama set in 1960s Montana. Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan star as Jerry and Jeannette Brinson, a long-married couple with a teenage son, Joe, and a flagging interest in one another. When Joe takes a job fighting fires in the wilderness, Jeannette begins an affair with another man.
If you’re looking for fireworks, Wildlife doesn’t have any. Instead, this quiet, thoughtful movie is more interested in documenting the intricacies of a decaying marriage. Gyllenhaal and Mulligan both give fine performances, but it’s the atmospheric cinematography from Diego Garcia (Causeway) that lingers in the memory.
Wildlife is streaming on YouTube.
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