It’s now April and you’ve probably already seen blockbusters like Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in movie theaters. Even if you haven’t, chances are you have no interest to in this month or anytime soon. So what else is there to watch?
There’s always streaming, but who wants to pay those ever-increasing subscription prices for Netflix, Hulu, and the rest? If you want to watch something good and free, don’t worry, Tech Reader has compiled a short list of three free movies you can stream this weekend. Thanks to ad-supported streamers like Tubi and YouTube, you can watch quality movies without paying a dime. The occasional ad break is worth it, especially for the films below.
Red Lights (2012)
The great thing about winning an Oscar is that it brings attention to both the movie you won it for and past films that may have been overlooked. That’s especially true for Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy, who has a resume full of movies that were neglected upon release but deserve another look in 2024. One such film is Red Lights, a 2012 supernatural thriller with an impressive cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, Toby Jones, and Elizabeth Olsen.
Murphy stars as Tom Buckley, a physicist who teams with Weaver’s psychologist to investigate supernatural cases. (Think of them as a classier, more chaste version of The X-Files‘ Mulder and Scully.) When famous and controversial psychic Simon Silver (De Niro) re-emerges after years away from the limelight, the duo, along with Olsen’s plucky student Sally Owen, decide to investigate. Unsurprisingly, strange incidents start to occur, and as objects move by themselves and people start to die, Tom becomes obsessed that Simon is the reason behind the strange phenomena. Red Lights is hokey fun with a bad ending, but you can forgive its flaws because of its talented cast and convincing, moody atmosphere.
Red Lights is streaming for free on Pluto TV.
Copycat (1995)
Sigourney Weaver pops up again in Copycat, a 1995 serial killer thriller that still doesn’t get enough love nearly 30 years after it was released. Weaver stars as Dr. Helen Hudson, a famous criminal psychologist who has developed agoraphobia since a serial killer attacked her years ago. Noticing a pattern in a series of recent murders in San Francisco, she reluctantly teams up with two detectives, M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter) and Rueben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney), to stop the serial killer from killing again.
What elevates Copycat from the countless others in this overcrowded genre is due to a number of factors: the slick direction by Jon Amiel; the crisp cinematography by László Kovács, which really gives you a sense of the SF Bay Area setting before Big Tech took it over; the creepy, urgent score by Christopher Young; and most importantly, the fantastic lead performances by Weaver and Hunter, whose characters can’t stand each other but must work together in order to save others (and themselves). It’s rare that this genre makes room for a great female character who isn’t a helpless victim, and Copycat gives you two for the price of one.
Copycat is streaming for free on Tubi.
The Imitation Game (2014)
The success of Oppenheimer ignited a brief wave of interest in WWII-era biopics, and one of the better ones is The Imitation Game. Directed by Morten Tyldum, the film features Doctor Strange star Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, a real-life British mathematician and computer scientist recruited to work for the British government in 1939. Because of his interest in cryptography, Turing and a team of cryptanalysts must decipher the Enigma machine, a cipher device used by the Nazis to send secret messages about planned military campaigns. What’s at stake? Only the fate of the democratic world.
The Imitation Game isn’t as dynamic as Oppenheimer, but it creates a compelling portrait of a man trying to unlock the secrets of an entire nation while struggling to hide his own. A large amount of credit should go to Cumberbatch and co-star Keira Knightley, both of whom breathe life and humor into their portrayals. It’s not a surprise both were nominated for Oscars in 2015 for their work.
Stream The Imitation Game for free on YouTube.
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