You don’t have to spend a fortune on rentals and subscriptions if you want to watch the best movies out there.
Streamers like Tubi, Pluto TV and even YouTube offer a huge selection of movies from all genres, countries and time periods for the low, low price of watching a few ads — you remember cable TV, don’t you?
This March, Watch With Us wants to highlight some particularly great movies that you can stream for free right now.
Our first pick is There Will Be Blood, the epic period drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis in a role that won him his second Oscar.
At the turn of the 20th century, silver miner Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) hits it big with California oil, becoming a cold-blooded businessman and adopting the orphaned son of an oil worker to project an image of family values. Daniel convinces landowners into giving him their oil-rich property for less than it’s worth, but when he is approached by a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) about oil deposits on his family’s land, Daniel is met with resistance from Paul’s preacher twin brother Eli (Dano). Though Daniel ends up acquiring Sunday’s land, he and Eli enter into a battle of psychological warfare amidst Daniel’s ruthless quest for power.
There Will Be Blood is a fantastic portrait of the false promises of the American Dream and the harmful intersection of capitalism and religion. Paul Thomas Anderson directs this austere period epic (loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!) with a steady command that revels in sparsity but oozes with an effusive aesthetic style and impressive technical verve. The real stars of the show, however, are Day-Lewis as the power-hungry, narcissistic Daniel Plainview and Dano as his foil, the religiously fanatical Eli Sunday.
Police detectives Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) are suspended for violently brutalizing a suspect, and find themselves hard up for cash. Brett wants to relocate his family to a safer neighborhood, while Anthony is further stalled in proposing to his girlfriend. The two end up falling into the criminal underworld in their desperate need for a source of revenue, planning to rob a dangerous heroin distributor (Thomas Kretschmann). At the same time, best friends Biscuit (Michael Jai White) and Henry (Tory Kittles) are hired by the distributor as getaway drivers, and the five men set on a deadly collision course.
Dragged Across Concrete may ruffle some ideological feathers, but that’s arguably what makes it so compelling. In addition to its thorny, complicated themes, the movie is unrelentingly bleak and almost excessively cruel — again, it adds texture to a film which is purposefully discomforting and confrontational. Overall, the slow-burn crime thriller is impossible to look away from; its unhurried pacing is far more compelling than a standard breakneck action flick. Plus, Vaughn and Gibson make for an unlikely buddy-cop duo.
When a mysterious power surge emanating from another planet threatens life in the Solar System, it is discovered that it may be connected to a lost space station from thirty years prior. The “Lima Project” was sent to orbit around Neptune in search of intelligent life, but the space station and crew members were never heard from again. Because the project’s leader was a man named Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), his son, Roy (Brad Pitt), sets off on a mission to Neptune to find out what happened to his father and uncover the truth about this power surge that threatens the existence of life on Earth — and perhaps elsewhere.
Criminally overlooked at the time of release, Ad Astra is a spell-binding and emotionally stirring sci-fi drama with heady philosophical themes and nuanced screenwriting. But Ad Astra isn’t just a remarkable feat of science fiction storytelling — character drama director James Gray proves that he has the filmmaking chops to helm a visually stunning, special-effects-heavy spectacle that still manages to be admirably restrained and meditative. The movie also features one of Pitt’s best performances, a complex role that is full of intense feeling.
When a mental patient named Rachel Solando (Patricia Clarkson) disappears, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) travel to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane. But shortly after they begin their investigation, it is revealed that Teddy has an ulterior motive for taking on the case. At the same time, Teddy suspects that things might not be all that they seem at the fortress-like Ashecliffe, and he starts questioning everyone’s motives while experiencing visions involving his deceased wife (Michelle Williams).
Shutter Island is a bit out of the usual wheelhouse for director Martin Scorsese — it’s a pulpy neo-noir with airport novel crime-thriller vibes and a shock twist ending. Still, if it’s coming from Scorsese, it’s going to be a great movie, and Shutter Island is fantastic entertainment rife with atmospheric tension, immersive cinematography and a constant sense of unease. Ultimately, the movie is a fun time as you try to unpack the mystery alongside Teddy, given a committed performance by DiCaprio that is frantic, frazzled and paranoid.
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