Over the years, streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ have raised their prices, and it’s getting to the point where maintaining subscriptions to all of them is becoming onerous. So it’s no surprise that people have been increasingly turning to streaming services like Tubi, Pluto TV, and the Roku Channel, where you can start streaming tons of movies and TV shows without even needing to create an account.
The downside is these services don’t usually have the hottest new releases, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a ton worth watching. In fact, you can watch a surprisingly large number of Best Picture-winning movies for free on these services if you know where to look.
I Tried Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV, and I Might Cancel Netflix
FAST streaming services have become quite popular, and now I can see why.
Wings (1927)
How it all started, just for fun
Wings won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture in 1927, and is easily the least well-known of all the movies on this list. It’s about a pair of World War I fighter pilots who are in a romantic rivalry over a woman played by Clara Bow, one of the world’s first movie stars. Wings is a silent film complete with title cards, and is shot in black and white. It looks antiquated by today’s standards but was praised at the time for its realism and technical prowess, and provides a window into a different era of filmmaking and even of living. What kinds of movies were people watching before World War II?
And hey, it’s free to watch on Tubi, so it’s not like you’ll be out any money if you check it out.
- Release Date
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January 5, 1929
- Runtime
-
144 Minutes
- Director
-
William A. Wellman, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Nearly 100 years later, still one of the best war films ever made
Released just a few years after Wings, All Quiet on the West Front is also about World War I, proving that war films have always been popular, then and now. This one has full sound and in general is better than Wings. It follows eager young recruits in the German army who soon have their dreams of glory dashed to pieces as they reckon with the horrible reality of life in the trenches.
There’s an ongoing debate about whether a movie that depicts war can ever really be an “anti-war movie,” since it’s hard not to make war look awe-inspiring. But All Quiet on the Western Front pulls it off. Even over 90 years later, it’s still powerful. You can watch it for free on YouTube.
- Release Date
-
August 24, 1930
- Runtime
-
152 Minutes
- Director
-
Lewis Milestone
- Writers
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Erich Maria Remarque, Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews
- Producers
-
Carl Laemmle Jr.
-
-
Louis Wolheim
Stanislas ‘Kat’ Katczinsky
-
-
The Apartment (1960)
The serious romantic comedy
Okay, we’re finally on the other side of World War II and people are ready to relax a little. The Apartment is about a lonely executive (Jack Lemmon) who tries to climb the corporate ladder by letting his superiors use his apartment to carry out their extra-marital affairs. He’s attracted to one of the elevator operators in his building (Shirley MacLaine) and she to him, but she’s also trying to get ahead and is involved with Lemmon’s boss (Fred MacMurray).
So we’ve got a love triangle and a sitcom-esque situation that writer-director Billy Wilder happily plumbs for a few laughs. But The Apartment also takes its characters seriously, which is why this movie has endured for so long when so many similar films have faded away. Watch it for free on YouTube.
- Release Date
-
June 15, 1960
- Runtime
-
125 minutes
- Director
-
Billy Wilder
West Side Story (1961)
All singing, all dancing, all free
One year after The Apartment, the Best Picture Oscar went to West Side Story, one of the all-time great movie musicals. A movie reimagines the warring families from Romeo and Juliet as young gangs in 1950s-era New York City. The songs are classics, the colors and bright and vibrant, and the experience is unforgettable.
Watch West Side Story for free on the Roku Channel, which has lots of great free offerings. It’s just a shame that Steven Spielberg’s fantastic 2021 remake, which may be even better than the original, isn’t also available to stream for free somewhere.
- Release Date
-
December 13, 1961
- Runtime
-
151 Minutes
- Director
-
Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins
The Godfather (1972)
And The Godfather Part II
Do I really need to tell you what The Godfather’s about? This movie is the granddaddy of all modern mob dramas. It plays out like a Greek tragedy, with the wealthy and powerful Corleone family going through a dangerous transfer of power that it might not survive. It features one of Marlon Brando’s most iconic performances as Don Corleone and one of Al Pacino’s most iconic early performance as his son Michael, who doesn’t want to get involved in the family business but finds himself sucked in in spite of himself.
You can stream both The Godfather and the excellent sequel for free on Pluto TV.
- Release Date
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March 24, 1972
- Runtime
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175 minutes
- Director
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Francis Ford Coppola
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Marlon Brando
Don Vito Corleone
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Al Pacino
Michael Corleone
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James Caan
Sonny Corleone
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Why pay for cannibalism when you can watch it for free?
We’re getting into slightly more modern classics now. The Silence of the Lambs is about tough-but-vulnerble FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), who is working a case that requires her to consult with imprisoned cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). The script is tight, the film is subversive in the way it puts us in Clarice’s shoes, and the chemistry between Foster and Hopkins is luminous.
You can watch The Silence of the Lambs for free on YouTube.
- Release Date
-
February 14, 1991
- Runtime
-
119 minutes
- Director
-
Jonathan Demme
-
Jodie Foster
Clarice Starling
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Anthony Hopkins
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
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Scott Glenn
Jack Crawford
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Forrest Gump (1994)
Momma always said that life is like etc and so forth, you know how it goes
Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks as a simple-minded man who improbably finds himself at several key moments of history in the latter half of the 20th century. It’s a fable, it’s a comedy, it’s a romance, it’s a drama…it all works.
Watch Forrest Gump for free on Pluto TV.
- Release Date
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July 6, 1994
- Runtime
-
142 minutes
- Director
-
Robert Zemeckis
-
-
Robin Wright
Jenny Curran
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Gary Sinise
Lieutenant Dan Taylor
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No Country for Old Men (2007)
The best Coen brothers movie. Fight me.
Joel and Ethan Coen have made a lot of classic movies over the years, from Fargo to The Big Lebowski to A Serious Man. For my money, No Country For Old Men is their best work, which is saying something.
No Country for Old Men follows a normal guy named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who stumbles on a drug deal gone wrong and finds a huge pile of money that none of the dead men on the scene will need. He takes it, but soon finds himself pursued by a psychopathic hitman named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and a much more mild-mannered police officer named Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). These three men circle each other until the inevitable happens.
Watch No Country for Old Men for free on Tubi.
- Release Date
-
November 21, 2007
- Runtime
-
122 minutes
- Director
-
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Spotlight (2015)
(Almost) up to the minute
The most recent Best Picture winner to watch for free, Spotlight tells the story of how, in the early 2000s, a specialist team of journalists at The Boston Globe broke the story about how the Catholic church was covering up sexual abuse. There isn’t anything incredibly fancy about Spotlight; it’s really well written, really well cast, really well paced, and tells a story that feels just as important and relevant now as it did decades ago.
No Spotlight for free on Pluto TV.
- Release Date
-
November 25, 2015
- Runtime
-
128minutes
- Director
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Tom McCarthy
And that’s just a start
This isn’t even half of the Best Picture-winning movies you can watch for free on these services. Poke around a little, and you’ll also be able to stream classics like Annie Hall, Platoon, Forrest Gump, Gladiator, and more. Having a Netflix subscription is great if you can afford it, but it’s not as necessary as you might think.