The 100 Best Movies on Tubi Right Now

This is a low-scale, intimate, almost minimalist movie that speaks volumes about the misconceptions that westerners have regarding the Middle-East. And the performance of Richard Jenkins is absolutely exceptional (earned him a nomination for the Oscars). He plays a professor who comes back to his New York apartment only to find two immigrants living in it. What a great role and what a great film.The Visitor is from the director of The Station Agent and very recently Spotlight, Tom McCarthy.

Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a drifter driving up to Alaska in hopes of finding work. When her car breaks down, she and her dog Lucy are stranded and forced to scrounge for food and repairs, hitting one roadblock after another on her path to an uncertain dream. This sympathetic and solemn look at poverty from director Kelly Reichardt serves as a reminder of how easy it is to fall through the fragile American safety net.   

Reichardt’s uncompromising approach paired with Williams’s restrained performance makes the experience authentic and intense, recalling the work of Ken Loach. This natural sharpness makes for an engrossing watch that builds in power until the emotional release of the film’s heartbreaking conclusion. 

This Park Chan-Wook classic is the third part of a trilogy of films around the theme of revenge, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. While ultimately unique, Lady Vengeance is a thriller set in a prison, in the vein of films such as the Japanese action drama Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. After being framed and wrongly convicted for murder, our protagonist seeks out the true perpetrator of the crime –– but more than anything else, she seeks vengeance. 

This film’s run time is 115 minutes and every second is essential. There is often gratuitous violence perpetrated by men against women in film, however Lady Vengeance takes back control and for that reason it remains one of my favorite revenge films.

It’s rare to see a prequel surpass its antecedent, but Pearl is that exception. You can watch it before or after X and still get the same satisfaction from piecing together the puzzle of Mia Goth’s many roles (three in total across the trilogy). If the first film owed a lot to slasher classics like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the second (surprise!) channels The Wizard of Oz and nods to the splendiferous melodramas of Douglas Sirk. The jarring form-content opposition here makes sense, as we’re seeing through the eyes of the main character, who most of all dreams of being in a movie. Because of that very same whimsy, everything has to change: the violence is not as explicit and the role of sex is brought to the forefront. All hail the new kind of final girl: a farm girl-turned-star.

Remarkably for a movie about women being shunned and exploited by those more powerful than them, I Am Not A Witch is often wryly funny. That’s because this satire about Zambia’s labor camps for “witches” is told with a matter-of-fact-ness that brings out both the heartbreak and absurdity of the film’s events. The bitter gravity of the predicament nine-year-old Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) finds herself in — she’s been accused of witchcraft on the back of some very flimsy evidence — is never glossed over, but neither is its farcicality. Appropriately for its subject, there are also touches of magical realism here, notes that elevate the film into something even more complex than a wry commentary on this morbidly fascinating form of misogyny. This hybrid tonal approach is executed with the kind of fluidity filmmakers might hope to one day master late on in their career — which makes the fact that this is director Rungano Nyoni’s debut all the more extraordinary.

When it comes to work, most apply to a job, take a 9-5 role for some decades, and then retire once enough funds have been acquired, the body gives out, or they reach the statutory age in their respective countries. This path isn’t as straightforward for the artist. La Belle Noiseuse is a portrait of an artist in his later years, only making a return due to an unexpected muse. It is quite lengthy, almost four hours, so it may feel like a daunting task for casual film viewers, as much as it is for the painter, but the way Rivette dedicates the time to the etching, the turn of the page, the brush of the paint upon the paper feels so calming, with the artist and their muse at their most natural. It’s easy to deduce the inevitable connection that forms, but La Belle Noiseuse is much more interested in the creative process, rather than the romantic drama, more interested in exploring the way art endeavors to capture the soul, even when the muse continues to remain elusive.

Front of the Class tells the true story of Brad Cohen (James Wolk), a teacher with Tourette Syndrome hoping to complete his masters. Brad battles through his disability while also learning to accept it and even inspire his young students, friends, and family along the way. As Hallmark movies goes, Front of the Class follows familiar beats and occasionally gets too sappy, but all is forgiven thanks to Wolk’s generous and sensitive performance. He carries the film by balancing pain with passion, and his dedication to succeed and have others accept him is nothing less than inspiring. It’s not as gritty as the other disability films, but it is one you can watch easily with the family.

You know how many films depict the magic and wonder of cinema in such gorgeous, magnificent scenes? Peeping Tom does the opposite. Sure, it has director Michael Powell’s signature flair, with excellently framed and colored shots, but he takes a much more violent route here, swapping spectacular fantasy with the psychological terror of how the act of filming and watching can be. Given the title, it won’t be a surprise that the film involves voyeurism, but rather than of the sexual kind, Powell hones into the morbidity of the camera gaze, the twisted pleasure that’s felt when the audience sees someone terrified, despite the violence done upon them. It’s because of this that the film was so controversial, but eventually, Peeping Tom garnered critical acclaim for breaking ground as the first slasher film ever made.

The Goodbye Girl is a charming romantic comedy following single mom Paula and her 10-year-old daughter Lucy (Quinn Cummings) as they reluctantly share their apartment with Elliot, a friend of her ex subletting the place. The plot is formulaic: Paula and Elliot are at each other’s throats, constantly sniping at each other while simultaneously charming us with their verbal acumen and physical dynamism. Dreyfuss is particularly stunning—he’s unpredictable at every turn, giving a twirl here and doing an accent there. He nabbed the Best Actor award at the Oscars that year, and rightly so. Then slowly but surely, they fall in love. No surprise there, but the whip-smart script (penned by Neil Simon) and the lively performances are what save the film. Even Lucy gets to drop laugh-out-loud one-liners while still being believably her age. It’s an all-around likable film, as well as a masterclass in romcom charm and acting.

There are plenty of films about dreamers, but none as wild and wacky as Fitzcarraldo. The film follows the titular opera-loving foreigner, who’s obsessed with creating an opera house in the middle of a jungle, and tries to get the funding for it throug the rubber business. It’s a pretty wacky premise, and a pretty wacky tale, but it’s the perfect film to challenge famed eccentric auteur Werner Herzog, who got a 320-ton steam boat hauled into the Amazon, had multiple recasts due to illness, and had conflict with leading man Klaus Kinski so tense that assassination was offered by one of the extras, among other troubles. Strangeness aside, Fitzcarraldo proved to be an audacious, operatic epic, garnering numerous nominations for the Palme d’Or, Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs.