100 Best Movies on Kanopy Right Now

100 Best Movies on Kanopy Right Now

November 24, 2024

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Kanopy is a platform that allows you to stream movies for free with your library card or university login. It’s just like making a trip to the library to borrow DVDs, except without the trip or the DVD part – just the watching. And like your library, Kanopy is full of classics. That’s a great thing if you’re into older movies, but if you’re looking for quality recent titles, you have a lot of digging to do. That’s where we come in. In this list, we’re gathering excellent recent movies available on Kanopy in one place. All 100 of these movies, like everything else on agoodmovietowatch, are highly rated by viewers and acclaimed by critics, so make sure you visit our other lists, or browse the site by mood, if you want more recommendations.

61. Rams (2014)

7.5

Country

Denmark, Iceland, Norway

Director

Grímur Hákonarson

Actors

Þorleifur Einarsson, Charlotte Bøving, Charlotte Bøving, Gunnar Jonsson

Moods

Discussion-sparking, Sunday, Uplifting

I always seek out Icelandic films; something about the quality of light and quirky sensibility that appeal to me. Having developed a fondness for sheep on a recent Welsh trek, “Rams” had a double attraction. A tale of brothers divided by life but ultimately united in and by their deep, tender, inspiring love of their rams. Close to perfection. Sigurdur Sigurdurjonsson is luminous in the lead role.

62. Stories We Tell (2012)

7.5

Country

Canada

Director

Female director, Sarah Polley

Actors

Alex Hatz, Alexandra "Allie" MacDonald, Allie MacDonald, Anne Tait

Moods

Sunday

Stories We Tell got on everyone’s radar when, back in 2015, it made the list of the all-time top ten list of Canadian films. That speaks to both the caliber of this movie and its relevance to North America. It’s in fact a first-person account about (and made by) actress Sarah Polley (Mr. Nobody, Exotica, Away from Her, Take This Waltz). In the film, she investigates the rumor that she was the product of an affair, and that her father might not be her biological father. Her family and suspected fathers are all storytellers, and many of them Academy Award winners. Ultimately, the movie becomes about her family’s remembrance of her now-deceased mother (the famous actress Diane Polley). It’s an examination of how the same story can be told so differently by different people and across time. Lies get added and truths are hidden, and all of that enriches Polley’s pursuit.

63. The Automat (2021)

7.5

Country

United States of America

Director

Lisa Hurwitz

Actors

Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Elliott Gould, Howard Schultz

Moods

Easy, Lighthearted, Lovely

The Automat is a charming documentary about the historic place it names—a spacious self-service cafeteria that fed thousands of people during a good part of the 20th century. Through nostalgic footage and delightful interviews with the likes of Mel Brooks, Howard Schultz, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Automat successfully convinces you that more than just some gimmick, it was a cultural landmark, a piece of Americana whose existence alone taught an entire generation integral values like democracy, diversity, and hard work. It’s also straight-up hilarious, especially when Brooks attempts to direct the film himself, or other subjects salivate as they recall the Automat’s unbeatable menu. It’s more anecdotal than academic, so if you’re looking for a sweet, sentimental, and simple watch, this is it.

64. Memories (1995)

7.5

Country

Japan

Director

Katsuhiro Otomo, Koji Morimoto

Actors

Ami Hasegawa, Gara Takashima, Hidetoshi Nakamura, Hideyuki Hori

Moods

Action-packed, Challenging, Character-driven

Best known for landmark cyberpunk anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo crafted strange and terrifying visions of a world that has not yet come, imagining technology that surpassed that of today, but in much pessimistic light compared to that of the genre. Three of his manga short stories are depicted in Memories, with Otomo partnering with Kōji Morimoto and Tensai Okamura to direct each segment, and with Satoshi Kon in writing, just before Kon’s own iconic surrealist films. Kon-written Magnetic Rose has been universally acknowledged as the best of them, being much more emotionally poignant, but the other two does have its charms, as Stink Bomb takes a relatively silly premise to its fairly logical, but scary conclusion, and Cannon Fodder takes the beauty of Otomo’s art into such a hollow and ugly world. All three deliver terrifying omens of death through technology used against the everyday man, whether by accident or design.

65. Hereditary (2018)

7.4

Country

United States of America

Director

Ari Aster

Actors

Alex Wolff, Alexis Long, Ann Dowd, Ari Aster

Moods

Intense, Thrilling

A chilling and dark movie to be especially appreciated by true suspense lovers. At the funeral of the family’s matriarch, no one is emotional except the granddaughter, whose grieving is disturbing, to say the least. When both grieving and not grieving are unsettling, you can tell what kind of family (and movie) this will be.

66. Beanpole (2019)

7.4

Country

Russia, United States of America

Director

Kantemir Balagov

Actors

Alyona Kuchkova, Andrey Bykov, Galina Mochalova, Igor Shirokov

Moods

Depressing, Dramatic, Intense

This heartbreaking Russian drama takes place in Leningrad six months after the end of the war. A boy is asked to do an impression of an animal, any animal, but the boy stands still. “Just do a dog then”, one person says, to which another remarks “he’s never seen one, they’ve all been eaten.”

In this bleak context, two friends meet again and try to restart their lives. Masha is a soldier who has just come back from the war in Berlin, and Iya, a tall woman nicknamed “Beanpole”, is a nurse who suffers from PTSD episodes that freeze her body. Both characters, so brilliantly acted, personify the thin line between desperation and hopefulness in this difficult but incredibly well-made drama.

67. For the Love of Spock (2016)

7.4

Country

Canada, United States of America

Director

Adam Nimoy

Actors

Adam Nimoy, Avery Brooks, Barry Newman, Bill Prady

Moods

Emotional, Feel-Good, Heart-warming

There are moments in cinema when the character and actor are irrevocably linked– to think of one is to think of the other, to the point that the line is blurred between both. One such pair is Spock and Leonard Nimoy, and, after his death, it was inevitable that the documentary about Nimoy would also be a documentary about Spock. For the Love of Spock is the first of two Nimoy documentaries, made by his son Adam, and it’s a lovely tribute to the iconic sci-fi legend that shifted the entire genre and the fan culture that emerged, but it was also a personal film where the family reckons with the fame that occurred as a result. Superfans might not learn that much about Spock (some of them are interviewed in the film), but For the Love of Spock is an excellent profile, even if it’s not as objective and logical as the character itself.

68. Timbuktu (2014)

7.4

Country

France

Director

Abderrahmane Sissako

Actors

Abel Jafri, Ibrahim Ahmed, Kettly Noël, Layla Walet Mohamed

Moods

Challenging, Discussion-sparking, Emotional

When a city is taken over by a militant group hoping to impose their standards of religion upon it, the situation can be quite depressing to talk about. The inherent danger to their lives, as well as the arbitariness of the changes, would undoubtedly feel terrible, yet, despite the horrifying events, 2014 Malian drama Timbuktu still spots some humor through the simple and straightforward way it depicts the occupying force– the rules they enforce on others, but not on themselves, and sometimes in silly ways that doesn’t even make sense. Timbuktu doesn’t mine the real life occupation for melodrama, but the contrast through which they depict the group versus the townspeople just living their lives highlights the foolishness of imposing an ideology to snuff out everyday culture.

69. Monsieur Lazhar (2012)

7.4

Country

Canada

Director

Philippe Falardeau

Actors

André Robitaille, Brigitte Poupart, Daniel Gadouas, Danielle Proulx

Moods

Depressing, Dramatic

After the sudden death of a teacher, 55-year-old Algerian immigrant Bachir Lazhar is hired at an elementary school in Montreal. Struggling with a cultural gap between himself and his students at first, he helps them to deal with the situation, revealing his own tragic past. A strong portrait without any weird sentimentality. 11-year-old actress Sophie Nélisse makes her brilliant debut.

70. November (2017)

7.3

Country

Estonia, Netherlands, Poland

Director

Rainer Sarnet

Actors

Arvo Kukumägi, Dieter Laser, Ester Kuntu, Heino Kalm

Moods

Challenging, Dark, Dramatic

There’s plenty of things happening in folk horror film November. With devils snatching livestock, magical automatons called kratts, and trying to trick the Plague while in the form of a pig, love surely can’t bloom strong in these circumstances. And this would be correct, but the way this tragic romance unfolds is through eerie, yet captivating, black-and-white dream sequences made up bits and pieces of Estonian folklore, and the film shines best when focused on these sequences. The love triangle will be familiar, but the approach, the offbeat humor, and the raw practical effects would be bewitching until the end.

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