The Best Slice-of-Life Movies to Watch on Tubi

Like many coming-of-age films about films, it’s easy to assume that Last Film Show would be a derivative of all-time film classic Cinema Paradiso. Both films from opposite corners of the world, separated by more than three decades, do share that awe of cinema from a projection booth. However, unlike Paradiso, the awe of Last […]

Education is a human right, but for many girls around the world, this isn’t necessarily guaranteed– especially if they want to learn past the required years of basic education. Yuni is a coming-of-age drama that depicts a girl in West Java, Indonesia who wants to go to university, but due to the marriage and virginity […]

This beautiful drama is set over a summer in New York State. Kathy and her son Cody drive to her estranged sister’s house, who had just passed. Kathy plans to quickly sell the house and go back to her normal life but that doesn’t happen when she learns that her sister was a hoarder. Forced […]

In Letterboxd, Cleaners was once the highest rated film of 2021, and was once in the list of the top 250 narrative features overall before the rating system changed in 2023. To viewers outside the Philippines, this might have been mind-boggling, especially since the film wasn’t yet released internationally the year it premiered, but it […]

In Motherwell, you either “get locked up or knocked up,” or so says Gemma, a teenager on the cusp of adulthood growing up in an old Scottish steel town. Gemma runs among a tight-knit group of friends, at the center of which is ordinary mischief, routine, and roughhousing. And beneath that lies a certain kind […]

This drama is about two friends attempting to rave in 1994 Scotland, after a recent Thatcher-era law banned the act and all music “characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. Johnno and Spanner, one living in fear of his older brother and the other of his stepfather, want to turn things around […]

Organized crime and drug dealing has been a topic of many a film, sometimes even glamorizing the whole endeavor, but rarely do these depictions acknowledge the weight it can do to a culture, particularly indigenous cultures. Birds of Passage is a film about drug dealers, but it’s a much more distinct take, tackling Colombia’s reputation […]

When striving towards your life goal, some concessions have to be made in order to get there, e.g. you would forgo some wants in order to fulfill that higher purpose. But how much are you willing to sacrifice? Mario is a sports drama about an aspiring football player that wants to make it higher up […]

What goes well with a love story? Creative architecture. Columbus the movie is such a great and genuine exploration of this idea, filmed in Columbus the city – a weird experimental hub for architecture that actually exists in real life! After his architect father goes into a coma, Jin (John Cho), a Korean-born man finds […]

I can’t get a song out of my head from this movie: the 1985 UK hit Desire As from Prefab Sprout. It plays when the two main characters, a sensitive kid who’s bullied by his school for not liking rugby, and the school’s rugby star; talk over the “Berlin Wall” that separates their dorm room. […]

This fun drama is about a 90-year-old who’s still searching for answers to life’s existential questions. Lucky smokes, drinks, and is pretty angry (a not-so-chill atheist); but he’s still around. Harry Dean Stanton, in what feels like an extension to his character Lucky, passed away a year after the film premiered in 2017. This was […]

This small movie set over one summer weekend is a tender and affecting coming-of-age drama. Jack is a bullied adolescent who lives in a run-down small town. When his aunt falls sick, he has to take care of his cousin, a younger and even more vulnerable kid. Their relationship evolves in this sensitive drama that […]

What’s great about this highly inventive film is that it doesn’t look like it was shot through three iPhone 5s. Instead of using shaky cameras and static shots, Tangerine glides us through saturated, orange-toned scenes that evoke the Los Angeles sunset. Launching director Sean Baker into prominence, Tangerine is an innovative film that, at heart, […]

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 […]

Cheerfully outrageous yet heartwarmingly tender, the Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was ahead of its time, daring to dive into drag and transexuality, when the rest of the world was still coming around to accepting homosexuality. On the bus which the title is named after, two drag queens and a trans woman have […]

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 […]

Andrew Garfield is a single father living with his own single mother in their family home. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, they find themselves evicted from their home by a businessman – Michael Shannon in a role as intriguing as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, if not more. Desperate for work, Garfield’s character […]

No one likes to be replaced. Even when it gets difficult, hardwork and years put in effort to take and keep these roles makes it feel precious, and that’s exactly how househelp Raquel feels in The Maid. It’s a funny domestic comedy, with a scowling Catalina Saavedra ready to protect the role she’s held onto […]

Crushes seem much more important when you’re young, and when you and your sibling share one, it easily alters your dynamic, with the jealousy, comparison, and the insecurity it can foster. The Man in the Moon tackles this childhood crush with care. Writer Jenny Wingfield and director Robert Mulligan characterize each kid with consideration befitting […]

Slow, contemplative, but captivating, Baraka uses no narration, dialogue, or text to connect its images. The documentary stitches together shots with different subjects from different locations around the world. At first, it seems very peaceful—gorgeous, high-definition shots of nature paired with a soothing, resonant score that lulls you into hypnosis—but as the film progresses, director […]

Anthology films aren’t for everyone, but it’s a fitting choice for 4 Moons. With each moon phase representing the stage in the couples’ respective relationships, the film gets to explore gay relationships in such a comprehensive way, creating a bird’s eye view of how lovers like the couples in the film live and love. It’s […]

Education isn’t always a guarantee, especially in less privileged areas that are underfunded, overlooked, and underprioritized, in the belief that these kids wouldn’t amount to much in the end. That being said, sometimes, what changes that fate is having a teacher that believed in his students and encouraged them to learn more than what they […]

Welcome to the Dollhouse tells the story of Dawn, an unpopular seventh-grader mercilessly bullied at school and ignored at home. Her day-to-day is painful to watch; her classmates make fun of her, her teachers never believe her, and her parents punish her, blatantly favoring her other siblings over her. But all this she puts up […]

In response to violence, some people consider aggression as the only solution, especially in a place that cannot rely on institutions– fighting fire with fire, but fighting for the good. Tyrannosaur depicts a British town with men that only operate on a mix of this idea, but this rage becomes relentless, unceasing, and never lies […]

Despite the subject matter, 2014 Malian drama Timbuktu still spots some humor through simple contradiction– straightforwardly depicting the occupying force enforcing certain rules upon a city, but not themselves, and with the city biting back in their own way, pointing out the silliness themselves. It’s these raw moments that lightens the entire film, humanizing both […]