Perhaps Big Tech hasn’t fulfilled its disruptive promise for movies after all: We cut our cable cables for cost and convenience, only to spend just as much (if not more) to jump through hoops and across platforms, with declining returns on quality.
But there is always good stuff being produced. This isn’t about free goods; it’s about discovery. It’s a selection of decent and fantastic films on free, ad-supported platforms such as Tubi, Plex, and Pluto TV that frequently slip between the cracks of our mind-bogglingly abundant, excessively content-ified entertainment complexes.
The selections for this debut column range from a modest farm to a tight Japanese apartment, a restaurant kitchen to an urgent historical record of memory. You can view these movies.
‘Shoplifters’ (2018)
Stream it on Pluto TV.
In the aisles of a supermarket, a frumpy father and his small kid exchange looks, twiddle their fingers, then leave with the loot: only chocolates and a few packages of ramen. It’s a beginning that may foreshadow a witty film about a ragged group of hustlers. But “Shoplifters” eventually becomes a heart-wrenching story wrapped in a soap opera, inspired by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s beautiful sensitivity.
Father and son aren’t precisely that: they’re members of a chosen family who, we gradually discover, are linked not by blood but by a cunning will to live in a mundanely brutal world. As the duo travels home, they come upon an abandoned young girl, who is quickly adopted into their family.
The narrative of the family (a standout ensemble led by Sakura Ando’s heartbreaking performance as the mother) is one of such subtle humanism and sensitivity that your heart is practically literally throbbing by the end. Life is difficult, yet a croquette dipped in ramen has never tasted better, a vacation to the beach has never been more enjoyable, and a mother’s hug has never felt safer.
‘Farha’ (2021)
Stream it on Tubi.
Since the war began in 2023, thousands of Gaza’s youngsters, who make up roughly half of the population, have been slaughtered. Watching “Farha” allows you to observe how the past influences the present. Farha, a young Palestinian in 1948, wishes to attend school. However, when violence strikes her little hamlet, her only chance is to live. When she asks her buddy Farida what she wants to be when she grows up, the explosion interrupts their talk. They recoil and flee, their trees bending to the left.
‘Boiling Point’ (2021)
Stream it on Tubi.
This British film is similar to “The Bear” (and premiered months before it), but with more vérité roughness and less hard-earned optimism. “Boiling Point” is shot entirely in one take, winding around the corners of a high-end restaurant and the slowly simmering crises of its head chef, Andy (Stephen Graham), over the course of one hectic night in the kitchen. It’s agony inside, but Andy’s life outside is likewise spiraling out of control.
The film’s single-shot depiction of chaos is a technological marvel. Graham is the fulcrum here, but his performance is not based on Gordon Ramsay-style pyrotechnics; rather, his continual clenched-jaw stoicism conceals a melancholy mess beneath.
