The big new movie this week, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, is a sci-fi romp that, while visually appealing, may not be for everyone. And since a lot of people have already seen the month’s past hits Dune: Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 4, there doesn’t appear to be a whole of options at the multiplex.
If this sounds like you, have no fear! Digital Trends has compiled a list of three movies you can stream this weekend. And the great thing about each of these movies is that they are all free. That’s right, thanks to ad-supported streamers like Tubi and YouTube, you can watch quality movies without paying a dime. The occasional ad break is worth it, especially for the films below.
What Women Want (2000)
There was a brief time when Mel Gibson hadn’t gone crazy, Helen Hunt starred in four films in one year because she was so in demand, and comedies still packed audiences into theaters. If this sounds like another era, that’s because it is — 2000, to be exact, and the top-grossing comedy of the year was What Women Want, a comedy about a male chauvinist pig, cocky ad exec Nick Marshall, who is cursed (blessed?) with the supernatural ability to spy on women’s thoughts.
Gibson is the pig, Hunt is the woman who hates him, then loves him, and then hates him again, and the ensemble cast that includes (holds breath) Bette Midler, Marisa Tomei, Alan Alda, The Last of Us Part II star Ashley Johnson, Sarah Paulson, Logan Lerman, Valerie Perrine, Delta Burke, and Judy Greer all teach Nick a valuable lesson: All women want is a man to listen. Or something like that. What Women Want is fluff, but it’s a particular kind of Y2K fluff that works because of the director, Nancy Meyers, who is an expert at this sort of thing.
What Women Want is streaming on YouTube.
The Client (1994)
Who was the most powerful person in Hollywood in 1994? If your answer is Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts, you’re wrong; it was John Grisham. Yes, the lawyer-turned-author dominated bookstores and movie theaters around this time, thanks to the hit film adaptations of The Firm with Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman and The Pelican Brief with Roberts and Denzel Washington in 1993. Hollywood wasted no time and followed up with The Client, another Southern-fried potboiler starring Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, and a whole lot of bad accents.
When 11-year-old Mark Sway witnesses the suicide of a lawyer with ties to the mob, he is chased by both the mafia and U.S. attorney Roy Foltrigg (Lee Jones, who chews the scenery). Desperate for help, Mark hires a down-on-her-luck attorney, Reggie Love (Sarandon), who defends Mark in the courtroom and, later, from the mob itself. The Client is better than its source material, and that’s due to the solid direction by Joel Schumacher, the charming central performance by Brad Renfro as Mark, and Sarandon, who earned an Oscar nomination for her empathetic performance. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to sip a tall glass of iced tea after you watch it.
The Client is streaming on Tubi.
Bridge of Spies (2015)
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no second acts in American lives, but Steven Spielberg didn’t get that memo. In the last decade, he’s been making hit after hit, and among the best is Bridge of Spies. This film tells the true story of lawyer James B. Donovan, who is hired to negotiate the release of Air Force pilot Francis Gary Power from the Soviet Union in exchange for convicted KGB operative Rudolf Abel, whom he defended in court a few years prior.
With a script co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen and great performances from Tom Hanks, Amy Ryan, and Mark Rylance (he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar), Spielberg takes an overlooked Cold War historical moment and turns it into a gripping piece of cinema. The ending is a true nail-biter, and the movie is one of the rare times Spielberg has directed an unabashed thriller.
Bridge of Spies is streaming on YouTube.
