Cinephemera

This is a good time to be a film lover. I’m not sure how cinephiles were able to live before the days of video cassettes. These days, we don’t even have to go to the store or even pay to see a ton of classic and newer movies. There are now many sites out there that host movies that you can watch for free! Here are some of the best ones that I’ve found out about.

Crackle
Looking at the movie selection on Crackle , I refused to believe that they were completely free. I clicked on a few and to my great astonishment, they are completely 100% free to watch on demand. Like Hulu, they are interrupted by commercials every so often but this is certainly one of the best selections of movies you’re going to find on the web for free.

Notable Choices: A Few Good Men, Big Fish, El Mariachi, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, The Karate Kid trilogy, Muppets from Space, The Professional, Spider-Man 2, St. Elmo’s Fire, and at least 9 Godzilla movies!

Hulu
I mentioned Hulu in my last post and I’ll mention it again now because it’s such a great source for movie watching. They recently added a documentary channel and they update their available movies frequently. There currently have around 300 choices making it one of the biggest offerings of free movies on the net. You can see all of them here .

Notable Choices: Africa Screams, Anastasia, House on Haunted Hill, The Lady Vanishes, Carnival of Souls, Inherit the Wind, Slacker, Air Force One.

Joost
This site is harder to get around and find something you might want to watch but if you dig around you might just find that diamond in the rough. They have a good collection of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton shorts and a lot of classic cult horror films. There’s a lot of good content here but the difficulty in navigating the site is rather annoying.

Notable Choices: The 39 Steps, Carnival of Souls, McLintock, His Girl Friday, Nosferatu, The Toxic Avenger, Metropolis, Gojira, Road to Bali.

SnagFilms
SnagFilms is your place for documentaries. There are so many documentaries here (over 500) I don’t even know where to begin. They’ve got documentaries on nearly every subject you can think of from panda bears to Led Zepplin. Most of these are independently made so you won’t find “bigger” docs like Mad Hot Ballroom or Fog of War but there are a few notable docs and there’s more than enough here to keep you interested for a very long time.

Notable Choices: Confessions of a Superhero, Super Size Me, Farther Than The Eye Can See, The Times of Harvey Milk, Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

YouTube
I mentioned YouTube in my last post as being a shadier method of movie watching but now YouTube has begun releasing movies legitimately. Most are in high quality and best of all, no ads beyond the usual occasional YouTube pop up. Their selection seems to primarily consist of old horror movies with some other movies thrown in.

Notable Choices: Carrie, Day of the Dead, The Little Princess, Casino Royale (1967), Satan’s School for Girls, Who’s Harry Crumb?, 7 Days in September.

Movies Found Online
Movies Found Online is a great directory of movies that have been located across multiple sources. They have a ton movies and documentaries available for free.

Notable Choices: Battle Royale, Night Watch, Akira, Waking Life, Yellow Submarine, Battleship Potemkin, Freaks, M, It’s A Wonderful Life, Don’t Copy That Floppy.

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