There are an increasing number of sites on the internet where you can watch films online for free legally so we’ve decided to compile a list of them. Most of the films available online are legally free as they are ‘public domain’ movies that have fallen out of copyright, so are usally quite old. However there are a lot of newer films now available too, in some cases the filmmaker has decided to make them free online for publicity as there not very mainstream, though sometimes these are only available for free for short periods.
The Archive
The Good – Lets you download the films as well as watch them online
The Bad – This is one of our favourite sites with no real bad points
The Archive is one of the most comprehensive sites that has nearly 3000 public domain movies to watch or download. It’s very easy to use with no registration needed and you can browse by language and category as well as seeing the most popular films. Details include subtitles for films, instructions for how to burn films to DVD and watchers own reviews. Popular films include George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Hitchcock’s The Man who Knew Too Much.
Indiemoviesonline
The Good – An impressive list of features films you won’t find on other sites
The Bad – You will soon have to register to use this site
Indie Movies Online is a UK Based site. They feature independent feature films that you probably won’t have heard of but cover a wide range of genres, although they only have around 200 films available. It’s easy to navigate as you can browse films by category or most watched and the site also features forums and current film news and reviews. At the moment you don’t need to register to watch, just confirm your date of birth.
Youtube
The Good – Simple to use with its recognisable user interface
The Bad – Lots of films aren’t available to watch free in the UK
Depending on your country Youtube lists all its movies that are legal uploads on these pages, in alphabetical order with a wide range to choose from. Again you may not have heard of a lot of these titles but there’s some hidden gems among them, even if you don’t spot them right away.
Jaman
The Good – A Good collection of recent films are available
The Bad – Films are ad supported
Jaman has movies you can pay to watch but also an impressive catalogue of free movies with classics like Nosferatu and many recent tiles as well. However it’s quite hard to filter out free ones; if you try to search by category it includes all of their movies including the paying ones. Again not all of their content is free in the UK so you may have problems watching some of the films.
AMCTV B-Movies
The Good – A Good collection of new and classic b-movies
The Bad – Its ad supported
AMC is an American movie site, so again you may be limited if you’re a UK watcher. Theres quite a lot of old b-movies available to watch here, but you do have to watch an ad before the film and theres no search function.
Documentaries
There are a numerous number of sites that just concentrate on free documentaries with popular titles like Supersize Me and Bowling for Columbine. Heres our three recommended sites freedocumentaries.org , freedocumentaries.net and documentary-film.net
Another site worth watching out for is The Auteurs site.
Although most of the films they have available are paying ones they often have a few free films which change regularly and the discussion and forums on auteurs are always worth reading.
Although an American site Speedcine is one of the most interesting sites we came acoss. It indexes all the free movies available online and where you can watch them. Although it focuses on American sites it is hoping to include databses of what can be watched where soon.
If weve missed any other sites out please let us know and we’ll add them to the list
