The 15 Best Movies Streaming On Tubi Right Now

Since its launch in 2014, the free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi has amassed a passionate following among both casual viewers and diehard cinephiles. While Tubi features original content like its streaming competitors, it is primarily known for its massive library — it boasted nearly 300,000 films and television episodes as of June 2025. An expedition into Tubi’s licensed film catalogue, helpfully broken down into categories like “Gothic Horror” and “Stand-Up Comedy,” reveals mountains of buried cinematic treasure. On Tubi, you’re just as likely to find a Japanese horror movie from the silent era as you are a modern Hollywood action flick. Keeping that in mind, it is not surprising that Tubi has now exceeded over 100 million monthly viewers.

With so many titles available, how do you choose which ones to watch? Luckily, Looper has compiled a list of the best movies streaming on Tubi, from a classic Hitchcock spy thriller to a cyberpunk anime masterpiece.

A film-within-a-film story centered around an adaptation of “The Odyssey,” Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt” details a collapsing marriage against a backdrop of beautiful scenery. Released in 1963, this French New Wave drama follows Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a French playwright summoned to Italy to rewrite the script for a big screen version of Homer’s epic poem directed by famed Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang, who plays himself. The ladder-climbing Paul offers up his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) to be seduced by his American film producer (Jack Palance), changing their lives forever and turning Camille’s love into contempt.

In the decades since “Contempt” was released, cinema has had no shortage of disintegrating couples arguing in front of gorgeous European vistas, but no one has done it better than Godard. Moving and existential, “Contempt” pulls the distant past of “The Odyssey” into the present, with David and Camille as far apart as Odysseus and Penelope. International superstar Bardot is at her captivating best as Camille, the blonde bombshell who leaves psychological shrapnel in her wake.

Mamoru Oshii’s anime classic “Ghost in the Shell” imagines a future where man and machine have become one. Thanks to technological advances, human beings can become cyborgs, including those who have installed their consciousness (or “ghost”) into a fully-cybernetic “shell.” In New Port City, Major Motoko Kusanagi (Atsuko Tanaka) is a cyborg investigating a series of ghost-hackings by an entity known as the Puppet Master (Iemasa Kayumi). As she digs deeper into the mystery, Kusanagi questions what it means to be human.

“Ghost in the Shell” is considered a cyberpunk masterpiece and one of the best anime films of all time. Released in 1995, the film features a cutting-edge combination of detailed cel animation and CGI, and it was a major visual influence on “The Matrix” among other Hollywood films. Decades after its release, “Ghost in the Shell” continues to possess audiences with its dense, existential exploration of the thin wire separating humanity and technology. In 2004, Oshii directed a sequel, “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence,” and a controversial live-action reimagining of “Ghost in the Shell” was released in 2017.

From the mind of visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a dark fantasy film born out of the horrors of war. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young Spanish girl living under the Francoist dictatorship, discovers a magical labyrinth occupied by a faun (Doug Jones). The faun tells Ofelia that she is the reincarnation of a lost princess, and only by completing three tasks can she return to her kingdom. On the outskirts of her fantasy realm, however, her fascist stepfather (Sergi López) closes in on anti-Franco guerrilla fighters. Ofelia is torn between two worlds, but which one is more dangerous?

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is a sumptuous and richly-imagined tale of a girl’s coming-of-age, one that draws from classic fantasy tales like “Alice in Wonderland” while still being wholly original. Viewers only need one glimpse of the majestic faun’s labyrinth or the ghastly, fairy-eating Pale Man (also Doug Jones) to understand why the 2006 film won Academy Awards for cinematography, art direction, makeup. Just be warned: “Pan’s Labyrinth” may appear somewhat child-friendly at first glance, but it’s a surprisingly violent film, with one scene in particular living long in the memory.

Combine the direction of Vincente Minnelli, the music of George and Ira Gershwin, and the dancing prowess of Gene Kelly, and you get “An American in Paris,” one of the best movie musicals ever made. The story is deceptively simple. Jerry Mulligan (Kelly), an American World War II veteran now struggling as an artist in Paris, is torn between two women: the fashionable heiress Milo (Nina Foch) and the working-class gamine Lise (Leslie Caron). But the way the story is told is nothing less than transcendent.

Jerry’s imagination explodes across the screen, culminating in a 17-minute ballet sequence with elaborate sets and costumes inspired by Paris’ greatest artists. A Technicolor marvel, this 1951 film is a feast for the eyes as well as their ears, and it features Kelly and Caron singing and dancing to jazz standards like “I Got Rhythm.” Simply put, they don’t make movies like this anymore.

A primal and relentless ride through the desert of the human soul, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” elevates the Spaghetti Western to the stuff of myth and legend. Sergio Leone’s 1966 epic is the exclamation point at the end of his “Dollars” trilogy, following “A Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More,” all starring Clint Eastwood as his archetypal Man with No Name character. Eastwood is the “Good” of the title, a gunslinger nicknamed Blondie who reluctantly teams up with the scheming Tuco Ramirez (Eli Wallach, the “Ugly”) in search of a hidden stash of gold.

Also in pursuit of the gold is a killer known only as Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef, the “Bad”). It all culminates in a Mexican standoff between the three in a deserted graveyard. Will anyone walk away with the gold, or have they all found their final resting place? Also featuring Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable score — even if you’ve never seen the film, you have more than likely heard its main theme — “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” is the ultimate Western, a film so powerful you can practically feel the sun beating down.

There are a few key ingredients to the Alfred Hitchcock cinematic cocktail: a case of mistaken identity, a beautiful blonde, a plot-driving MacGuffin, and, above all, suspense. There were many variations of this recipe throughout Hitchcock’s long and productive career, but it is especially delicious in “North by Northwest,” his 1959 spy thriller starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Roger Thornhill (Grant) is an ordinary man who, thanks to a waiter’s mix-up, is confused for a Cold War spy named George Kaplan. Framed for killing an ambassador, Thornhill sprints across the country to clear his name and find the real Kaplan — if he even exists. He meets the captivating Eve Kendall (Saint) along the way, but she is also not who she appears to be. Featuring pulse-pounding plot twists, a legendary chase scene between Grant and a deadly crop duster, and a sly, subversive sexuality, “North by Northwest” is without a doubt one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies.

The story of Robin Hood, the emerald-clad archer who stole from the rich to give to the poor, has been told countless times, but 1938’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is the definitive telling. In a gloriously green imagining of Medieval England, Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) and his band of Merry Men live in Sherwood Forest, defending the poor and oppressed from the wicked Prince John (Claude Rains). Robin falls in love with the pure-hearted Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland) and aims to restore King Richard the Lion-Heart (Ian Hunter) to his rightful throne.

“The Adventures of Robin Hood” is one of the crown jewels of the Golden Age of Hollywood, an endlessly entertaining swashbuckling adventure. The film was shot in three-strip Technicolor, and its vibrant, deeply saturated colors make every scene look like a page from a storybook. Flynn’s Robin Hood is an irresistibly charming rogue; when he raises his sword against Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone), he makes a duel to the death in a torch-lit castle look like amazing fun. In the decades since the film’s release, the character of Robin Hood has been seen in parodies, cartoons, and gritty retellings, but the pure movie magic of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” has never been eclipsed.

In the annals of action movie history, there is “before” John Woo and “after” John Woo, and perhaps no film better exemplifies his big, blood-splattered impact on the genre than 1989’s “The Killer.” The titular killer is Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat), a Triad hitman with a unique sense of justice. While exchanging gunfire with gangsters, Ah Jong accidentally blinds a civilian, the beautiful nightclub singer Jennie (Sally Yeh).

To pay for an operation that will repair her sight, Ah Jong agrees to carry out a hit on a mob boss. In the chaos of the crossfire, Detective Li Ying (Danny Lee) witnesses Ah Jong saving an injured child and he becomes obsessed with tracking down the hitman. But “The Killer” is less of a cat and mouse game than a story about the shared sense of honor between a cop and a criminal.

An essential piece of Hong Kong action cinema, “The Killer” features Woo’s trademark bursts of operatic violence — bodies fall in slow motion, flocks of doves symbolically take to the air, and candlelit churches are obliterated by gunfire. The filmmaker had a major influence on the likes of Tony Scott, Jim Jarmusch, Luc Besson, Robert Rodriquez, and Quentin Tarantino, with the latter calling him “a major hero” of his.

In the shadowy streets of Vienna, pulp fiction writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is being followed. A flash of light reveals the smiling face of his pursuer, his dear friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). One problem: Lime is supposed to be dead. This famous entrance is just one unforgettable scene in 1949’s “The Third Man,” Carol Reed’s noir classic. Martins comes to Austria to bury his friend, who was supposedly killed in an accident. He learns that the charming Lime was actually a black market dealer of deadly, diluted penicillin, which sends him on a journey into the dark heart of postwar Vienna.

It is a surprisingly small role for the “Citizen Kane” auteur, but Orson Welles nonetheless steals every scene he appears in as the diabolical Harry Lime. Moody, atmospheric, and enthralling to the very last frame, “The Third Man” surprises the viewer at every turn. As the late, great film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies.”

Bong Joon-Ho’s 2003 detective thriller “Memories of Murder” is an unsettling mixture of satire and horror, inspired by a series of then-unsolved killings that ripped through South Korea in the 1980s. The film begins with the shocking discovery of two women who have been sexually assaulted and murdered in a small town. The seriousness of the crimes leaves detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) out of his depth. Detective Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) arrives from Seoul to help the investigation, and together they embark on a quest to find the elusive serial killer.

“Memories of Murder” has been listed among the best films of the 21st century. By turns grim and absurd, engrossing and maddening, the film burns with an increasingly desperate intensity as its heroes hunt for clues and suspects. It will stick with viewers long after they see its haunting final shot, in which Detective Park stares straight into the camera: Bong suspected that the real killer would watch the film and he wanted him to feel Park’s gaze. A man named Lee Choon-jae confessed to the murders in 2019.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

1934’s “It Happened One Night” follows Ellen “Ellie” Andrews (Claudette Colbert), a headstrong heiress who has recently gotten married. Hoping to escape from her disapproving father (and his plans for an annulment), Ellie hops on a bus, where she meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a down-on-his-luck reporter. Peter offers to help the wayward woman get to New York City if she lets him write about her story. What follows is a saucy, romantic romp across the country.

“It Happened One Night” is a sterling example of pre-code Hollywood, before censorship clamped down on eroticism in romance films. See, for example, Ellie lifting up her skirt to flash her legs as she and Peter hitchhike, or a running joke about the “walls of Jericho” (really a blanket hanging between hotel room beds). An influential and irrepressible romantic comedy, “It Happened One Night” is also a genuine piece of Hollywood history — it was the first film to win the “big five” Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, and best screenplay.

In the idyllic North Carolina town of Lumberton, where roses are always red and the sky is always blue, college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers a severed human ear in a field. Investigating the mystery behind the ear, he uncovers the violence and depravity lurking beneath Lumberton’s placid façade. Jeffrey becomes involved with both the sweet high schooler Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) and the tormented torch singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), ultimately crossing paths with the psychopathic criminal Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper at his most terrifying).

“Blue Velvet” is a defining motion picture for auteur filmmaker David Lynch, who released this seductive neo-noir psychodrama on an unsuspecting world in 1986. Puncturing its Rockwellian images of Americana with shocking moments of sexuality and violence, the film stunned audiences and critics alike and it is now recognized as one of the best films of the 1980s. “Blue Velvet” is a rare example of a film that feels both ahead of its time and outside of time, existing in its own strange, dreamlike dimension.

Actor Charles Laughton directed only one feature film during his distinguished career. Fortunately, that film was the masterpiece “The Night of the Hunter.” In an unforgettable performance, Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a serial killer posing as a preacher during the Great Depression. Powell marries widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) because he knows her young kids are hiding the $10,000 their late father stole. The children run away and take shelter with the kind, elderly Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), leading to a final confrontation between good and evil.

Filmed in expressionistic black and white, “The Night of the Hunter” unfolds like a beautiful nightmare. It was disparaged by critics upon its release in 1955, and Laughton chose to never make a movie again. Today, however, it is recognized as one of the greatest thrillers ever made and has influenced directors like Joel and Ethan Cohen and Spike Lee — the character Radio Raheem in Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” sports brass knuckles reading “LOVE” and “HATE” in tribute to Powell’s hand tattoos and even delivers the same monologue explaining why they’re both part of the story of life.

“The Man Who Fell to Earth” boasts the first starring role for legendary singer/songwriter David Bowie — one could argue that Thomas Jerome Newton, the meditative, orange-haired extraterrestrial of the title, was the role Bowie was born to play. In Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 science fiction fantasy cult classic, Newton is a humanoid alien who arrives from a dying world. With his advanced technology, Newton hopes to build a spaceship to send water back to his home planet, but he is woefully unprepared for Earth’s many vices: namely, sex, alcohol, and television.

“The Man Who Fell to Earth” rejects the typical trappings of an “alien invasion” story, instead using fragmented editing and eye-grabbing visuals to depict the disintegration of Newton’s psyche. It has become an arthouse favorite, with the scene in which David Bowie watches dozens of television screens at once standing as one of the most enduring images in sci-fi cinema. In 2022, Showtime produced a sequel television series of the same name starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, with Bill Nighy taking over the role of Newton from the late Bowie.

1938’s “Bringing Up Baby” is the definitive screwball comedy. Cary Grant plays David Huxley, a bespectacled, straight-laced paleontologist who spends a dizzying 24 hours with Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a free-spirited socialite who dotes on a pet leopard named Baby. Whisked away to the Vance family home in Connecticut, David joins Susan in her pursuit of the missing Baby as well as the stolen intercostal clavicle that David needs to complete his museum’s Brontosaurus skeleton.

Directed by Howard Hawks, “Bringing Up Baby” is as fresh and as funny today as it was in the ’30s. The comedic chemistry between Hepburn and Grant lights up the screen, and it’s hard to find a romantic comedy today that doesn’t carry a trace of the film’s DNA. Hawks, who went on to direct the likes of “His Girl Friday,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and “Rio Bravo,” carved out a reputation for strong female characters at a time when that was far from the norm. He was a trailblazer in his field, and “Bringing Up Baby” is an example of Hawks at the height of his powers.