The best free movies on YouTube right now (December 2024) (2025)

Genre

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Stars

Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

Directed by

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

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It’s rare for YouTube to have the streaming rights to a Best Picture winner, so whenever that happens, take advantage of it. The aforementioned Best Picture recipient isNo Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers’ neo-Western thriller based on the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy. While on a hunt, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) witnesses a drug deal that ends with the death of several men. Despite his hesitation, Llewelyn steals the drug dealers’ briefcase containing $2.4 million in cash.

Llewelyn’s gamble draws the attention of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a ruthless hit man hired to retrieve the money. Meanwhile, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) investigates the drug deal and races to protect Moss. The riveting thriller is one of the best films of the 21st century, backed by tremendous direction from the Coen Brothers and a generational performance from Bardem.

Genre

Family, Comedy, Fantasy

Stars

Shad Moss, Morris Chestnut, Jonathan Lipnicki

Directed by

John Schultz

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Teenage orphan Calvin Cambridge (Lil’ Bow Wow) eats and sleeps basketball. The Los Angeles native spends most of his days dreaming of playing professionally with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. However, Calvin’s small stature and amateur skills will never translate to the NBA. When the orphanage’s bully throws an old pair of sneakers belonging to Michael Jordan onto a power line, Calvin sets out to retrieve them during a rainstorm. Calvin gets the sneakers back, but not without first getting struck by lightning.

The next day, Calvin learns that the lightning turned the shoes into magic sneakers, allowing him to play like Jordan. After an impressive showing during a one-on-one game, Calvin signs with the Los Angeles Knights and quickly becomes a superstar. How long can Calvin keep this up before the sneakers run out of magic?

Genre

Comedy, Drama

Stars

Steve Carell, Christian Bale, John Magaro

Directed by

Adam McKay

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Leave it to Adam McKay to inject humor into the 2007-2008 financial crisis for his black comedy The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis’ 2010 book of the same name. The Big Short features multiple stories that intertwine to show how a select group of people predicted the housing market would crash and decided to profit from it.The Big Short starts with Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a hedge fund manager who, after discovering the housing market will collapse, creates credit default swaps. Essentially, Burry is shorting the housing market, and if it goes broke, he will make a significant profit.

Banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) gets word of this and pitches the swaps to another hedge fund manager, Mark Baum (Steve Carell). Meanwhile, amateur investors Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) find Vennett’s presentation and get their hands on some swaps, too. Don’t worry about the financial jargon. McKay creates hilarious and easy-to-understand montages to help the audience better understand the lingo.

Genre

Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction

Stars

Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine

Directed by

Christopher Nolan

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In his lifelong attempt to better understand time, Christopher Nolan tackled wormholes and space travel in the sci-fi adventure film Interstellar. Humanity is slowly going extinct in a dystopian future due to a global crop blight. The only way to solve their problems is to find a new planet to inhabit. Former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is recruited to explore a wormhole near Saturn. The belief is that one of the three planets on the other side of the wormhole can be the next home for the people of Earth.

Joined by Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and a team of scientists, Cooper leaves his family on Earth to pilot the mission. The journey is treacherous and challenging, from giant waves and unstable conditions to unruly astronauts and mechanical issues. Yet, Cooper and the team venture out into the unknown, and what they discover will change the course of humanity forever.

Genre

Action, Thriller, Crime

Stars

Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty

Directed by

Kathryn Bigelow

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Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze square off in Kathryn Bigelow’s excellent action thriller, Point Break. Former college quarterback Johnny Utah (Reeves) is a hot-shot FBI agent who teams with veteran agent Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey) to catch a group of bank robbers known as the “Ex-Presidents.” The duo hypothesizes that the robbers are surfers, so Utah goes undercover within the beach community, searching for more information.

While posing as a surfer, Utah meets Bodhi (Swayze), the eccentric leader of a group of surfers. As Utah spends more time with the surfers, he develops a genuine bond with the free-spirited Bodhi. However, this complicates Utah’s mission, blurring the lines between his new friends and his job.

Genre

Fantasy, Drama

Stars

Madison Wolfe, Imogen Poots, Sydney Wade

Directed by

Anders Walter

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Genre

Drama, History, Crime

Stars

Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff, Anne Heche

Directed by

Marc Meyers

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Someone at YouTube has very deftly picked up on the renewed interest in Jeffrey Dahmer by getting the rights to stream My Friend Dahmer. This serial killer movie is based upon the true story of John “Derf” Backderf (Alex Wolff), a cartoonist who was the closest friend that Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) had in high school. In this adaptation of Backderf’s graphic novel, he and his fellow outcasts befriend Dahmer, but they aren’t blind to his bizarre behavior.

However, they couldn’t have predicted that the awkward young man that they knew would go on to become one of the most infamous serial killers of the last century. It’s also a tragic tale, as no one notices how monstrous Dahmer has become until it’s far too late to stop him.

Genre

Fantasy, Drama, Thriller, Romance

Stars

Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel

Directed by

Neil Burger

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The Illusionist beat the similarly themed film, The Prestige, to theaters by about two months, but Christopher Nolan’s movie is the superior of the two. Regardless, The Illusionist has its charms, largely in the core trio of Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti. When they were young, Eduard Abramovich (Norton) and Duchess Sophie Von Teschen (Biel) had a passion for each other that her parents forbade.

Upon adulthood, Edward reinvented himself as Eisenheim The Illusionist and reunited with Sophie before she could be married to the malevolent Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). When Sophie is murdered, Chief Inspector Walter Uhl (Giamatti) is unnerved when Eisenheim appears to be able to summon Sophie’s spirit at will.

Genre

Horror, Thriller

Stars

Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman

Directed by

George A. Romero

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A seminal entry for American horror cinema, George A. Romero’s classic horror movie follows seven people who find themselves trapped in Pennsylvania as the terrifying walking dead surround them. They have to try to survive without understanding the terror that lurks outside.

The movie has been noted as the first zombie film, and its influences can be seen in everything from 28 Days Later to Shaun of the Dead. Romero’s debut — he wrote, directed, edited, and acted in the film — made him into a superstar,quickly revolutionizing the genre on a budget of a mere $114,000.