ITVX has a huge library of amazing movies – and, the best part is, you don’t need to pay anything to watch them.
The incoming launch of HBO Max has served as a sobering reminder of just how many streaming platforms there are.
Netflix is still the biggest and most popular, but Prime Video, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, and Apple TV (to mention a few) all have their merits – and their own direct debits.
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That’s where ITVX comes in. If you’re looking for a film to watch, and you don’t mind a few ads, you can watch all of these completely free. It helps that they’re brilliant, too.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
- Genre: Action, Drama
- Year: 1969
- Cast: 2 hours 20 minutes
- Director: Peter R. Hunt
- Runtime: 2 hours 20 minutes
What it’s about: James Bond goes undercover in pursuit of Blofeld, with his mission taking him to the Swiss Alps, where he uncovers a plot involving beautiful women from around the world – and he finds love, too.
Why to watch: This is, quite simply, the most underrated James Bond movie in the entire canon: a breathtaking, poignant tale of heroism and doomed love that would be regarded much higher if Sean Connery was in it. To borrow George Lazenby’s words, “this never happened to the other fellow”. Diana Rigg’s Tracy di Vincenzo is also an all-time Bond girl.
Hot Fuzz
- Genre: Comedy, Action
- Year: 2007
- Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Timothy Dalton
- Director: Edgar Wright
- Runtime: 2 hours 1 minute
What it’s about: Nicholas Angel, a decorated London police officer, is relocated to a small town because he’s too good at his job. However, this seemingly quiet haven is harbouring a dark secret.
Why to watch: “By the power of Grayskull,” this is where Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s Cornetto Trilogy peaked. Hot Fuzz is a blood-splattered, fizzy send-up of the action genre with perhaps the highest laugh rate in any movie since Airplane.
2001: A Space Odyssey
- Genre: Sci-fi
- Year: 1968
- Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain
- Director: Stanley Kubrick
- Runtime: 2 hours 29 minutes
What it’s about: In a saga spanning millennia, we see mankind’s evolution via a mysterious monolith, from apes learning to break bones to a voyage to Jupiter to uncover its origin.
Why to watch: A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? This is the greatest movie ever made: an untouchable sci-fi epic that’s eerily prescient but unknowable, technically wondrous, and spiritually incomparable. Stanley Kubrick took cinema ad astra – to the stars, infinity, and beyond.
Catch Me If You Can
- Genre: Biography, Crime
- Year: 2002
- Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Runtime: 2 hours 21 minutes
What it’s about: Frank Abagnale Jr pulls off audacious cons for a living, posing as a pilot, doctor, and lawyer and cashing cheques worth millions of dollars while evading the FBI.
Why to watch: One of Steven Spielberg’s gentlest and most affectionate movies, Catch Me If You Can is a breezy, jazzy, yet exhilarating caper that proved to be the perfect vehicle for the post-Titanic era of Leonardo DiCaprio’s career. It’s impossible not to enjoy it, in our eyes.
Bronson
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2008
- Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, James Lance
- Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
- Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes
What it’s about: In 1974, Michael Peterson is sentenced to seven years in prison for armed robbery. In the violent decades that followed, he became known as Charles Bronson, the most dangerous prisoner in Britain.
Why to watch: The depths of A Clockwork Orange’s depravity will never be reached on-screen again. However, Bronson – directed by the maker of Drive – is close in spirit: an astonishing character study that doesn’t rationalise ‘evil’, with Hardy’s electrifying performance at its bare-knuckled centre.
Buried
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2010
- Cast: Ryan Reynolds
- Director: Rodrigo Cortés
- Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
What it’s about: Paul Conroy, an American civilian working in Iraq, wakes up inside a wooden coffin that’s been buried underground. With little more than a lighter and a phone, he tries to figure out how to escape.
Why to watch: John Waters once advised people to see Buried with “someone you hate”. That’s an exquisitely apt recommendation: it’s a celluloid nightmare more visceral than anything you’ve (hopefully) experienced. Plus, it reveals Reynolds’ true dramatic talents underneath his smarmy persona.
Dirty Dancing
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Year: 1987
- Cast: Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Cynthia Rhodes
- Director: Emile Ardolino
- Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
What it’s about: While holidaying with her parents at a summer resort, Baby falls under the spell of Johnny, the camp’s rebellious dance instructor.
Why to watch: Dirty Dancing is one of the most joyous and rewatchable movies ever made. In short – sorry, but we can’t resist – you’ll have the time of your life. We swear… it’s the truth.
Jack Reacher
- Genre: Thriller, Action
- Year: 2012
- Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Werner Herzog
- Director: Christopher McQuarrie
- Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes
What it’s about: Jack Reacher, a former military police investigator, is called upon to figure out the truth when an ex-army sniper is accused of committing a mass shooting.
Why to watch: Tom Cruise doesn’t look like Jack Reacher as he’s written by Lee Child. If you can let go of your preconceptions, this is one of his most underrated roles; harshly shrewd, clinical in combat, and against his usual movie-star type.
As a film, it’s a compelling conspiracy thriller with superb action sequences; it’s unsurprising that Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have such a strong working relationship.
Kill Bill (Vol 1 and 2)
- Genre: Action, Thriller
- Year: 2003–2004
- Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- Runtime: 4 hours 7 minutes (1 hour 51 minutes and 2 hours 18 minutes)
What it’s about: Years after a pregnant assassin – code-named The Bride – is slain by her troupe of contract killers, she emerges from a coma hellbent on revenge.
Why to watch: Kill Bill isn’t Quentin Tarantino’s greatest masterpiece (that honour goes to Inglourious Basterds). It is the movie he was born to make; a high-art, bloodily effervescent pastiche with some of the most unforgettable lines and images in the director’s canon. And, yes, we’re grouping them as one film – if you can, watch The Whole Bloody Affair.
La La Land
- Genre: Romance, Musical
- Year: 2016
- Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend
- Director: Damien Chazelle
- Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
What it’s about: Mia and Sebastian, two young artists chasing their dreams in Los Angeles, meet and quickly hit it off. But what matters more, success or love?
Why to watch: Cynics would have you believe La La Land is overrated. They’re wrong: it’s a near-immaculate, swooning, infectious love story that’s shamelessly in love with its technicolour, song-and-dance ancestors. It’ll make you cry, too. What a picture.
Law Abiding Citizen
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2009
- Cast: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Leslie Bibb
- Director: F. Gary Gray
- Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes
What it’s about: Years after Clyde Shelton’s wife and daughter are violently murdered, he seeks vengeance not just against their killer, but the corrupt authorities who let him walk free.
Why to watch: A gruesome, post-Taken crowdpleaser, Law Abiding Citizen is trashy, B-movie carnage with Gerard Butler cut loose. You may not think about it much when it’s done, but you’ll feel like you love it in the moment.
Parasite
- Genre: Drama, Thriller
- Year: 2019
- Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik
- Director: Bong Joon-ho
- Runtime: 2 hours 12 minutes
What it’s about: The Kim family lives in a semi-basement flat in Seoul, struggling to make ends meet. When their eldest son starts tutoring a rich family’s daughter, they see an opportunity to infiltrate their lives, but their deception starts to unravel.
Why to watch: Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. This was the first foreign-language movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and for good reason: it’s a masterpiece that’s immensely entertaining.
Predestination
- Genre: Sci-fi, Thriller
- Year: 2014
- Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor
- Director: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
- Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
What it’s about: On his final mission, a time-travelling agent is tasked with going back to 1975 New York to prevent a terror attack.
Why to watch: Predestination is a bamboozling movie in the best possible way; enormously ambitious, dazzling, and expertly performed by Hawke and Snook. You’ll feel dizzy by the time the credits roll – and then you’ll want to watch it again.
The Prince of Egypt
- Genre: Animation, Drama
- Year: 1998
- Cast: Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock
- Director: Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells
- Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes
What it’s about: Moses, an orphan raised as an Egyptian prince, discovers his true origins and flees – until a fateful conversation with God reveals his destiny: to liberate the slaves.
Why to watch: Try as Pixar, Disney, or Studio Ghibli might, there’s no topping The Prince of Egypt. This is the greatest animated movie ever made; a true wonder of artistry on the crest of the millennium.
Read more: The best movies you can watch for free on BBC iPlayer right now