Watch the latest films and movie classics on your Mac for free, legally and above board.
If you’ve exhausted the free movie section of YouTube and want more ways to stream films for free, you’ve come to the right place. The best news is that you don’t have to be a pirate to download free movies. Every option here is 100 percent legal, in the UK at least.
The UK’s two biggest players in movie streaming are LoveFilm and Netflix. Both services are super-cheap to subscribe to. Netflix costs £5.99 a month, as does LoveFilm. If you’re an Amazon Prime user, you can save more by getting Prime and LoveFilm Instant together for £79 a year. That works out at £29 for the LoveFilm portion of the payment – just £2.41 a month!
But what if your budget is zero pence? Here’s a way to get a total of two months of free movies.
Netflix has fewer total movies than rival LoveFilm, but more new films. It’s great for original serial drama too.
LoveFilm and Netflix each offer a 30 day, no obligation trial. You’ll need to sign up for the service of your choice with your payment details, but if you cancel online before the trial is finished – you’ll pay nothing. In either case, you can cancel instantly by visiting the service website and selecting the cancel link in your account. Sign up to LoveFilm for month, cancel, then sign up to Netflix for a month. Free movies galore!
Here’s a tip, though. Neither service will remind you when your trial is coming to an end, so make sure you put an alert in your Mac’s Calendar app.
As Seen on TV
TV catch-up services are a great source of cinematic entertainment.
The BBC iPlayer, to give the UK’s best known catch-up service its official name, has a section for films. At any time you’ll discover a dozen or fewer films to watch – but they’re always high quality. At the time of writing film classics One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Unbearable Lightness of Being were on offer. Check in weekly as titles change frequently.
Channel 4’s 4OD catch up service is also worth a nod. Though you won’t find many movies, there’s an extensive archive of old Channel 4 content, including mini-series and TV movies. That’s some of the UK’s best telly, from naturalistic drama This Is England to dystopian sci-fi Black Mirror – all free.
Channel 4’s history as a maker of film drama and TV movies makes its archive a pleasure to stream.
Dedicated Sites
Over the years dozens of free movie services have come and gone. Joost, Babelgum, Jaman – these were once the go-to sites for free films.
Now there are only a few such services left – and only a couple worth trying. The ‘net’s longest surviving free streaming site is Crackle. It has 241 free movies to watch online, free, supported by advertising. There are some good picks too. No sign-up is necessary, but making an account enables you to save a “watchlist” of films you want to see later.
Finally, archive.org is host to free, public domain media in a variety of formats. If black and white, classic movies are your guilty pleasure you’ll find thousands here, including films by Hitchcock, Roger Corman and Federico Fellini.
A lot of this stuff isn’t available in the Middle East, so you’ll have to use a VPN to trick the service into thinking that you’re applying from a UK IP address. Failing that, your only real option is OSN Play, OSN’s streaming service for subscribers. This doesn’t amount to free movies on your computer – as you have to be a subscriber to use the service – but the service is pretty good nonetheless.
