Pluto TV is free and ad-supported, and beyond its live channels sits an on-demand library with some real gems. These are the ones worth your time, led by The Overnight, Boyhood, and Brawl in Cell Block 99, each a film I’ve reviewed or ranked among the best of its year.
Every pick links straight to where it’s streaming free, and the list gets refreshed as titles come and go.
Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of October 2026.
THE OVERNIGHT (2015)
A couple new to Los Angeles accept a playdate invitation from a charismatic local family, and the evening gets progressively stranger and more intimate. Patrick Brice’s raunchy, awkward comedy is very funny and surprisingly sweet, with Jason Schwartzman at his most unhinged.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
BOYHOOD (2014)
Richard Linklater filmed the same cast for twelve years to capture a boy growing from first grade to college. The result is a quiet, monumental achievement, and Patricia Arquette is extraordinary as the mother holding everything together.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 (2017)
Vince Vaughn plays a laid-off tow truck driver turned drug courier who lands in prison and has to fight his way to its darkest wing. S. Craig Zahler’s slow-burn grindhouse is brutal, bone-crunching, and anchored by Vaughn’s terrifying, career-redefining turn.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016)
Bizarre by traditional sequel standards, ’10 Cloverfield Lane is nonetheless an immaculate work of genre craftsmanship, a bustling coup de grace of wit, intensity and phenomenal performances with John Goodman perhaps giving the best of his already standout career. A real “bucket” of winning.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
ALL IS LOST (2013)
Robert Redford, alone on a sinking yacht in the Indian Ocean, with almost no dialogue and no one coming to help. J.C. Chandor’s survival drama is pure, gripping cinema, and Redford gives one of the best performances of his career without saying a word.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
WHAT MAISIE KNEW (2013)
What Maisie Knew is an emotional powerhouse of a film led by an adorably funny-faced young actress functioning on a purely natural level, allowing the “performance” underneath to disappear entirely. Onata Aprile is remarkable as a little girl caught between her self-absorbed parents, played by Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, in a quietly devastating custody drama.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
STARRY EYES (2014)
Low-budge indie horror tracks the disintegration of a wanna-be Hollywood starlet, complete with a Kafka-esque transformation that’ll have even the hardest of horror fans squirming. Alex Essoe gives a fearless performance as an aspiring actress who will do anything for a role, in a nasty satire of Hollywood ambition.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
PERSONAL SHOPPER (2016)
Kristen Stewart plays a celebrity’s personal shopper in Paris who is also a medium, waiting for a sign from her dead twin brother. Olivier Assayas’ haunting, enigmatic ghost story features one of Stewart’s best performances, and its text-message sequence is a nail-biter.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
BLOODY HELL (2020)
A bank robbery hero flees his own fame to Finland and gets carved up by a family feeding something in their basement. Follows proudly in the grand tradition of Australian horror, irreverent about the genre while adding a worthwhile entry to it.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
SHORT TERM 12 (2013)
Brie Larson plays a supervisor at a foster care facility for at-risk teens, balancing their crises with her own buried pain. Destin Daniel Cretton’s breakout is a raw, tender, and deeply moving drama, with early turns from Lakeith Stanfield and Rami Malek.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
COLD IN JULY (2014)
As the next chapter in Mickle’s ascension, Cold in July is a wonderfully stylized jangle of unsettling imagery, deep-seated tension, and brash, bold, cold comeuppances. A Texas man shoots an intruder in 1989 and the dead man’s father comes looking for him, with Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, and Don Johnson making a terrific trio.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
TITO AND THE BIRDS (2019)
In a Brazil gripped by an epidemic of fear that makes people physically ill, a young boy sets out to finish his father’s research into the cure, which might just be birdsong. This gorgeous, painterly animated feature is a striking parable about panic and media.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
BUSTER’S MAL HEART (2017)
Rami Malek plays a mountain man who breaks into vacation homes to survive the winter, haunted by a fractured past as a night-shift hotel clerk. Sarah Adina Smith’s mind-bending, nonlinear puzzle is strange, sad, and anchored by Malek’s committed turn.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
THE BIG SHORT (2015)
A band of outsiders and oddballs (Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt) bet against the housing market before the 2008 crash. Adam McKay’s furious, fourth-wall-breaking comedy turns a financial disaster into an entertaining, infuriating lesson.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
SCREAM (2022)
A new Ghostface targets the relatives of the originals while the film coins the word “requel” for what it’s doing. Razor-sharp, bloody glorious, and most importantly a hell of a lot of fun. The fifth film brings back Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette while poking smart fun at legacy sequels, and the kills are as vicious as ever.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
MANDY (2018)
Nicholas Cage. Murder cults. Biker gangs from hell. Mandy is a balls-out acid-trip that’s kinda artsy and totally cheeseball and fully worth your attention. Cage goes gonzo. Nicolas Cage goes full Cage in Panos Cosmatos’ psychedelic revenge odyssey, complete with a chainsaw duel and one of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s final scores.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE (2015)
Two serial cheaters (Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis) become best friends and make a pact not to sleep together. Leslye Headland’s rom-com is raunchy, smart, and surprisingly sweet, and its leads have chemistry to burn. It’s the rare rom-com that is genuinely funny and genuinely sexy.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
YOUNG ONES (2014)
In a drought-ravaged future, a father (Michael Shannon) fights to protect his family and his land from a scheming young suitor (Nicholas Hoult). Jake Paltrow’s moody sci-fi western is a slow burn, but it looks incredible and the performances are strong.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND (2017)
Ana Asensio writes, directs, and stars as an undocumented immigrant in New York who takes a mysterious, well-paying gig that turns into a nightmare. It’s a tense, slow-burn thriller about the desperation of surviving in the city, and Asensio is riveting.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
FIRST LOVE (2019)
Takashi Miike appears to be on top of his game, presenting a turducken of a love story in a gangster caper in a daffy crime drama. Giddily violent and stylish, First Love is loaded with attitude, charisma, and character with some fuddy-duddy dialogue limiting it from true greatness.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
THIRST STREET (2017)
A hallucinatory psychosexual-thriller/twisted-rom-com Thirst Street will undoubtedly remain one of 2017’s best undiscovered gems. With an ace up his sleeve in star Lindsay Burdge, director Nathan Silver tells this story of unrequited love with splashes of startling comedy, dreamlike imagery and a prevailing sense of dread and watching it is nothing short of a rare treat.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
BURNING (2018)
A young aspiring writer becomes obsessed with a charismatic, wealthy stranger (Steven Yeun) who may be hiding something sinister. Lee Chang-dong’s slow-burning mystery is hypnotic and ambiguous, and Yeun is chillingly opaque.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST (2018)
After she’s caught with another girl on prom night, a teenager (Chloë Grace Moretz) is sent to a gay conversion therapy camp in 1993. Desiree Akhavan’s quietly furious drama is funny, tender, and defiant. Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck are wonderful as her fellow campers.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV
THE ENDLESS (2017)
Moorhead and Benson’s The Endless is a riveting trip down the rabbit hole, fastened with a smarter-than-average and genuinely thrilling script and impossible to predict plotting. Suffers in the acting and special effects department but remains a strong recommendation for sci-fi fans looking for some original flavor.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
SIDE EFFECTS (2013)
A young woman (Rooney Mara) on a new antidepressant commits a shocking act, and her psychiatrist (Jude Law) unravels in its aftermath. Steven Soderbergh’s twisty pharmaceutical thriller is a slick, sexy throwback to 1990s potboilers.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION (2015)
Though not the franchise’s top shelf entry, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation relies on a charmed, charming cast and thrilling set pieces to create a stirring (if forgettable) action adventure. Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is a terrific addition, and the Vienna opera sequence is one of the franchise’s finest set pieces.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
SYNCHRONIC (2020)
Two New Orleans paramedics trace a string of bizarre deaths to a designer drug that sends users back in time. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead turn a time-travel premise into a moving buddy drama, with Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan both doing excellent work.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
CAMP X-RAY (2014)
A young soldier (Kristen Stewart) assigned to Guantanamo Bay forms an unlikely connection with one of the detainees (Peyman Moaadi). Peter Sattler’s restrained, humane drama gave Stewart one of her first great post-Twilight showcases.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (2015)
In 1971, a Stanford psychology professor (Billy Crudup) assigns students to play prisoners and guards, and the experiment spirals out of control within days. It’s a tense, disturbing recreation of a notorious study, with a cast full of rising stars.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
LAST FILM SHOW (2022)
A nine-year-old boy in rural Gujarat falls in love with cinema and befriends a projectionist who sneaks him into the booth. Pan Nalin’s semi-autobiographical film is a warm, nostalgic ode to the magic of celluloid and the people who kept it running.▶ Streaming free on Pluto TV · Read the full review
FAQ
What is the best free movie on Pluto TV right now?
Right now, The Overnight tops the list, followed by Boyhood and Brawl in Cell Block 99.
Is Pluto TV really free?
Yes. Pluto TV is free to watch with ads, and no subscription is required.
How often is this list updated?
Picks are refreshed every few weeks as titles come and go from Pluto TV.
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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