The Best Movies on Kanopy Right Now (November 2026)

Last updated: November 1, 2026

Want something scarier? The best horror movies on Kanopy right now →

Kanopy might be the best-kept secret in streaming: it’s free with a library card from most U.S. public libraries and universities, and its catalog is stacked with festival favorites, indie gems and modern classics. These are the best movies streaming on Kanopy right now, pulled straight from my reviews and updated as titles come and go, with a link to the full review if you want the long version. For more, see my full list of free movies across every service.

PRIDE (2014)

🍅93%Critics🍿89%Audience⭐7.8IMDb

In 1984, a group of London gay and lesbian activists set out to support striking Welsh miners. Matthew Warchus’ true story is funny, rousing, and deeply moving, and its ensemble is a joy from top to bottom. Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, and Ben Schnetzer lead an ensemble that will have you cheering by the end.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013)

🍅92%Critics🍿74%Audience⭐7.4IMDb

Inside Llewyn Davis is a mood piece if there ever was any, rich with soulful folk ballads, colorful characters, and stripped of the usual framework that we call a story. Oscar Isaac’s breakthrough performance anchors the Coen brothers’ melancholy portrait of the 1961 Greenwich Village folk scene, cat and all.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review · Every Coen Brothers Movie, Ranked

HEEL (2025)

🍅88%Critics🍿76%Audience

A family kidnaps a hard-partying, misanthropic 19-year-old and chains him up in their home, determined not just to punish him but to rehabilitate him into one of their own. Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough play father and mother consequence, the latter so pale and whispery she seems like a Victorian ghost. A touch A Clockwork Orange meets The Loved Ones, Jan Komasa’s darkly funny psychological thriller heads to rather unexpected places.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · See where it ranks among the best horror of the 2020s

SWISS ARMY MAN (2016)

🍅73%Critics🍿72%Audience⭐6.9IMDb

One of the most bizarre and bizarrely beautiful films to grace the Sundance Dramatic Competition, Swiss Army Man is not a film to be puzzled out in one go but that’s ok. It’s mightily entertaining, features two standout performances and has enough raw originality coursing through its veins to make it truly stand in a league of its own.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

ANORA (2024)

🍅93%Critics🍿84%Audience⭐7.4IMDb

Mikey Madison rules the screen as a Brooklyn stripper who falls for the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch and the fallout their entanglement entails in the truly alive Anora. As their story unfolds, writer-director Sean Baker puts the romantic-comedy through a fun house mirror, where the promises of love and wealth distort into vapor and illusions, unraveling as the well-drawn characters confront the tricks they’ve played on themselves.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

GHOSTLIGHT (2024)

🍅99%Critics🍿97%Audience⭐7.5IMDb

Keith Kupferer gives one of the great unsung performances of recent years as a gruff Chicago construction worker who stumbles into a community theater production of Romeo and Juliet while his family quietly comes apart, opposite his real-life wife Tara Mallen and daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer. Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s blue-collar drama has a rare economy to it, rich in character and lived-in detail, and its slow-burn reckoning with grief lands like a gut punch.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy

NO OTHER CHOICE (2025)

🍅97%Critics🍿93%Audience⭐7.5IMDb

No Other Choice is an expertly constructed social satire from Park Chan-wook that harkens to its South Korean compatriot Parasite. Come for the bloody thrills, stay for the pertinent message about humanity and their employment crisis circa 2025.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

COSMOPOLIS (2012)

🍅67%Critics🍿31%Audience⭐5.1IMDb

Cosmopolis is philosophical poetry in motion told through a series of increasingly bizarre and abtruse vignettes that doesn’t wait for you to catch up, a tactic that kept me glued to the screen in anxious anticipation and careful study for it’s entire one hour and 49 minute run time.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

PLEASURE (2021)

🍅88%Critics🍿60%Audience⭐6.3IMDb

A stunningly provocative exploration of the peaks and valleys of the porn industry led by a wowing performance from newcomer Sofia Kappel, Pleasure uses gratuitous sex to speak to structures of power and consent while telling the story of one girl’s thirst for pornstar fame.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

TITANE (2021)

🍅90%Critics🍿85%Audience⭐6.4IMDb

Titane sees Julia Ducournau use expressive body horror and ostensibly insane plotting to explore the very-real transformative nature of childbearing. A startling and genuinely thrilling work of avant-garde brilliance. Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or for this gleefully transgressive body-horror fever dream, and Agathe Rousselle is astonishing in her first role.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

SPOTLIGHT (2015)

🍅97%Critics🍿93%Audience⭐8.1IMDb

Spotlight is a classically told investigative thriller featuring confident performances from its able ensemble. Though it adheres to a familiar narrative style, its overwhelmingly excellent craftsmanship makes it a strong feature, and its Best Picture win was well earned.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

GREEN ROOM (2016)

🍅90%Critics🍿75%Audience⭐6.9IMDb

Jeremy Saulnier’s grotesquely violent Green Room pits a hapless punk band against a group of militant Neo Nazis in almost pornographically gruesome fashion. A relentlessly fierce examination of violence meets punk, this well-acted violent venture is a must for those compelled to see such material.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

WHAT MAISIE KNEW (2013)

🍅86%Critics🍿80%Audience⭐7.4IMDb

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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018)

🍅87%Critics🍿69%Audience⭐6.9IMDb

The Sisters Brothers subverts every waking expectation one has for the Western genre, currying favor with rich, strange performances and a bold penchant for charging down the dirtroad less traveled. Poetic, eccentric, and surprisingly heartrending at times, consider this one from Jacques Audiard a flashbang must-see.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

DINNER IN AMERICA (2022)

🍅91%Critics🍿90%Audience⭐7.5IMDb

Dinner in America is a rough-around-the-edges ode to love on the fringes of society, where a criminal punk rocker and a bizarre loner court an unlikely flirtation, all while navigating the suburbs, musical aspirations and the law. Expect a brash curb-stomp of a coming-of-age saga and prepare for impact.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

UNDER THE SKIN (2014)

🍅84%Critics🍿55%Audience⭐6.3IMDb

Scarlett Johansson plays an alien prowling Scotland for men to consume, and Jonathan Glazer shoots it like a waking nightmare. Under the Skin is engaging, seductive, and totally f*cked in the head. Mica Levi’s eerie score is half the experience.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

ARRIVAL (2016)

🍅94%Critics🍿83%Audience⭐7.9IMDb

Minor quibbles aside, Arrival is heady, bold, emotionally decadent and fearless. It’s science fiction for film lovers lead by an excellent turn from Amy Adams and emboldened by Jóhann Jóhannsson’s unforgettable score and Denis Villeneuve’s moody aesthetics.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

MASS (2021)

🍅95%Critics🍿90%Audience⭐7.5IMDb

A painstakingly intimate, conversation-driven drama with phenomenal performances all around (Jacob Isaacs and Ann Dowd are especially extraordinary), Mass is a terrific and terrifically depressing debut from Fran Kranz that will be sure to move audiences to tears.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

SANCTUARY (2023)

🍅88%Critics🍿82%Audience⭐6.2IMDb

Sanctuary, a kinky dark romantic comedy, transcends its overtly sexually-charged trappings to become a provocative exploration of power, control, and trust. With an unforgettable performance from Margaret Qualley, it’s a wildly unpredictable ride that’ll leaves an indelible mark on the more risqué viewer’s psyche.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

ONLY GOD FORGIVES (2013)

🤢41%Critics🍿37%Audience⭐5.7IMDb

Even when the film is as subtle as a neon sign, it’s as sharp as a wakizashi, making Only God Forgives a 21st century creation myth at its most boldly esoteric. Cliff Martinez’s pulsing score and Larry Smith’s lurid cinematography make it a sensory experience as much as a story.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

SPENCER (2021)

🍅83%Critics🍿52%Audience⭐6.5IMDb

Pablo Larraín and Kristen Stewart achieve wonders in the awards-destined Princess Diana biopic Spencer. A handsomely-mounted portrait of strained poise under royal expectations, the artful biographical drama boasts sumptuous production details, skillful direction, and a career-best turn from Stewart.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

PEARL (2022)

🍅93%Critics🍿83%Audience⭐7.0IMDb

An electrifying improvement over X, Ti West’s Technicolor slasher is a darkly funny thirst trap; a gory origin story that sees Mia Goth give an absolute scene-stealing performance as the titular Pearl. Mia Goth co-wrote the film with Ti West, and her unbroken monologue and that end-credits smile are the stuff of horror legend.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2025)

🍅80%Critics🍿88%Audience⭐7.3IMDb

Mike Flanagan adapts a not-so-scary Stephen King story to tremendous effect with The Life of Chuck, crafting an ethereal, poetic drama that juxtaposes the vastness of time and the universe against the quiet importance of a single human life. The cast is outstanding, the story is profound, the direction is assured, and the result pulses with the beauty, messiness, and meaning of being alive.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review · Mike Flanagan Movies and Shows, Ranked

HONEYLAND (2019)

🍅100%Critics🍿86%Audience⭐8.0IMDb

Honeyland masterfully employs the documentary medium to tell a sprawling story about sustainability through the lens of a traditional Macedonian beekeeper. The perfect cross section of educational entertainment and storytelling prowess, the Sundance award winner is nectar for the soul that buzzes with poignancy.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

ENEMY (2014)

🍅74%Critics🍿64%Audience⭐6.8IMDb

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a history professor who spots his exact double in a movie and becomes obsessed with meeting him. Denis Villeneuve’s queasy, sepia-toned puzzle box is seductive and deeply strange, and its final shot is one of the great WTF endings.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

BLACKFISH (2013)

🍅98%Critics🍿90%Audience⭐8.1IMDb

The story of Tilikum, the orca behind multiple deaths at SeaWorld, and the industry that kept him captive. Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s documentary is infuriating and heartbreaking, and it changed how a lot of people think about marine parks.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

CLIMAX (2018)

🍅68%Critics🍿65%Audience⭐6.9IMDb

A purified blast of masterfully refined schlock, Climax is a depraved and largely unpleasant experience that boasts technical genius, a roaring soundtrack and wholly authentic performances. It’s at once impossible to recommend and the most disturbing, effective piece of filmmaking I’ve yet seen in 2019.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

POSSESSOR (2020)

🍅94%Critics🍿59%Audience⭐6.5IMDb

A brilliantly rendered technology-fueled nightmare, Possessor announces Brandon Cronenberg as an uncompromising storyteller, one who manages brilliant, thought-provoking plotting amid incredibly affecting production elements (including an extreme reverence for practical special effects.)▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

FENCES (2016)

🍅92%Critics🍿75%Audience⭐7.2IMDb

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis (and the rest of the cast) are simply outstanding in the powerfully acted and supremely written Fences, a 1950s melodrama about a struggling African American family, even if the movie itself feels much more like theater than a film; the experience is stirring and important nonetheless.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE DISASTER ARTIST (2017)

🍅90%Critics🍿85%Audience⭐7.3IMDb

One of the funniest and most sincere making-of comedies to come out of Hollywood, The Disaster Artist finds James Franco and brother Dave Franco homaging the world’s worst movie with one of their bests.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

ALL IS LOST (2013)

🍅95%Critics🍿64%Audience⭐6.9IMDb

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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE GIFT (2015)

🍅92%Critics🍿75%Audience⭐7.0IMDb

For fans of classic psychological thrillers, a la Hitchcock, to clean, clear modern horror, there is something in The Gift for all lovers of edgy cinema that dares to make you think. Joel Edgerton writes, directs, and co-stars as an old acquaintance whose unwelcome gifts unearth a couple’s buried secrets, with Jason Bateman cast against type.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

KRISHA (2016)

🍅95%Critics🍿77%Audience⭐7.1IMDb

Backed by a spine-tingling score, Krisha is a powerful journey through the dingy bowels of addiction and family secrets. Krisha Fairchild is masterful in a breakout role for the ages just as first-time director Trey Edwards Shults proves himself a powerful emerging voice with a debut that won’t soon be forgotten.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

TOGETHER (2025)

🍅89%Critics🍿75%Audience⭐6.7IMDb

Together is a twisted, tactile meditation on love, compromise, and the bodily cost of staying too close for too long, brought to life by Michael Shanks’ sharp direction and a pair of knockout performances from Alison Brie and Dave Franco, both delivering some of their best onscreen work to date. Together, they make the film’s grotesque intimacy feel oddly, disturbingly relatable.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

OUT OF THE FURNACE (2013)

🤢54%Critics🍿52%Audience⭐6.7IMDb

Christian Bale’s steelworker goes after the backwoods crime boss responsible for his brother’s disappearance. Scott Cooper’s grim Rust Belt thriller is full of heavyweight performances, and Woody Harrelson makes a truly frightening villain.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

LONGLEGS (2024)

🍅85%Critics🍿61%Audience⭐6.5IMDb

Oz Perkins delivers another sinister vision of the occult in taut, skin-crawling Longlegs. Maika Monroe is excellent as a nervy, kinda-clairvoyant FBI agent, while Nicolas Cage creeps as the eponymous killer but is not always an additive force. While never outright terrifying, this deliberately-paced supernatural horror film is dripping with atmosphere and tension.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

HEREDITARY (2018)

🍅90%Critics🍿72%Audience⭐7.3IMDb

Ranking up their with the great contemporary horror movies of our time, Hereditary delivers the scares of The Conjuring with the atmospherics of The Shining all matched to a jaw-droppingly stunning performance from Toni Collette. Now go scare the shit out of yourself with it.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)

🍅95%Critics🍿86%Audience⭐7.8IMDb

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a sociopath who discovers he can make money filming LA’s crimes and car wrecks for the local news. Dan Gilroy’s razor-sharp thriller is a scathing look at media ghouls, and Gyllenhaal is terrifying.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)

🍅79%Critics🍿50%Audience⭐5.8IMDb

The naturally unnatural world comes to a head in surreal, erotic, satirical fashion in a way only David Cronenberg could cook up. The world-building of Crimes of the Future impresses more than some of the plot movements but a game Viggo Mortensen helps keep this ethereal body horror think-piece captivating from gory start to evocative finish.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016)

🍅91%Critics🍿79%Audience⭐7.2IMDb

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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

PARASITE (2019)

🍅99%Critics🍿90%Audience⭐8.5IMDb

Like a rival organism depleting its host, Parasite may lay waste to the mind but it nests in the soul, lingering with the viewer long after its conclusion. Bong Joon-ho’s masterful and indefinable parable is a creation of layer upon layer of storytelling skill matched to standout technical prowess across the board. An easy contender for best film of 2019.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (2021)

🍅66%Critics🍿25%Audience⭐5.3IMDb

As fascinating, thought-provoking, and well-researched a documentary as A Glitch in the Matrix is, it also proves to be utterly terrifying in both its study of simulation theory and the dark real world implications it poses.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)

🍅79%Critics🍿83%Audience⭐8.2IMDb

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort cons his way into a fortune and a mountain of drugs in the 1990s. Martin Scorsese’s three-hour bacchanal is a riotous, damning comedy, and DiCaprio’s Quaalude crawl is an all-timer. Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie both shine in an ensemble working at full tilt.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

BOYHOOD (2014)

🍅97%Critics🍿80%Audience⭐7.9IMDb

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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

WEREWOLVES WITHIN (2021)

🍅86%Critics🍿80%Audience⭐6.0IMDb

Josh Ruben continues to make a name for himself in the horror-comedy game with his adaptation of Werewolves Within, which employs a supremely-affable ensemble cast, a goofy premise, and plenty of directorial gags to monstrously-amusing effect. Continue to keep a close eye on this guy, he’s apt to transform into a big-timer one of these lunar rotations.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

RELIC (2020)

🍅91%Critics🍿51%Audience⭐6.0IMDb

The clever, strange and emotionally-satisfying first film from director Natalie Erika James uses horror to get at the heartache of senility. Emily Mortimer gives an anguished performance as a tormented daughter and mother as Relic burrows under its audiences’ skin through an earnest, emotional approach to genre filmmaking.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

THE LODGE (2020)

🍅75%Critics🍿51%Audience⭐6.0IMDb

Led by a strikingly gloomy performance from Riley Keough, The Lodge uses the power of psychological warfare and brutal natural elements to spook up a dark cabin fever horror story that refuses to let up.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

SOUND OF METAL (2020)

🍅97%Critics🍿90%Audience⭐7.7IMDb

Sound of Metal jams to a deeply personal and subjective track as audiences experience the isolation and trauma of hearing loss alongside an ex-addict drummer, played by a never-better Riz Ahmed. Having undergone a similar (if much milder) experience, I connected with the story on a deeply personal level.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

BLACK BEAR (2020)

🍅89%Critics🍿64%Audience⭐6.5IMDb

Black Bear commits fully to breaking rules of cinema, which may leave some bewildered or frustrated, but between its smart screenplay, saucy technical savvy, and all-around great performances, the odd-duck drama-thriller is absolutely deserving of your attempt to puzzle through it.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

IN THE EARTH (2021)

🍅79%Critics🍿24%Audience⭐5.1IMDb

Ben Wheatley’s return to horror uses the backdrop of a global pandemic to spin a folksy yarn about woodland killers and pagan worship that employs militant audio-visual hallucinogenic effects to entertain and disorient. A real return to form for Wheatley and the first movie to effectively tackle the virus and its effect on our collective sanity.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review

Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of November 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best movies on Kanopy right now?

This month’s top picks include Pride, Inside Llewyn Davis, Heel, Swiss Army Man, and Anora.

How often is this list updated?

Every month. Films that leave Kanopy are removed, and newly added movies we’ve reviewed are added. Last updated November 1, 2026.

Is Kanopy really free?

Yes. Kanopy is free with a library card from participating public libraries and universities, though some libraries limit how many films you can watch each month.

Some links on this page are affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission if you rent, buy, or sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.