Hi! Here's FIVE titles FOR your Tubi Watchlist | August 2020
Way back in the Summer of ‘19, we decided to get rid off our Netflix account. Not because there wasn’t anything to watch—although we had been finding ourselves spending more time searching for something we wanted to watch than actually watching things we felt good about after the ‘are you still awake’ pop-up would pop up and remind us of how long we’ve been zoned out—the main reason we got rid of our Netflix was because we were finding ourselves just watching things to watch things, mostly out of the lazy convenience of it all. Which starting feeling unproductive in the bad ways.
Well, it is now the Summer of 2020, and even with a global quarantine putting the appeal of having Netflix’s streaming catalogue at our fingertips at an all-time high, we’re still managing to put that $10/month fee towards other things. Not that the $10/month saved is a lot of money (although, all that stuff adds up, especially in a global pandemic recession), and not that I still don’t have similar costing monthly subscriptions (unlimited music on the evil Spotify, and unlimited books on the hopefully less evil Scribd), but whenever you can cut an ongoing expense out of your monthly bills and still manage to find alternative ways to meet your monthly ‘sometimes it’s nice to veg out in front of the tv for a few hours’ quota, that’s a notch in the win column.
But how have we been managing to find alternative ways to meet our monthly ‘tv veg out’ quota without having a Netflix or equivalent monthly streaming subscription?
Well, the first part of the answer is that we intentionally try to watch less things each week. The second part is that we watch more things on Youtube (s/o Seth Myers’ Closer Look series & NBA highlights + this nice documentary on the best superhero cartoon ever + other good, non-alt-right conspiracy theory videos you can find out on the tubes). The third part is that, ok, MAYBE we know of a naughty site where you can usually find things to watch for free and we can just plug our laptop into the flat screen tv and watch some things that way (but these naughty sites are not super dependable and they have a tendency to disappear/get shut down + probably come with other risks, hence their aforementioned naughtiness). And the fourth part of the answer is that there are a few free and legal way to watch movies and tv shows online.
Now, these free and legal ways will vary by country, but here in Canada we have a few major tv stations that put stuff up online for you to watch for the low cost of having to watch a few commercials — usually these will be new episodes for 1 week after they’ve aired on tv, plus usually a few older shows/movies are available to watch in full whenever. Sites like CBC (with some great shows like PEN15) and CTV (with old movies like the actual best film called ‘Gladiator’) and GLOBAL (for new seasons of Survivor, whenever that goes back into production) all have a few options that are worth sitting thru a few commercials in order to watch for free.
And then there is a site called Tubi - which is basically like free Netflix (and so far only available in Canada, US, Australia & New Zealand).
Yes, you have to watch some commercials (that’s why it’s free). And, yes, the overall selection contains a whole bunch of stuff that you will probably never, ever want to spend anytime watching (unless you’re one of those people who like watching ‘so bad it’s good’ type movies, than Tubi might be a real goldmine for you). But if you treat Tubi like a digital version of that discount used-DVD section that Blockbuster used to have (back when Blockbuster used to exist) you can actually find some real gems to watch on Tubi. So when you factor in the fact that it costs nothing to have a subscription, and if you also remember that part of your reasoning for ditching your Netflix subscription was to try and watch LESS movies/tv each week, it turns out that Tubi is a pretty sweet deal + goes along way for making cutting your paid streaming cords a lot easier.
And because I was one of those guys that liked digging through the discount Blockbuster titles in search of those rare DVD gems that were worth taking home on the cheap (and still like to do similar at thrift stores) I’ve actually been enjoying scouring Tubi looking for those rare diamonds in the rough to add to my Watchlist and stream on the next movie / veg out night. Because any idiot can find something on Netflix or HBO to watch, but it takes a real crate digger to keep finding stuff on Tubi.
And since I have a blog that shares things I like, I figured I would start compiling a list of available-on-Tubi titles that I think are worth adding to your own Watchlist, just in case anyone else out there is also looking to fish from the same free-to-stream waters. And since I have a history of recommending ‘FIVE things FOR’ in the past, and since Tubi adds/removes titles each month, I figured I’d keep my recommendation list to 5 titles and try doing it every month (Boom! New recurring blahg feature!).
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So, here’s my FIVE picks FOR August 2020:
If you’ve ever got stuck in a conversation with me about movies in the last year or so, you’ve probably heard me go on (and on) about how great ‘Jojo Rabbit’ is. Well, ‘Boy’ was one of Taika Waititi’s earlier films, and all of the childlike charm and creativity that made Jojo so great can also be found here. It’s a really fun and heartwarming watch, and I was stoked & a little bit surprised to find it while scrolling around on Tubi.
‘Grizzly Man’ is Werner Herzog’s fascinating look at an awkward outsider finding a place to belong away from society, and why the wild is called the wild. Haven’t re-watched this doc on Tubi yet, but I definitely remember really liking this one back in the day and am looking forward to giving it a re-watch one of these days (especially now that I live in the mountains and there are literally bears, and probably a few ‘grizzly man’ type folks, in my neighbourhood).
I had heard ‘Under The Silver Lake’ get a shoutout on a Ringer podcast talking about the decades best horror movies (they were talking about another movie by David Robert Mitchell that is on Tubi, ‘It Follows’, which I have not watched yet—I’m normally not a big horror guy—but I do have it saved for later so you might see it on a future monthly list) and after watching the trailer for ‘Silver Lake’, I was feeling pretty confident that this film had a bunch of elements that tend to agree with the movie digging part of my brain. And, although it maybe could have done with being a little bit shorter than its 2hr 15min runtime, it was a pretty stylish and entertaining watch about stoner paranoia and ‘what does it all mean’ conspiracy codes & hidden meanings. Very enjoyable, especially for a movie that had gone completely under my radar when originally released. Also noticed there’s quite a few A24 titles on Tubi right now, which is a good thing to see.
‘Cocaine Cowboys’ is like if Narcos + Scarface + Blow had a baby and that baby was a documentary. It’s a pretty brutal and honest look at the Miami cocaine boom of the 70s and 80s (lots of gruesome footage and candid interviews with those involved) and there is a never-stop-talking-cutting pace with outdated edits and effects that really go quite well with a documentary about cocaine in the 70s and 80s. Pretty entertaining watch.
Like ‘Grizzly Man’, ‘Green Room’ is another film that I was already a fan of before discovering that it was available to watch on Tubi — so this is more a recommendation for those who have not seen this tense ‘punk band vs a bunch of nazis’ thriller before. Patrick Stewart is great as the baddie and Anton Yelchin’s performance will have you bummed out to remember that he tragically died not too long after ‘Green Room’ came out. This movie was also recommended a few times by other people in past ‘Highly Recommended’ Q&As, so definitely don’t give this one a miss.
OK, and that will do it for the 5 things I recommend you add to your Tubi Watchlist this month if you’re also trying to get the most out of their pretty stellar—especially given the $0 price tag—alternative streaming service (and if you’re not already, maybe you should consider giving it a try… perhaps with one of the 5 films recommended above?).
I’ll be back around this time next month with another list of 5, but if you have any Tubi recommendations yourself, please feel free to drop them off in the comments or go shout at me on the socials (I’m always open for discovering via ‘highly recommended’).
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