Transcription
Today, I'm going to recommend 10 of the best and most underrated movies currently available for free right here on YouTube. Official free listings that include an insanely overlooked World War II masterpiece at my number one spot. We've also got zombies, sharks, shootouts, a star-studded drama, and a low-budget sci-fi gem that packs a hell of a punch all the way at the back of this list of bangers with The Signal.
Can you recall for me the first time you encountered The Signal? We're not certain what we're dealing with here, which is a brilliant little sci-fi movie with an interesting hook that does take quite a while to set in. But once it does, it's so good. This movie doesn't actually need a ton of special effects, or at least not until they get towards the climax of the movie. The Signal's got much more of a big budget feel than lower budget sci-fi movies like this tend to have. And even though it is a bit of a slow burn at the beginning, the payoff is ultimately well worth it. You follow a young man who is following a signal. He knows of this mysterious signal. When he finds the origins of it, uh, he gets a lot more than he bargained for. He actually wakes up in a weird facility with these robotic legs. And that's about all I'm going to say. The movie sets up much more as it plots along. You've also got a great little role from Lawrence Fishburne. And there's just no way you're going to be able to predict what direction this movie is headed. I mean, it is a total gem. I highly recommend. The only reason it's at the back of the list is because everything else I've got here is so good.
So, if you like getting movie recommendations like this and discovering movies you've never seen or heard of before, I put out two videos like this every single week. So, if you prefer that personal touch over, you know, the faceless channels that are run by AI that are just rampant on YouTube today, let the algorithm know you like this better instead by subscribing to the channel. I'll repay the favor by making sure you never run out of awesome stuff to watch.
Awesome stuff like my next pick, which is that Shark Attack movie, The Shallows, starring Blake Lively. And honestly, she may be the reason this movie was overlooked. I know she had a fan base at the time when this movie came out. A fan base that has dwindled, but this movie is not really designed to appeal to her Gossip Girl fan base. It's also not Jaws, okay? So, don't go expecting some epic movie that really nails every single note. That's not really what this is. It's a summer popcorn movie about a shark attack or a series of shark attacks. More specifically a surfer, a young woman trapped on a rock surrounded by giant man-eating sharks. So, it's a bit of a fantastical situation. It's a one-in-a-million kind of situation, but it makes for a really thrilling movie. Now, I'm a fan of shark movies. There's not a lot of great ones. There's a lot of garbage ones, but I would put this up there with some of the better ones like 47 Meters Down. I think this is better, more exciting, more visually stunning. Even if it is a bit more by the book, it's following a good book here. You know, it's following a good format, an exciting one at the very least.
Now, I've only got one true horror movie on this list, but it is a found footage movie that I know countless people have passed up on because quite frankly, we're all tired of found footage movies, but I'm promise you this one is worth your time. It's titled As Above So Below. Now, this one had a little theatrical run and it does have a cult following just like I'm recommending it here. There are a lot of people that have learned how awesome this movie actually is. Now, the way I've described it over the years is that it almost turns into like an Indiana Jones style adventure. A very low-budget Indiana Jones to be fair. And up front, it just sort of presents itself as a typical found footage movie. You follow a group of young adventurers going down into the catacombs underneath Paris. So, the setting is interesting enough to kind of carry this movie. It's an interesting place to be and they're like spelunking. So, the very beginning, you know, it's interesting enough. There's a little bit of tension, a little bit of pressure. It's good enough, but the deeper they go in As Above So Below, the wilder and weirder things get. Yet, it always stays grounded as this realistic feeling found footage movie. Even though it goes into crazy fantasy directions. That's what makes this movie so cool is it doesn't keep you waiting, listening to things in the dark the way a lot of found footage movies can. It starts off that way and turns into a wildly unhinged adventure horror story.
"We have to jump."
"What?"
"We'll die."
"Hold on. Hold on."
But for those of you more in the mood for just straightforward typical action adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones, again, there's not a lot of Indiana Jones adjacent movies made over the years that are really good. There's a few movies like The Mummy and my next pick, Sahara. Now, this one, I think, has just been underrated like since it came out. It kind of flopped at the box office. And while it's not on the same level as something like Indiana Jones, it is dangerously close. Now, I will warn you with this one, it does feel a bit dated today. It's one that came out in the early 2000s, and it very much feels like it. And unfortunately, it's not necessarily in a good way. The dated feel on this one kind of rubs me the wrong way, to be honest. But the action and adventure stuff in it is fantastic. I mean, if you like movies like Indiana Jones and National Treasure and have somehow never seen Sahara, not only is it a blast, but it actually has some really excellent action sequences in it. To be fair, this is probably the weakest reviewed movie on this list if I had to guess. But, you know, you're not watching this as a cinephile. You're watching it just to have a fun time.
Now, an action movie that kind of misled the public and ended up being something much more poignant and heavier, I think, than anyone expected is the Jason Statham Guy Ritchie collaboration, Wrath of Man. Now, Jason Statham really made a name for himself with Guy Ritchie movies, his early movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and then went on to have this incredible action movie career that's kind of still going today. What I love about Wrath of Man, though, is that it presents itself as one of those movies, just a Jason Statham action movie where they're knocking off armored trucks, you know, and Wrath of Man is a little bit. It gives you enough of that if that's what you're in the mood for. Yet, Wrath of Man is a hard-edged Guy Ritchie gangster movie. It's got more of a hard edge to it than his other gangster flicks than any of them. And I love all of his gangster movies. It's kind of both things at the same time. It feels almost like a classic like Dirty Harry movie. Speaking of Dirty Harry, Scott Eastwood plays the villain in this flick and I think he does a great job. I'm surprised I haven't seen him playing villains since. But the movie's actually got a pretty heavy story. And when it gets to some of the gangster stuff in the movie, it is not only dark, I mean, it is maybe the most intense dark character Jason Statham has ever played. And I I don't think I'm exaggerating. So, if you thought this was just going to be another movie where Jason Statham's just kicking everybody's ass, that is not what this movie is, you get enough of that if that's your thing. It's in there. But this movie's got so much more to offer. It is easily one of the best movies Guy Ritchie has made in the last 10 years, and he's made quite a few.
"If he's not a cop, what is he?"
"He's a dark."
Now, in the early days of this channel, when I first started growing an audience, one of the movies I got the biggest responses to, really still to this day, the biggest response I've ever gotten is to Train to Busan. People loved the recommendation. They either strongly agreed with it because they had seen it or they came back to tell me how much they loved it. Hell, even people I've showed this movie to, in fact, everybody I've showed Train to Busan to in my life over the years has told me how much they liked it after the fact. It's not something that happens that often, but the sequel to Train to Busan is currently free on YouTube and it's awesome, but it's a very different kind of movie. In fact, Peninsula, presented by Train to Busan, I believe it's what it's titled. It's basically just a spin-off. You're not revisiting any of the same characters and the events of Peninsula are taking place well after the events of Train to Busan, but it's centered around the same zombie outbreak. In fact, Peninsula is basically a heist movie. People are going into this quarantine zone to try to get some things back out. It's a career. There's a whole economy built around this quarantine zone. Anyway, you follow these people going in and not only is it supposed to be kind of this quick extraction in-and-out thing. Of course, they get stuck and there's some wild stuff that happens in Peninsula that's very far removed from Train to Busan. Train to Busan had kind of this family story at its heart. Had a lot of heart to it honestly and a lot of desperation. You know, you're trapped in a train with people trying to survive a zombie outbreak. Peninsula is almost the opposite. You've got a few people going into the fire in order to try to make some money. And man, was that a mistake. So, this movie is loaded with way more action. In fact, it's an action horror movie. Much more so than Train to Busan was. Not as good, not as much heart, but still kind of an awesome follow-up. Fans of the zombie genre, this movie is a mustwatch.
Next up, I'm technically recommending two movies, and technically neither one of them is a movie. Right now, for free on YouTube, they have The Animatrix and Gotham Knight. These are two animated collections of short films that came out around the time of the Matrix sequels and the Dark Knight sequels. The same Japanese animators worked on both of these collections and it's stunning animation. That's the main reason I'm recommending it, but also really interesting little shorts. So, The Animatrix features short stories that are all adjacent to The Matrix, but don't involve any of the characters from the movie. And it does a great job of building out the world of The Matrix even more. It builds out the post-apocalyptic future that the humans live in, but also builds out like ways that people have touched and interacted with The Matrix the same way Neo did, but you know, in different ways and different stories, each done in a different stunning, I mean, jaw-dropping animation style. Really slick soundtrack with The Animatrix. I like The Animatrix, I think, better than the sequels to The Matrix. By the way, The Matrix and the sequels, they're also included for free on Prime right now. But then they also have Gotham Knight, which if you like The Animatrix and you're into Batman at all, oh my god, Gotham Knight is a mustwatch. Every short is really interesting. It focuses on a different villain or some weird mysterious interaction people have had with Batman and they do it again in this animation style, but like one guy he's recalling seeing Batman and it's like he's a ghost. He's like this spectre or spirit and the way it's animated is really cool to see Batman sort of brought to life in these different ways. Again, fans of either the genre or Batman, these little anime short collections, they are a mustwatch, which is why I've ranked them so high on a list of feature films, even though they don't really belong here.
Now, a sci-fi movie that has a massive cult following that is free on YouTube, but didn't make the list, is They Live.
"I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum."
I love this movie. It's one of my all-time favorite cult films. If you love it, too, you might want to check out my t-shirt shop where you can get this one. You can get a They Live design and a whole bunch of other designs based on some of those cult films that I love so much. It's a great way to help support the show, but I'll tell you, the shirts are ridiculously soft. This one I've had, it's been washed a hundred times. It is still almost as black as the day I got it and as soft, softer than the day I got it. They are a fitted design, so if you like your shirts looser, definitely go a size up.
But a science fiction movie with a much bigger budget that I think is wildly underrated is Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
"No, no, no, no, no, no."
"Talk to me, Sean."
"I don't know who Sean is, and I don't know who you are."
This is the followup that director Duncan Jones did for Moon, a movie I'd featured just recently on the channel. A sci-fi movie that I think is almost as brilliant as Moon and just as well directed and received a fraction of the praise. While this movie does have kind of the glossy feel of a big blockbuster movie, it was done on a relatively low budget, millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions. And it feels almost like a Christopher Nolan movie when it comes down to the concept and the delivery. Almost. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man who keeps waking up on the same train over and over again minutes before a terror attack before the train explodes. And he keeps reliving it like a Groundhog Day movie. But the interesting hook, the science fiction twist in Source Code is the thing that makes this different from any other Groundhog Day style movie. It doesn't have the same flavor, doesn't have the same concept, even though it kind of looks like it does at first. There's something way different happening in Source Code that makes this movie so much more interesting. And again, it's perfectly directed by Duncan Jones. I mean, he's done some turds in terms of big blockbuster movies. He needs to get back to these smaller concept-heavy sci-fi flicks. They're fantastic.
And then I mentioned I had a star-studded drama, an excellent drama based on a true story that was not only written by Aaron Sorkin, but it was his directorial debut with Molly's Game. If the name Aaron Sorkin's not familiar, he's an insanely famous writer, wrote The West Wing and The Social Network. So just incredible, super sharp dialogue. Well, Molly's Game stars Jessica Chastain as a woman who ran high-stakes poker games, illegal games, but games played by celebrities, famous people, important politicians. And the movie is so much more interesting than the trailer lets on. Like her story is incredible. The way she sort of built up these massive games, but also she was connected to a lot of really important people throughout this. And so her defense case is even more interesting than the high-stakes poker stuff. Uh Idris Elba plays her lawyer and the movie's got a lot going on in it. It's not only about her doing her crimes. It's about her basically trying to get away with it after the fact. Incredible supporting cast on this movie, too. Like tons of really great actors you'll recognize playing, you know, players in these games. So this is not a movie where I feel like you need to have any interest in poker. You don't need to want to watch an Aaron Sorkin drama. It's got so much happening that this is a broadly appealing movie if you're the least bit interested in a true crime story like this. Molly's Game is dynamite stuff. There's not quite anything else like it I can think of.
"Am I breaking the law?"
"Not really."
"We're able to find out for sure, aren't we?"
"Laws are written down."
I mentioned a World War II movie, like a masterpiece that I never see available to stream almost ever. It's so rare. I've probably only talked about this movie once on the channel before. It's titled The Big Red One.
"I found it."
"Oh my god."
"Just one of your balls, Smitty."
"You can live without it. That's why they gave you two."
Now, this does have a pretty killer cast, including Lee Marvin, who also starred in The Dirty Dozen, which is also free on YouTube right now. But if you've seen that and you want to watch something you haven't seen, The Big Red One is an incredible World War II movie. The movie also stars Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine. You follow a small group of soldiers who have really unusual interactions along the way. There's a great scene where they're like hiding in a cave as people are passing by. I mean, really, every little incursion and interaction they have, almost every sequence and scene in The Big Red One feels uniquely different from any other World War II movie I've ever seen. It does have some pacing issues for today's audiences. You do have to be a bit patient with it. But if you've watched a lot of World War II movies over the years and you've somehow never seen this one, this is a unique case where it's a movie that definitely should have become a classic that people loved and talked about for decades after and it just didn't. It somehow slipped through the cracks even though it is 100% that quality of a movie. If that sounds like you, do not miss it. It will not be free on YouTube forever.
Here's the list recap along with other streaming services currently hosting these movies so you can maybe have some better luck finding them because again they're going to be leaving YouTube soon. So subscribe to the channel to make sure you catch my videos as soon as they release so you don't miss the movies before they're gone. But I'll keep making these videos as long as y'all keep watching them. Thanks for watching this YouTube list and you will see me on the next.