The free streaming service Tubi added lots of new movies at the start of this month, including some of our favourites: Predator, Big Trouble in Little China, Menace II Society, Bring It On, The Mask, Bram Stoker's Dracula and many more.
But if you're looking for guaranteed entertainment then there are three movies in particular that stand out in August. Here are three of our favourite films that are always worth watching, or watching again.
Ghostbusters
- RT score: 95%
- Age rating: PG
- Runtime: 105 minutes
The original and, for many reviewers, the best in the now sprawling Ghostbusters franchise is as fun today as it was way back in 1984 – even if the special effects are showing their age.
The key is the casting: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis are perfect as the motley crew of pest controllers taking on everything the spirit world can throw at them, and the gag-packed script takes full advantage of their comedic gifts. And it's impossible not to smile when Ray Parker Jr's theme song kicks in. If there's something strange in the neighbourhood, who you gonna call?
Available to stream for free on Tubi in the US, while those in the UK can find it on Netflix or on Binge or Stan in Australia.
Groundhog Day
- RT score: 94%
- Age rating: PG
- Runtime: 101 minutes
Didn't I post this yesterday? I kid! This tale of a man trapped in a day that keeps repeating is "the perfect comedy," The Guardian says. Bill Murray even says it's "probably the best work I've done". It's a more modern take on the Scrooge story, a nineties take on Frank Capra with Murray as the grumpy weatherman apparently destined to live the same day over and over again.
Groundhog Day is very funny, but it would be a very different film if it weren't for Murray: there's an edge to his performance that prevents the film from becoming too sweet.
Available to stream for free on Tubi in the US, while those in the UK and Australia can find it on Prime Video.
Fargo
- RT score: 95%
- Age rating: R
- Runtime: 98 minutes
This is one of my very favourite films, largely due to the spectacular performances of Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, William H Macy and more. It's one of the Coen Brothers' best-loved movies, a dark-hearted comedy centring on a desperate salesman (Macy) and his attempts to stage a fake kidnapping. Everything goes spectacularly wrong and you'll never look at a wood chipper in the same way again.
As Empire said at the time, "it is a deliciously convoluted tale of crime, punishment and a cowardly used-car salesman set in a white-out snowscape of Minnesota, written and directed with the verve, painstaking nuance and outrageously black humour that have become the mainstay of a Coen movie." Its five out of five stars are well deserved and if you're in the US, it's one of three new 90s crime movies coming Prime Video in August.
Available to stream for free on Tubi, The Roku Channel, Pluto TV or Freevee in the US, while those in the UK and Australia can find it on MGM Plus.
