The best movies you can stream for free – just by using your library card

Feeling the pinch because of the cost-of-living crisis? Wanting to watch a great movie, but don’t subscribe to the right streaming service – and can’t afford to have them all?

You may not be aware that hundreds of great flicks are available for free by using your library card.

Yes, membership of most of our local government-run book borrowing establishments also allow entitles you to access to one or both of two cinematic streaming “libraries” – Beamafilm and Kanopy.

Stuff to Watch has taken a deep dive into their current catalogue and come up with a list of a dozen terrific movies – both classic and relatively recent – available right now.

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Another Round (2021, Beamafilm/Kanopy)

While this Danish drama about a group of teachers who decide to spice up their dull lives by keeping a constantly elevated blood alcohol level is a celebration of life and finding happiness within it, this is not a movie that glorifies drinking.

Mads Mikkelsen is magnificent in the nominal lead, a depressed man hoping to get his joie de vivre back from the bottom of a bottle and learning more about himself in the process, but all of the central quartet deliver terrific performances.

Brooklyn (2015, Beamafilm/Kanopy)

Based on Colm Toibin’s acclaimed 2009 novel, this is a charming and compelling drama, anchored by a simply superb performance from Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Atonement).

Luminous yet under-stated, she perfectly captures the nervousness and slow-blossoming of someone getting used to unfamiliar surroundings.

Fans of costume dramas will love the attention to detail on display in the recreations of early 1950s rural Ireland and New York, from the department store Lamson tubes to the form-fitting fashions.

Boyhood (2014, Kanopy)

The magnum opus of one of the most creative directors of the past two decades is also perhaps the ultimate coming-of-age story.

Boyhood is the culmination of 12 years of filming, bringing together tropes and ideas from Richard Linklater’s back catalogue (the snapshots of life from the Before trilogy, Dazed and Confused’s feel for the dialogue and rhythms of teenage life), resulting in a clever and compelling watch from start to finish.

Carol (2016, Beamafilm/Kanopy)

Todd Haynes’ sumptuous adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt focuses on Manhattan “shopgirl” Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), whose life is turned upside down after she locks eyes with the older, more refined Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) across a crowded Xmas Sales floor at her department store Frankenberg’s.

Carter Burwell’s evocative soundtrack and some bravura cinematography – which makes the mundane seem luminous – ensure Carol is a cineaste’s delight.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013, Beamafilm)

Almost two decades after he burst onto the scene with the searing one-two punch of A Time to Kill and Lone Star, Matthew McConaughey finally delivered on that early promise with this drama.

Rivalling Christian Bale’s turn in The Machinist for sheer alarming physical transformation, McConaughey does a fantastic job of charting redneck, reckless electrician and hustler Ron Woodroof’s metamorphosis into a champion and tireless campaigner for those with Aids.

Imagine if Denzel Washington’s Philadelphia character had contracted HIV and you’ll have some idea of the real-life tale told within Jean-Marc Vallee’s (The Young Victoria) stark and stylish film.

The cast also features a scene-stealing Jared Leto and a beautifully understated Jennifer Garner.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Beamafilm)

New Zealand must be about the only country in the world that doesn’t screen this 1946 holiday season staple on network television every year.

Jimmy Stewart was almost never better than here, playing a businessman who rediscovers his reason for living in Frank Capra’s magical adaptation of Philip Van Doren Stern’s 1943 short story The Greatest Gift (itself loosely, but very obviously, inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, Beamafilm/Kanopy)

From the opening scenes of operatic-scored heart surgery to its heart-wrenching denouement, Yorgos Lanthimos thriller was one of the most unnerving slices of cinema in years.

And yet, bizarrely, it also possessed a thick streak of black comedy coursing through its dramatic veins. Perfectly paced, the Greek director’s screenplay slowly unveils its mysteries before daring to make the audience almost complicit in the terrible conundrum facing cardiac surgeon Dr Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell).

Surgically precise and gleefully messy, it’s also notable for being an early collaboration between Farrell and his Banshees of Inisherin co-star Barry Keoghan.

Leon (1994, Kanopy)

Known as The Professional on its release here, Luc Besson’s story of the strange relationship between a hitman and a traumatised but precocious tween gave the world Natalie Portman, Jean Reno and Gary Oldman (playing one of cinemas’ greatest villains).

Notable for its restraint, as well as its boundary pushing, you’ll never be able to listen to Beethoven in quite the same way after watching this.

A Little Chaos (2015, Beamafilm/Kanopy)

The late Alan Rickman’s first foray behind the camera in almost 20 years begins with breaking wind, but there’s nothing flatulent about his poignant and crowd-pleasing period drama.

Set in mid-19th century France, this is the tale of widowed landscape gardener Madame Sabine De Barra (an earthy but still luminous Kate Winslet) and her contract to construct the grand gardens at Versailles for the notoriously fickle Louis XIV (Rickman).

The seemingly slight tale gradually blooms into a sensuous and sensitive drama.

Loving Vincent (2018, Kanopy)

Entirely hand-painted by a team of more than 100 specially-trained artists, this Oscar-nominated, animated historical mystery is a breathtaking achievement.

Saoirse Ronan, Chris O’Dowd provide the vocals and visages as Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman attempt to unravel the last days of troubled artist Vincent van Gogh.

Melancholia (2011, Kanopy)

The end of the world has never looked more haunting or beautiful than in Lars Von Trier’s operatic science-fiction thriller. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play sisters whose troubled relationship decays even further as a planet called Melancholia heads on a collision course with Earth.

Evocative and provocative, it makes great use of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde to score our planet’s final moments.

The Truman Show (1998, Kanopy)

That most rare of mainstream Hollywood movies – an intelligent, poignant premise that also richly entertains.

Directed by an Australian (Peter Weir) and scripted by a Kiwi (Andrew Niccol), it’s the story of the unwitting star (Jim Carrey) of the world’s largest TV show, who begins to suspect his seemingly idyllic life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

This quite brilliant and frighteningly prophetic parable of reality-television-gone-mad also features Laura Linney, Natascha McElhone and Ed Harris.