I’ve been in a movie-watching mood lately, so I’ve spent a lot of time on IMDb and Letterboxd trying to find things to watch. But, oddly enough, Tubi has turned into my most-used movie discovery service. Its catalog is perfectly tailored for finding new films that I’ve never heard of, including some real gems and a handful of amusing stinkers.
A Big Catalog With Lots of Obscure Movies
I’m constantly impressed by the size and scope of Tubi’s catalog. The platform regularly licenses popular and award-winning movies (MoonlightandHolesare two recent additions I was happy to see) while also providing a smorgasbord of rare, obscure, forgotten, or “bad” content that I’ve never heard of (or can’t find on other platforms).
Tubi
Tubi has a great spread of well-known movies and shows, as well as more obscure hits, all for free.
You can use any streaming platform as a movie-discovery service. They’re designed for that purpose. Netflix tailors its home screen to your personal taste, suggesting movies and shows that it thinks you’ll enjoy, going so far as to alter movie posters if it believes that one poster will appeal to you more than another. It encourages you to utilize your watchlist, and it presents a carousel of new content when you log in. And, most importantly, Netflix maintains a diverse catalog. It offers films of every genre and mood, so there’s always something unfamiliar or interesting to watch.
Tubi doesn’t require a paid subscription—it’s an ad-supported platform. And although it has its fair share of original content, most of its stuff is licensed. I’m sure that Tubi could afford a hundred-million-dollar licensing deal, but the company can’t blow its budget on a single TV show, so it focuses on content that can be licensed or acquired at a reasonable price. Naturally, this leads to a lot of “independent and nichecontent deals,” so the bulk of Tubi’s catalog is comprised of obscure, old, forgotten, underrated, and “bad” movies.
Scrolling through Tubi is honestly pretty fun, especially if you’re with friends. It’s got some seriously unhinged movie titles and posters, the best of which are too profane for this article.
But I’m more interested in movies that look genuinely interesting or funny, particularly those with good actors. I’d never heard ofUsed Peoplebefore, but I saw that Kathy Bates and Shirley MacLaine were in it, so I watched it and enjoyed it.From Beyondis fairly well-known, but I didn’t realize that Jeffery Combs had a lead role until I bumped into it on Tubi.
I usually use IMDb or Letterboxd to find new movies, and I’ll often just go through an actor’s filmography, opening anything that looks interesting into a new tab so I can take note of it and hunt it down later. Tubi offers a less structured form of discovery—you just scroll through carousels of movie posters—but it’s more enjoyable than sitting at a computer and trudging through a website. Plus, it’s a streaming app, so I don’t have to search for any of the movies that I want to watch. I can just add them to my watchlist.
This isn’t to say that Ionlywatch movies with actors that I recognize. I watch plenty of random stuff, too. But I can usually trust a good actor to deliver a good performance, and even if a movie totally blows, it’s fun to watch a recognizable figure wade their way through a pile of trash.
No Critic Scores, No Problem
Like I said, IMDb and Letterboxd are my go-to movie discovery platforms. But I wish that they would give me the option to hide critic scores and user ratings for things that I haven’t watched. No matter how hard I try to ignore scores or ratings, they invariably cloud my judgement—I’m less likely to seek out a movie if I know that it has a two-star rating or a 20% score on the Tomatometer, or whatever.
Will I enjoy every “two-star” movie that I watch? Of course not, but I know from experience that I regularly disagree with critics. And that’s one of the main reasons I’ve enjoyed using Tubi as a movie discovery service.It doesn’t show any ratings. I can see a movie’s poster, read a short summary of the movie, see which actors are in it, and check out the trailer (if one’s available) without having someone’s opinion shoved in my face.
Keeping myself in the dark also makes me more excited to open IMDb or Letterboxdafterfinishing a movie. Like, am I alone in thinking thatTammy & the T-RexandThe Stupidsare four-star movies? DidJabberwockysuck as bad as I thought it did?
Admittedly, Tubi’s rating-free streaming interface isn’t unique. Netflix and other services got rid of their in-app movie ratings a long time ago, presumably to discourage people from skipping “bad” movies or shows. The only major services that still tap into critic or user ratings are Prime Video and Apple TV, at least as far as I’m aware. (There’s Plex, too, butit lets you disable movie ratings.)
The thing that makes Tubi uniquely good as a discovery platform is primarily its diverse and obscure film catalog, which platforms like Netflix lack. The rating-free interface simply makes discovery more appealing because I can’t refer to other peoples' opinions when deciding what to watch.
