Get the Popcorn! It’s Movie Night

Celebrate the golden era of the silver screen with a regular

Classic Movie Night. Movie nights are a great way to bring residents together and are easy to organise with an array of film streaming platforms now available, including many free options. So, grab the popcorn and settle in for a night of moving pictures.

Films for Free

As well as local television streaming platforms like TVNZ OnDemand and ThreeNow which have a small range of movies available, there are other places you can find amazing films to view for free.

Beamafilm

Beamafilm is an Australasian video streaming service showcasing hundreds of high-definition documentaries, independent features, educational and foreign films, with new films added regularly. Auckland Libraries members get unlimited simultaneous access whenever and wherever there is an internet or WiFi connection – simply sign up for an Auckland Libraries account.

Beamafilm’s ‘Classics’ section has a decent array of films showcasing some of the greatest in golden era Hollywood talent from Cary Grant and John Wayne to Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor.

TOP PICK: His Girl Friday (1940), starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

This classic screwball comedy tells the story of a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another

man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife.

OverDrive

Like Beamafilm, OverDrive offers feature films, documentaries, how to videos, and children’s videos, and Auckland Libraries members can borrow up to 35 items. OverDrive has a really interesting and eclectic mix of old movies and television shows, from early Elvis outings to Boris Karloff creep shows, you won’t fall short of finding something to entertain the masses.

TOP PICK: The Kid (1921), starring Charlie Chaplin

The opening title of The Kid reads: A comedy with a smile—and perhaps a tear. Which sums up this silent comedy-drama perfectly.

With much anguish, an unwed Mother abandons her child, placing him in an expensive automobile with a handwritten note: “Please love and care for this orphan child”. Two thieves steal the car and leave the baby in an alley, where he is found by The Tramp (Chaplin’s most famous on-screen character). After some attempts to hand the child on to various passers-by, he finds the note and his heart melts. He takes the boy home, names him John and adjusts his household furniture for him.

Public Domain Movies

Public Domain Movies is another site to watch free classic movies. This site offers long lists of feature films, comedy movies, drama and romance movies, science fiction, and horror as well as cartoons, and enables you to watch free classic movies without registration, simply pick what you want and push play.

TOP PICK: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), starring Jonathan Haze and Mel Welles.

This Roger Corman classic is about a nerdy flower shop clerk who grows a giant, man-eating plant. The film employs an original style of humour, combining black comedy with farce.

On Skid Row, Los Angeles, California, pennypinching Gravis Mushnick owns a florist shop which is staffed by him and his two employees, the sweet but simple Audrey Fulquard and clumsy Seymour Krelboyne. Seymour creates a special plant that he crossbred from a Pinguicula and a Venus flytrap. The plant (voiced by writer Charles B. Griffith) develops the ability to speak and demands that Seymour feed him .. unfortunately, the plant craves human blood.