One of the most awesome powers film has is the ability to immersively and spectacularly sweep us away into another time. Whether they are telling a story based on true events or pure fiction, a period piece uses the past to provide us with a different vantage point for the human experience, allowing for some of the most moving stories in cinema to be told in lush, often painstaking accurate, detail and have yielded some of the most memorable performances in recent memory.
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If you’re looking to time travel for your next movie night, check out one of these 10 films below, currently streaming for free on Tubi.
10) Lady MacBeth
Before she was Yelena Belova, Florence Pugh had her first star-making turn in Lady MacBeth. Don’t let the title fool you; it’s not a Shakespeare piece. Pugh stars as Katherine, a young woman in 19th century rural England who, after all but being sold into marriage, begins an affair with one of her staff. Katherine’s story and sanity unravels in a shocking, yet irresistible manner, and the starkness of the country setting only heightens Pugh’s fantastic performance in the film.
9) Saving Private Ryan
We were delighted to learn this Steven Spielberg masterpiece was streaming free on Tubi. Saving Private Ryan is nothing short of an epic, kicking off during the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, which uses the backdrop and cruelty of war to tell an endlessly poignant and inspiring tale of sacrifice and humanity.
8) Straight Outta Compton
While Straight Outta Compton is set in the relatively recent past of 1980s Los Angeles, the themes it explores around racism and systemic police brutality while telling the story of prolific rap group NWA is startlingly relevant. The film masterfully captures an important moment of both music and American history, while exploring the relationship between the two.
7) Hotel Rwanda
While the horrific events that inspired Hotel Rwanda occurred in 1994 during the age of rapid telecommunications and 24-hour news, they went largely unnoticed and uncovered by the rest of the world. Hotel Rwanda helps redress that balance with Don Cheadle playing Paul Rusesabagina, the courageous hotel owner that went to the limit to shelter and aid 1,000 refugees via the hotel he managed during the Rwandan genocide.
6) Girl, Interrupted
A fascinating character study featuring the performance that won Angelina Jolie an Oscar, Girl, Interrupted follows Susanna (Winona Ryder) a troubled young woman who finds herself at Claymoore, a mental institution in the late 1960s. Susanna grows close with the other women a Claymoore, especially Jolie’s sociopathic Lisa, and chronicles her struggle to take back control of her life with an unflinching intensity.
5) I, Tonya
Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan’s showdown at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics is one of the biggest sports scandals in history. I, Tonya finally tells Harding’s side of the story in a raw, darkly funny, and thought-provoking manner. Margot Robbie delivers a complex, endlessly watchable performance as Harding that all but cemented her superstardom.
4) The Pianist
Another epic set during World War II, The Pianist tells the story of a battle different from the storming of the beaches at Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. Adrien Brody plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish Polish radio pianist living in Warsaw who slowly and reluctantly watches his home surrender to fascism under the Nazis and is ultimately forced to be a fugitive in order to avoid certain death at a concentration camp. The Pianist tells Szpilman’s incredible true story of survival and the triumph of the human spirit, along with issuing a sobering warning of hate can transcend class.
3) Hamlet
The modern master of Shakespeare himself, Kenneth Branagh, both directed and starred in this version of Hamlet, which sets the timeless tragedy in 19th Denmark. As if seeing Branagh perform the Bard’s most famous “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy isn’t enough of a draw, Hamlet‘s cast is an embarrassment of riches, while its lush production design and costuming makes the film a feast for the eyes.
2) The Wolf of Wall Street
In one of his career-best performances, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, an actual stock broker whose lust for greed and power nearly causes his own undoing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Legendary director Martin Scorsese is also at the top his game here, painting an intoxicating but perilous picture of the excess and corruption in the finance world in this modern classic.
1) A Single Man
Would you really expect a film directed by Tom Ford, the visionary fashion designer, to look anything short of divine? Ford delivers not just on style, but also on substance in his directorial debut A Single Man, in which Colin Firth plays a grieving man in 1960s Los Angeles. The film’s aesthetic and performances heighten one another to make for a melancholy and thoughtful meditation on grief and the importance of cherishing one’s humanity.
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