The 15 best movies on ITVX you can stream for free in May 2026
An underrated Daniel Radcliffe thriller is available now
ITVX is one of the most underrated streaming platforms, particularly for its huge selection of free movies – and these are the best films you can watch now.
To be fair, no one can blame you if you’ve never thought to check out its film library.
If you’re not using ITVX to catch up with the likes of Secret Service and The Lady, you’re probably watching Netflix movies or using other streamers.
However, not only does ITVX have brilliant movies, but they’re all completely free to stream!
Imperium
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2016
- Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Devin Druid
- Director: Daniel Ragussis
- Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes
What it’s about: Nate Foster, an idealistic young FBI agent, is selected to go undercover amongst a group of white supremacists who are suspected of planning a terrorist attack.
Why to watch: To many, Daniel Radcliffe will always be Harry Potter. However, that’s a disservice to his fascinating post-wizardry career – and Imperium, a gripping, jaw-dropping thriller inspired by an incredible true story, is one of his most underrated movies. You have never seen Radcliffe deliver a performance like this – that should be enough to convince you.
Blitz
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2011
- Cast: Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, Aidan Gillen, David Morrissey
- Director: Elliott Lester
- Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
What it’s about: When a serial murderer targets police officers in London, a hard-nosed detective and a newly appointed police sergeant break every rule in the book to hunt the killer down.
Why to watch: Blitz has all the charms of a Jason Statham actioner (sans The Transporter-esque, preposterous set-pieces). But it has two other assets: it’s a genuinely gritty, brutal thriller with a compellingly sinister through line, and just look at the cast. It’s a who’s who of British telly mega-stars, and they’re all great in it.
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The Bank Job
- Genre: Thriller, Drama
- Year: 2008
- Cast: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays, Keeley Hawes
- Director: Roger Donaldson
- Runtime: 1 hour 52 minutes
What it’s about: Terry Leather, a self-reformed criminal, gets a tip-off about a plan to rob a bank. He reluctantly gets involved, but they inadvertently discover other dirty secrets that thrust them into a web of corruption.
Why to watch: The Bank Job is, undoubtedly, Jason Statham’s most underrated movie. It’s a witty, intricate crowdpleaser that will keep you on the edge of your seat. While there are elements of fiction, it’s based on a pretty staggering true story (supposedly buried due to its connection to the royal family): the 1971 burglary of Baker Street deposit boxes, with as much as £3 million estimated to be stolen.
Meet the Parents / Meet the Fockers
- Genre: Comedy
- Year: 2000, 2004
- Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo
- Director: Jay Roach
- Runtime: 1 hour 48 minutes, 1 hour 55 minutes
What it’s about: Greg Focker – yes, that’s his name – wants to marry his girlfriend, Pam. He wants to meet her parents before he proposes – however, over the course of one chaotic weekend, his father-in-law-to-be puts him through hell.
Why to watch: Meet the Parents strikes the perfect balance between cringe, relatability, and pure star power (this was before Robert De Niro took a check for just about anything). It has some of the funniest scenes in any comedy from the 2000s – and then its sequel, the filthier, more preposterous Meet the Fockers, still manages to be a laugh riot.
School of Rock
- Genre: Comedy, Family
- Year: 2003
- Cast: Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Sarah Silverman
- Director: Richard Linklater
- Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes
What it’s about: Dewey Finn, a wannabe rockstar, needs a job after he was kicked out of his band. So, he poses as a substitute teacher at a prestigious school… and decides to teach his class the joys of rock and roll.
Why to watch: The Before trilogy may be Richard Linklater’s magnum opus, but School of Rock is (rightfully) his most pop-culturally beloved film, and truly one of the greatest family films of the 21st century. Jack Black has never been better; perhaps never has there been a role more suited to one actor. If you don’t like it, you probably need to assess your taste.
The Suicide Squad
- Genre: Action
- Year: 2021
- Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis
- Director: James Gunn
- Runtime: 2 hours 12 minutes
What it’s about: Amanda Waller assembles Task Force X, a group of incarcerated villains, for a mission on a South American island. They’re tasked with destroying a secret, sinister laboratory (and not killing each other, of course).
Why to watch: James Gunn is a comic book movie visionary (if you disagree, talk to the wall with posters of Guardians of the Galaxy and Superman). The Suicide Squad – an audacious, macabre reboot of a notorious flop – could be the director in his purest, yet most commercial form. It’s hilarious, gleefully irreverent, and eye-poppingly gruesome – plus, it introduced the world to John Cena’s Peacemaker. What a gift.
Catch Me If You Can
- Genre: Biography, Crime
- Year: 2002
- Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Runtime: 2 hours 21 minutes
What it’s about: Frank Abagnale Jr pulls off audacious cons for a living, posing as a pilot, doctor, and lawyer and cashing cheques worth millions of dollars while evading the FBI.
Why to watch: One of Steven Spielberg’s gentlest and most affectionate movies, Catch Me If You Can is a breezy, jazzy, yet exhilarating caper that proved to be the perfect vehicle for the post-Titanic era of Leonardo DiCaprio’s career. It’s impossible not to enjoy it, in our eyes.
Bronson
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2008
- Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, James Lance
- Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
- Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes
What it’s about: In 1974, Michael Peterson is sentenced to seven years in prison for armed robbery. In the violent decades that followed, he became known as Charles Bronson, the most dangerous prisoner in Britain.
Why to watch: The depths of A Clockwork Orange’s depravity will never be reached on-screen again. However, Bronson – directed by the maker of Drive – is close in spirit: an astonishing character study that doesn’t rationalise ‘evil’, with Hardy’s electrifying performance at its bare-knuckled centre.
Buried
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2010
- Cast: Ryan Reynolds
- Director: Rodrigo Cortés
- Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
What it’s about: Paul Conroy, an American civilian working in Iraq, wakes up inside a wooden coffin that’s been buried underground. With little more than a lighter and a phone, he tries to figure out how to escape.
Why to watch: John Waters once advised people to see Buried with “someone you hate”. That’s an exquisitely apt recommendation: it’s a celluloid nightmare more visceral than anything you’ve (hopefully) experienced. Plus, it reveals Reynolds’ true dramatic talents underneath his smarmy persona.
Jack Reacher
- Genre: Thriller, Action
- Year: 2012
- Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Werner Herzog
- Director: Christopher McQuarrie
- Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes
What it’s about: Jack Reacher, a former military police investigator, is called upon to figure out the truth when an ex-army sniper is accused of committing a mass shooting.
Why to watch: Tom Cruise doesn’t look like Jack Reacher as he’s written by Lee Child. If you can let go of your preconceptions, this is one of his most underrated roles; harshly shrewd, clinical in combat, and against his usual movie-star type.
As a film, it’s a compelling conspiracy thriller with superb action sequences; it’s unsurprising that Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have such a strong working relationship.
Kill Bill (Vol 1 and 2)
- Genre: Action, Thriller
- Year: 2003–2004
- Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- Runtime: 4 hours 7 minutes (1 hour 51 minutes and 2 hours 18 minutes)
What it’s about: Years after a pregnant assassin – code-named The Bride – is slain by her troupe of contract killers, she emerges from a coma hellbent on revenge.
Why to watch: Kill Bill isn’t Quentin Tarantino’s greatest masterpiece (that honour goes to Inglourious Basterds). It is the movie he was born to make; a high-art, bloodily effervescent pastiche with some of the most unforgettable lines and images in the director’s canon. And, yes, we’re grouping them as one film – if you can, watch The Whole Bloody Affair.
Crank
- Genre: Action
- Year: 2006
- Cast: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Dwight Yoakam
- Director: Neveldine/Taylor
- Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes
What it’s about: Hitman Chev Chelios wakes up with a big problem: his heart will stop if he doesn’t keep his adrenaline levels high. As he barrels through LA’s criminal underworld, jacking himself however he can — including defibrillators, cocaine, and public sex — he tries to find the man who poisoned him.
Why to watch: On paper, it’s an exercise in bad taste. A head-empty excuse to unleash a keyed-up, sweaty Stath onto the streets. In reality… that’s exactly what it is, but it’s also gonzo gold, appallingly laugh-out-loud and, yes, pulse-racing in a way that still feels bracingly singular. Put it this way: it wouldn’t get made today.
No Time to Die
- Genre: Action
- Year: 2021
- Cast: Daniel Craig, Lashana Lynch, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux
- Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
- Runtime: 2 hours 43 minutes
What it’s about: James Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. However, his peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help.
Why to watch: No Time to Die was Daniel Craig’s final Bond movie – and what a way to bow out. It isn’t perfect (Rami Malek’s villain isn’t great), but this is an incredibly ambitious, soulful conclusion to his tenure as 007. Its ending may remain controversial – regardless of how you feel, it’ll make you cry – but we may never see an entry in the franchise this bold ever again.
Parasite
- Genre: Drama, Thriller
- Year: 2019
- Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik
- Director: Bong Joon-ho
- Runtime: 2 hours 12 minutes
What it’s about: The Kim family lives in a semi-basement flat in Seoul, struggling to make ends meet. When their eldest son starts tutoring a rich family’s daughter, they see an opportunity to infiltrate their lives, but their deception starts to unravel.
Why to watch: Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. This was the first foreign-language movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and for good reason: it’s a masterpiece that’s immensely entertaining.
Read more: The best movies on BBC iPlayer you can watch for free
