Someone recommends a great movie or show to you. Is it available on one of your services? Where exactly is it?

Streaming media search engines can solve this modern dilemma.

JustWatch covers over 80 countries.

“We show you where you can legally watch movies and TV shows that you love. You are kept up to date with what is new on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and many other streaming platforms. Our simple filter system allows you to see only what is important to you. We also allow users to track their favorite shows and movies, and can notify you when a title is available on one of your services.”

“savant academy award” finds Police Academy. Nope; second word match.

Reelgood covers the US and the UK.

“Reelgood takes all the various movies and TV shows that have ever been made (almost) and tells you where you can watch them, from subscription services (like Netflix and Prime Video) to free services (like Crackle, TubiTV and others) to TV everywhere options (like FX, ABC, and FOX) to rental and purchase options (like iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu.)”

“savant academy award” finds The Savant. Nope; first word match.

WIMM or What is My Movie can help when you don’t remember the name of that movie. Just type in what you’ve got and WIMM will suggest matches.

“Descriptive movie search is based on our research on what is called “Deep Content”. Deep Content is everything we can see and hear in a video, but cannot mechanically analyze – until now. Deep Content includes transcripts, audio, visual patterns and basically any form of data feed that describes the video content itself. After analyzing the deeper levels of the video, we automatically convert it into advanced metadata. This metadata is then processed by the beating heart of our engine: a cognitive machine learning system that understands natural language queries and matches it with our metadata.”

“savant academy award” finds Rain Man, the correct answer.

My take: I use JustWatch. I’ve customized it with my services and have a filter set to 70% for IMDb. So if Netflix or Prime add a ton of new stuff, it only shows me those ones.

Filmzie is another AVOD option for free movies, especially if you have a smart TV.

To review, AVOD means Advertising-based Video On Demand. Yes, films will be interrupted by ads, but the content will be free. Kinda like TV is free but peppered with commercials.

Smart TVs with Filmzie integration are: Samsung Smart TV, LG Smart TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.

Filmzie can also be watched with a web browser and through their iOS and Android app.

Two-year-old Filmzie was founded by Matej Boda in Slovakia.

They style themselves as: Free streaming for true movie lovers.

“Filmzie is a high-quality worldwide platform for streaming free movies & TV series. There are so many great films out there from extremely talented filmmakers that just don’t get seen by the general public. We are here to change that! Simply by watching movies on Filmzie, you are supporting filmmakers.”

See a list of their 1,000+ movies, including both features and shorts. See some background on them at StartupBeat.

You don’t need an account to watch free movies, but creating an account lets you socialize in Groups with other Filmzies.

My take: I could not find out how to get your film listed here or how much they’re paying. The lack of built-in Chromecast support is an issue for me.