The Best Movies Now Playing in Theaters

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run. While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the […] The post The Best Movies Now Playing in Theaters first appeared on The Film Stage.

Jan 16, 2025 - 16:28

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run.

While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the essential films that may be on a screen near you.

All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)

Following up her enigmatic, beautiful debut A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal Kapadia shows an entirely different register with her dazzling Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize winner All We Imagine as Light. While India foolishly didn’t select it to compete in the international feature category at this year’s Academy Awards, hopefully it’ll take an Anatomy of a Fall-esque path this season. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Writer-director Payal Kapadia isn’t interested in the flashy world of Mumbai that gets so much global attention. Per its opening soundscape, All We Imagine as Light means to bask in the luminescence of life found among India’s lower classes, which means acknowledging the inequality and socio-economic injustice that defines their everyday as much as it means showcasing their intrinsic glow and dogged refusal to let the inalienable love, beauty, and camaraderie of existence be taken from them.”

Anora (Sean Baker)

Sean Baker’s radiant rom-com / rollicking thriller Anora is one of the most acclaimed films of the year for good reason. The Palme d’Or winner is finally now in theaters, giving audiences a chance to witness Mikey Madison’s captivating performance. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Anora is a devastating, gut-busting beauty––regular cinematographer Drew Daniels lending his brilliance to yet another Baker triumph––the kind that hurts your heart and holds you tight to recover at the same time, tears of laughter streaming down your face.”

Babygirl (Halina Reijn)

Premiering with much fervor at the Venice Film Festival, Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies follow-up Babygirl finds Nicole Kidman playing a high-powered CEO who puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much-younger intern (Harris Dickinson), and which earned her Best Actress at the festival. Savina Petkova said in her review, “It’s not too early in the festival to say Reijn wrote and directed one of––if not the––most compelling films of this year’s Venice selection and deserves full praise for landing a project of this caliber while making a third feature that is as close to perfection as can be. Babygirl is billed as an erotic thriller and doesn’t waste any precious time before stating it; the very opening scene sees Romy (Kidman) climaxing, her face held in a tight close-up until she collapses on her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas).”

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)

Certain to be crowned the most ambitious cinematic undertaking in independent filmmaking this year, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a drama of epic proportions. At 215 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission, shot on VistaVision, and presented on 70mm (if you’re lucky), Venice’s Best Director winner is now in a limited release. As Rory O’Connor said in his review, “In Corbet’s miraculous introduction, a musical overture is disrupted by a dizzying climb: first Brody’s face, enveloped in shadows in the belly of a ship, then a race to the deck with Lol Crawley’s 70mm camera barely keeping pace. For a few dark moments it’s difficult to make out what’s going on––then, all of sudden, the score surges, the men reach clear sky, embracing as the Statue of Liberty breaks into the frame from above them, the New World turned upside-down. Mere moments in, we are already given a taste of what Corbet’s film will ultimately say about the American dream. For the opening act, Tóth moves in with his assimilated cousin (Alessandro Nivola), who already sports a new name and religion, and begins work in his furniture shop but soon gets the feeling that his modernist sensibilities may not be welcome. The relationship with Van Buren (who he meets after being given a chance commission to refurbish his library, producing a light-filled space that makes the pages of Life magazine) offers hope of artistic freedom and upward mobility; but soon ego, envy, and xenophobia rear their ugly heads. Corbet allows this mood to slowly fester away, building to a metaphor that is about as vulgar as it is cruelly effective. It is probably best to leave it there.”

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)

Any cat owner who saw this year’s A Quiet Place: Day One may recall the stress induced by the image of a cat bobbing underwater and often think of that as our feline hero escapes one sticky situation after another. They’re not alone, though, interacting with an adorable band of animals that include a capybara, golden retriever, lemur, and limp-winged tall bird. The cute buddies all “speak” through meows, barks, squeaks, and grunts, making Flow essentially enough of an “art film” to get festival play, even if it’s pretty simple at heart––while ostensibly a cutesy animated movie for children, I never felt my intelligence insulted. I don’t know if a limited release provided by North American distributors Janus and Sideshow means Flow finds a young audience beyond cultured adults taking their kids, but the film, at heart, recalls some of classic Disney. – Ethan V. (full review)

From Ground Zero

From Ground Zero is a film that, in an ideal world, would not exist, and cannot be written about as if it were a normal production. This anthology of 22 shorts is Palestine’s submission for the Best International Film Oscar and has deservedly made the 15-title shortlist. Like any anthology film, it suffers from certain pieces being better-realized than others, though it’s difficult to critique this in all good conscience; when making art in a war zone, there’s an inherent urgency that outweighs dramatic shortcomings. As the title reminds us, these are dispatches from a living hell unfathomable to any viewer, and the fact that several filmmakers have been able to keep creating under such circumstances is a miracle––one anybody with a heart would trade for both an end to the bloodshed and these directors being able to create art on their own terms. – Alistair R. (full review)

The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn)

After making a splash with his influencer satire Sweat, Swedish director Magnus von Horn returned to Cannes with the black-and-white drama The Girl with the Needle. Savina Petkova said of Denmark’s Oscar entry in her Cannes review, “Teaming with co-writer Line Langebek, van Horn takes a true story and weaves many obstacles, encounters, and disappointments to make sure we see Karoline as a multifaceted character, even if she barely speaks. It’s not that she’s deliberately quiet or scheming in any way; her reticence to talk instead confirms a lack of faith in life as it is. Girl‘s period setting––1919 in a post-WWI Copenhagen––may be a century removed from our times, but its atmosphere weighs on you just as today’s world might. With old wars supposedly ending and new ones brewing, home evictions, poverty, and lack of abortion rights, Scandinavia in the 1920s can terrifyingly mirror many parts of Europe in the 2020s. The Anthropocene looms over The Girl with the Needle, which is the best thing a period piece can hope for: a knowing, truthful look at the past from the vantage of our present.”

Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)

As a Peterloo appreciator, Mike Leigh never left, but it’s certainly nice to have him return to his smaller-scale character study roots with Hard Truths. Unequivocally giving the performance of the year, Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s weathered, worn, troubled Pansy is against the world––this includes her husband, son, friends, and any acquaintance or stranger that gets in her path. Rather than sanding-down the edges of her personality to potentially win audience sympathies, Leigh goes the opposite route, in turn making an even more cathartic portrait of festering anger containing at least a sliver of feeling every human has, particularly relatable when it comes to the seemingly unsolvable frustrations of our present-day world.

I’m Still Here (Walter Salles)

This fall, Walter Salles finally returned with his first feature in 12 twelve years, the moving political / family drama I’m Still Here, led by a powerhouse performance from Fernanda Torres alongside Selton Mello and Fernanda Montenegro. Savina Petkova said in her review, “Torres is stellar, even with such a hermetic character. Eunice is stoic, almost saintly in her devotion to family, the expressions of which never manage to elevate I’m Still Here from visual flatness, its surprisingly deep commitment to conventional shot continuity, and an overblown duration of 135 minutes. Suffering cannot be measured, neither familial nor national, but on this occasion Salles has somehow failed to find the right cinematic framework for this biopic storytelling. The film feels uncalibrated, but not in the free-flowing, depth-exploring, liberated kind of way.”

Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot)

Memoir of a Snail marks the long-awaited return to feature filmmaking from Adam Elliot, director of 2009’s Mary & Max and Oscar winner for the short Harvie Krumpet. Featuring the voices of Sarah Snook, Eric Bana, Jacki Weaver, and Kodi Smit-McPhee, the film won the top prizes at Annecy and BFI London. David Katz said in his review, “Memoir of a Snail’s director Adam Elliot (following-up his enduringly popular 2009 feature Mary and Max) prefers the term ‘clayography’––his own portmanteau of claymation and biography––which does someway capture the uniqueness of what he’s doing. He specializes in exhaustive stop-motion character studies. Which isn’t to say they lack storytelling escalation, but underlines how little we grasped about the likes of Wallace, Gromit, and Jack Skellington’s psychology or motivations. Elliot strongly favors voiceover as a primary tool for exposition––of course, a sin for various theorists of film storytelling––and Memoir of a Snail displays the limitations of combining this approach with his various still tableaux of clay, paint, and paper.”

Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)

With imagery quite literally conjured from the deepest bowels of darkness, it’s clear why Nosferatu has been on the mind of Robert Eggers since he saw F. W. Murnau’s silent classic at the impressionable age of nine. The director’s fourth feature is his most assured and accomplished, an impeccably crafted, knowingly humorous, and perhaps too-rigid odyssey into the depths of true evil, one in which you can feel Eggers’ obsessions flow through every nocturnal frame. While The Northman was evidence he could work in a bigger playing field, his latest is the ideal marriage of focused, character-driven frights of his first two features and the imaginative world of his Viking epic, where no detail was left unconsidered. As Nosferatu relates to the vampire tales that have come before, from Murnau to Herzog to Coppola, the experience isn’t seeing how the director reinvents the wheel of the storied myth, but precisely how he honors this timeless myth with an exacting, full-bodied vision in all its evocative, erotic, and gory gothic horror. – Jordan R. (full review)

Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

There are only a few films this year that truly feel like they are radically advancing the language of cinema; RaMell Ross’ narrative debut Nickel Boys certainly stands among them. After crafting one of the most remarkable documentaries of the last few years with the Apichatpong Weerasethakul-backed, Sundance-winning, Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Ross has now adapted Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed, Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel. With cinematography from Jomo Fray, who shot last year’s stunning All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Nickel Boys sees Ross exude stunning formal power once again, telling this story with a unique, empathetic conceit that makes for a radical adaptation and one of the year’s best films. Jourdain Searles said in her review, “Nickel Boys is a difficult film to define or boil down to constituent pieces. It feels alive like an open, bleeding heart. It’s a tragic story told with hope that doesn’t ring saccharine or overwrought. Sometimes it moves like water, flowing from ugliness to beauty. There are few American films that come close to what it accomplishes, as either film or adaptation. Nickel Boys suggests a miracle, with the makings of a classic.”

Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader)

After his trio of “Man in a Room” films, Paul Schrader has switched gears with the poignant drama Oh, Canada. Reteaming with his American Gigolo star Richard Gere, the film follows a famed Canadian documentary filmmaker who gives a final interview to one of his former students to tell the whole truth about his life. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “It’s the first time the director has worked with Richard Gere since the mutually beneficial success of American Gigolo 44 years––a moving and poignant choice given the wildly diverging paths they have been over that time. The actor was 31 when Gigolo came out, about to be thrust to the top of the A-list. Never comfortable in the sunnier parts of Hollywood, Schrader would use the film’s success to plug away for as long as he could with his own idiosyncratic brand of filmmaking. That their paths have convened again here, with Schrader rejuvenated (loving life as the elder statesman of the New York scene) and Gere without a solid role in years, is itself a poignant narrative. That they’ve done so on a story about a filmmaker reassessing his own legacy is even more compelling.”

The Order (Justin Kurzel)

At quite a steady clip, Justin Kurzel followed True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram with The Order, a gritty crime drama that’s certainly his best film since the debut Snowtown. Starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, and Marc Maron, the film tells the true story of FBI agents tracking down robberies carried out by white supremacists. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Australian native Kurzel has finally––as was inevitable at his climbing rate––begun telling stories stateside, but the move to the American West simply amounts to a setting shift. The film doesn’t feel foreign to his other work––a compliment or a dig, depending on how you read it. For one, The Order bears its fair share of clichés. You can guess how it’ll end. The boilerplate crime-thriller framework follows that of his past films, which don’t stray from the formula either.”

A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)

There’s something humble about Jesse Eisenberg writing, directing, and co-starring in a film, only to give its plum role to Kieran Culkin. Eisenberg, still, writes himself arguably the best scene in this picture; maybe the jury’s still out on the humble thing. David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) meet at the airport ahead of a trip to Poland. Their grandmother has recently passed and set some money aside for the two young men to take a tour of the motherland––captured, courtesy DP Michal Dymek, in visually and emotionally arresting images. – Dan M. (full review)

The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar)

The warmest and lightest film about death is quite an accomplishment. Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut The Room Next Door brings together Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro, and Alessandro Nivola in the adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s rich, witty, heart-aching novel What Are You Going Through. Rory O’Connor said in his review of The Room Next Door, “Speaking as someone who strayed from the Almodóvar flock some films ago, The Room Next Door presents a welcome surprise. His recent output of shorts and medium-length films (Strange Way of Life and The Human Voice) pointed towards a director paring down in all the wrong ways. The Room Next Door is the other kind, the closest he’s come to an exercise in late style: it’s succinct, light on its feet, totally earnest, and––in spite of some indulgent conversations on art and writing––never feels like it’s trying too hard. Would an artist who felt they still had something to prove write a scene like the one in which Martha stares out the window of her hospital room, quoting Joyce while pink snowflakes gently fall over the Manhattan skyline? That the sequence works is as much a testament to the strength of the performances (watch out for Moore’s close-up in the scene, a real classic of the genre) as it is to the director’s conviction.”

Santosh (Sandhya Suri)

Both a gripping crime thriller and a poignant character study, Santosh operates in the delicate space between realism and genre storytelling. With her unflinching camera, Suri captures Santosh’s transformation with silences, gestures, and glances that speak volumes. Moments of visual poetry punctuate the narrative: the washing of a bloodied uniform, statues veiled in cloth, the charged removal of a nose ring. These charged moments, intertwined with the gritty, overarching plot, result in a gripping journey through moral ambiguity, where questions of agency and complicity haunt both Santosh and the viewer, building to a chilling climax. – Lucia A. (full interview)

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)

Here’s a film that asks, in the vein of another’s title: did you wonder who fired the gun? Yet in Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is set concurrently against Iran’s Jina (Women, Life, Freedom) protests, the question’s sarcastic rather than interrogative. This gun is not literal and corporeal, but metaphorical and deadly, its firer the collective will of hundreds of women who cannot abide the country’s theocratic regime and morality police. There’s no doubting the film’s own cogently didactic thrust, either. – David K. (full review)

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez)

One of the best documentaries to premiere at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat a radically and rhythmically edited look at global politics. John Fink said in his review, “It was Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” which is one way of approaching Belgian filmmaker and multimedia artist Johan Grimonprez’s sprawling, jazz-infused Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. The political essay revisits 1960, a turbulent year in global affairs: Patrice Lumumba rises to power in Congo just as the United States, through the CIA-backed Voice of America radio network, aims to soften America’s image aboard, sending jazz musicians Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, and Max Roach to tour the world. The film positions the jazz musicians as a kind of political cabinet while Gillespie envisions his own run for the White House on TV talk shows back home. It proceeds with a rather kinetic, defiant tone in which the jazz, breaking news, citations, and quotes interrupt the historical footage a more standard documentary may have primarily focused on.”

Vermiglio (Maura Delpero)

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Italy’s Oscar entry Vermiglio, about the trials and tribulations of a family living in a small mountain community during wartime, is one of the most starkly beautiful films of the year. Lucia Ahrensdorf said in her AFI Fest review, “Vermiglio is set in the eponymous alpine village during the waning days of WWII. Maura Delpero’s film, gorgeously shot by Leviathan cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, is a slow-moving fable that unfolds as a novelistic series of pastoral tableaus. The short chapters evoke Balzacian poetic realism and recall the sensual textures of last year’s The Taste of Things. But unlike that film, which exuded autumnal warmth and celebrated pleasure––therefore freedom––Vermiglio‘s stark, wintery beauty comes at the price of its characters’ desires. The painterly frames physically constrain subjects, especially women who suffer pointedly under the social restrictions of this time and place.”

More Films Now Playing in Theaters