Movie theaters are officially back. As the cinematic offerings slowly return to the big screen compared to the streaming services and various digital rental retailers, we’re here to sort out what’s actually the best bang for your buck at the box office.
A new year and a new COVID variant are in full swing, so now might be a good time to exercise restraint even if there are bigger budget offerings hitting the big screen.
Of course, use your judgment when choosing whether to go back to the movies or not, but there’s an ever-growing percentage of vaccinated moviegoers who are champing at the bit to get back in front of the big screen. And I’m very happy to say that we’re back, here to help.
That said, things in theatrical distribution are a little strange right now, so apart from some big recent blockbusters, there’s a mix of Oscar-winners, lingering releases, indies and classics booked—depending, of course, on the theater. But thankfully, there’s been enough good movies actually released recently this year that you should have no problem finding something great to watch.
Check out the 10 best movies in theaters right now:
10. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Release Date: June 7, 2024
Director: Bilall Fallah, Adil El Arbi
Stars: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vaness Hudgens, Paola Nuñez, Alexander Ludwig, Ioan Gruffudd, Jacob Scipio, Melanie Laburd, Rhea Seehorn, Dennis Greene
Rating: R
Runtime: 166 minutes
If the Bad Boys movies are mostly about the war raging in the soul of America’s ideal psychopath supercop, then Bad Boys: Ride or Die paints that war with big and shameless Fast & Furious ambition, no longer questioning if Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) should kill, but why he does. Is he a Bad Boy, or a Good Boy who is so Good at doing Bad things that he’s cosmically aligned with the nature of the Bad Boy? Is he the monolithic Good-Bad Boy, a true representation of punitive justice in its purest form? Anyway, in this one, Mike finally gets married. With Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Adil & Bilall have divined the right direction for the franchise. Doubling down on the sudsy melodrama while curbing much of their visual language from late-period Bay, they’ve found a way to branch off from the first two films without anchoring it with expansive lore. Swooping, long-take drone shots and an endlessly spinning omniscience accompany more than five obligatory POV shots from the barrel of a gun or some other inanimate object, cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert’s world a constantly moving tumbler of squelching slo-mo violence, obligation its glorious driving force. But rather than let the chaos warp the film’s sense of space, Adil & Bilall’s action scenes—with which Ride or Die is lovingly bloated—are as legible as they are earnest attempts to court a big audience. The two directors have also wisely caught on to the benefit of their actors’ ages, Smith now mid-50s and Lawrence pushing 60. Not only has Smith spent the past 20 years doing increasingly difficult stunt work alongside his dramatic roles, Lawrence has become the warm, welcome emotional center of the franchise. In fact, the true magic of this fourth installment is that somehow it has transformed Marcus Burnett, one of the most insufferable characters in late-‘90s action filmmaking, into a hilarious delight. Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a genuine crowd-pleaser, just undeniably captivating, funny and raging, neon-pink copaganda.–Dom Sinacola
9. Starve Acre
Release Date: July 26, 2024
Director: Daniel Kokotajlo
Stars: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Arthur Shaw, Sean Gilder
Rating: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
Starve Acre is steeped in the idea that hidden wisdom and ancient powers are not only present, but close to its characters, just barely out of their reach until they start digging for them. That understanding provides crucial, fog-thick atmosphere, but then the film goes further, digging into the emotional lives of two people who discover there’s much more to their bleak homestead than either of them dared dream. Starve Acre is a tiny farm on the English countryside where, in the 1970s, archaeology-focused academic Richard (Matt Smith) moves his wife Jules (Morfydd Clark) and son Owen (Arthur Shaw). The farm is Richard’s ancestral home, and while the specter of his departed, cruel father still looms over the landscape, he’s determined to make it a brighter, happier place for his own son. But Starve Acre has other plans, and they present themselves when Owen begins making references to a being called “Jack Grey,” from a fairy story propagated by Richard’s dead father and, in the present day, by the family’s next-door neighbor, Gordon (Sean Gilder). What starts as the story of a child who might have taken on some layer of supernatural influence turns tragic when Owen suddenly dies, leaving Richard and Jules awash in grief. With their marriage on a knife’s edge, the couple retreats (almost literally) to opposite sides of the farm, with Jules constantly in bed and Richard digging out in the fields in search of the property’s literal ancient roots, roots that might hold secrets to far more than just an old superstition. The film’s 1970s setting, coupled with the muted autumnal tones provided by cinematographer Adam Scarth and the moody score by Matthew Herbert, allows Starve Acre to achieve a certain tonal shorthand with genre fans. Starve Acre is not one of those horror films that everyone going in blind will enjoy. It’s not a crowd pleaser or a popcorn thriller. It’s a steady, methodically engineered, beautifully realized meditation on the slow, persistent sting of grief, and a gentle unearthing of the things we bury deep in our souls. It will not satisfy every viewer, but those who are able to tune into its particular malevolent hum will find a remarkably atmospheric tapestry of dread, and a folk-horror essential.–Matthew Jackson
8. Thelma
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Director: Josh Margolin
Stars: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 97 minutes
Every good action hero knows you’ve got to stick to your guns. Ethan Hunt is a marathon-running master of disguise. John Wick has never lost count of his remaining bullets. Jackie Chan’s various inspectors and agents view the world as their personal set of monkey bars. When writer/director Josh Margolin’s debut Thelma keeps its sights trained on its rogue granny on a mission (June Squibb), its hilarious geriatric reframe of action-movie tropes has a game champion. Like its absentminded hero, the film can sometimes get sidetracked right when things are getting good, wandering down schmaltzy or twee narrative paths. But when it lets Thelma (and Squibb) do her thing, the comedy is perfectly cute and a stellar showcase for what an actor’s late career can offer. There’s novelty in the comedic turns from the 94-year-old Squibb and her 81-year-old co-star, Richard Roundtree (in his final film role). These actors get to tap a well that’s unique to their age and the genre without sticking them into the boxes that generally contain old performers. They’re not utterly dignified, wisdom-dispensing elders. They’re not tragic victims of time. And they’re certainly, blessedly not the dreaded “rapping grannies” who are more punchline than performer. As the pair abscond on their quest to retrieve Thelma’s stolen savings, solicited from her cookie jar and mattress by phone scammers, they’re clearly complex, pulling off warm humor, endless charm and impressive stunts. A 94-year-old doesn’t have to ride a motorcycle off a cliff to make you gasp. Thelma’s emphasis on the unique pleasures found at different stages of life works because we can see the trust it places in Squibb as its front-and-center star.–Jacob Oller
7. Only the River Flows
Release Date: July 26, 2024
Director: Wei Shujun
Stars: Yilong Zhu, Chloe Maayan, Chunlei Kang, Tianlai Hou
Rating: R
Runtime: 101 minutes
Detective Ma Zhe (Yilong Zhu) wanders through the frames of Wei Shujun’s period noir Only the River Flows, smoking cigarettes like carbon monoxide is actually his oxygen, almost always bedecked in his leather coat. These are the trademark symbols of a weary cop who has worked too long and seen too much. Ma Zhe’s protective outerwear doesn’t protect him at all, of course, not even against the weather; he’s often seen shivering and hugging himself for warmth in the cold rural nights he spends chasing a murderer. Only the River Flows takes place in Banpo Town, a fictional riverside hamlet, in 1990s China. Ma Zhe, already on the cusp of being jaded when we meet him at the start of the film, is tasked with solving the murder of an elderly woman, whose dead body washes up on the shores of said river; Shujun makes hay of the “case closed!” trope, wherein the culprit is found too soon, and too easily, to satisfy the hero’s internal drive to pursue the truth and find justice. Ma Zhe starts Only the River Flows intact, and over time splinters become cracks become gaping chasms in his mental health. It’s a gradual breakdown, complemented by Chengma Zhiyuan’s thoughtful and measured cinematography; every shot feels lived-in, with each detail given atmospheric purpose. The effect is the establishment of a world that feels static, in stark contrast to Ma Zhe’s slow fracturing. The river is the only entity in the movie with the freedom to keep going, steadily, unchanged and unbothered, a gurgling symbol of a peace Ma Zhe is denied by his deep-rooted misgivings about his job.–Andy Crump
6. Green Border
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Stars: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Behi Djanati Atai, Tomasz Włosok, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous, Maciej Stuhr, Agata Kulesza
Rating: NR
Runtime: 152 minutes
Green Border is at its most effective when its medium is the message. Stilling, frantic images shot through a bird’s-eye lens in black-and-white recall war films such as Schindler’s List, imbuing the contemporary conflict at the center of the film with a larger, historicist scope. Perhaps more importantly, these images toe the line between an observational and experiential subjectivity, in which we are both inundated by a documentary-style realism as well as an acutely focused, first-hand experience of bodily movement—particularly within the contested border that threatens migrants’ ability to do so. We both understand the precarity of their very existence and embody their immediate, multisensory experiences of danger. In a world marred by the tragedy of displacement—casualties of myriad geopolitical, colonial and economic interests—Green Border’s resonance speaks for itself. Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border chronicles the sweeping, myriad effects of the Belarus-European Union border crisis of 2021. A panoramic view of the crisis, the film initially centers a group of refugees whose origins span from countries in the Middle East and Africa. The multinational group is lured into border crossing by the rhetoric of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who promises migrants easy access into the European Union. The group of refugees are rendered a vehicle for the whims and machinations of Poland and Belarus, with officers of both countries tossing them from border to border. Disorder and disorientation is harrowingly depicted in sharp, sensory fashion, with the refugees’ agility and perseverance being steadily, gradually beat down. Holland’s lens portrays dislocation as multipronged, the physical, spatial and psychological implications of it all bleeding into each other. Holland’s choice of black-and-white cinematography is a striking one, an indication of a filmic and ideological continuity with her previous works Angry Harvest and Europa Europa, each of which relate Holocaust-set stories. In Green Border, her images of the present are coded with the pain of years past, if only to say—in compassionate, non-instructive fashion—that we ought not to repeat the machinations of death and destruction.–Hafsah Abbasi
5. Ghostlight
Release Date: June 14, 2024
Director: Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan
Stars: Keith Kupferer, Dolly de Leon, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Tara Mallen, Matthew C. Yee, Lia Cubilete
Rating: R
Runtime: 115 minutes
Ghostlight opens with darkness smothering the rustle and whispers of an audience making its way to their seats before the show starts. Then: The rattling hiss of the stage curtain opening. We expect to see actors, a set, props. Instead, we just see a suburban backyard, the property of Dan (Keith Kupferer), who’s awake much too early for his or his wife’s liking, but helpless to do anything about his REM cycles apart from stare forlornly outside. Life, the film tells us up front, is a show we all perform in, but in the rest of the telling, Ghostlight argues that acting specifically, and the arts broadly, are necessary tools for understanding it. Like Saint Frances, Ghostlight was written by Kelly O’Sullivan, who played the lead in the former and went behind the camera with Alex Thompson to co-direct on this one. Dan is haunted by a year-old tragedy that goes unspecified for the film’s first hour; the choice to dole out pieces of that lingering incident, which weighs on Dan as surely as his wife Sharon (Tara Mallen) and their daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), gives the filmmakers scaffolding that mimics the way Dan dances around his grief rather than face it. It’s a heartbreaking bread crumb trail leading us bit by bit to the worst possible ordeal a family can endure, an injury inflamed by an insult to Dan’s self-esteem: Mandatory leave from his construction job following a volcanic physical outburst on site. Happily, misery loves company, and though Rita (Dolly de Leon), an erstwhile Broadway actress now doing community theater, isn’t miserable herself, exactly, she can pick a miserable soul out of a crowd like a hawk tracking mice through grass. She invites Dan to join her troupe; they’re putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet, and they’re down a man. Ghostlight could easily cultivate these characters as guides to one another, a group of lost souls who find redemptive catharsis through their friendships; this is, after all and in fairness, the role Rita plays to the reluctant, chagrined Dan. But the film’s thesis is about not human connection but humans’ connection to art, how we benefit from the presence of art in our lives, and what lonely, repressed existences we’d be damned to lead without it. Ghostlight’s argument in favor of art as essential to the soul is also a statement honoring creative endeavors as noble professions. — Andy Crump
4. Janet Planet
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Director: Annie Baker
Stars: Zoe Ziegler, Julianne Nicholson, Sophie Okonedo, Will Patton, Elias Koteas
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 113 minutes
Janet Planet immerses the audience in the boonies of Western Massachusetts during the summer and early autumn of 1991, allowing the viewer to absorb countless details of the period, mood, and relationships. Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), who will enter middle school in a few weeks, lives with her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and doesn’t have real friends of her own, which places her uncomfortably close to the adult orbit of failed romances and rootless non-careers. Mother and daughter both have what Janet later refers to as “forthrightness” while seeming, to some extent, at a loss for how to make each other happier. Baker’s (and Ziegeler’s) portrait of Lacy as the film continues is frequently stunning in its heartbreaking preadolescent candor. The bespectacled redheaded girl in oversized t-shirts expresses a sober self-analysis (“I usually have a hard time making friends”) that barely masks her sadness and ongoing neediness. She seems perpetually on the hunt for kids her own age, and simultaneously terrified that she’ll find them and be forced to pull away from Janet. Nearly every one of Lacy’s scenes is uneasily compelling – a coming-of-age story unbound by genre clichés. Why, then, does Baker insist on multiple scenes that grind the movie to a halt, even taking into account its deliberate pacing? Maybe Baker’s patience and empathy simply exceed my own. Shooting on 16mm celluloid, she captures moments that will become comforting memories, whether they should be or not: Lacy’s race through a local mall with a sadly temporary friend becomes a bucolic romp. The theme music of Clarissa Explains It All watched on a sick day becomes hypnotic. The many great scenes in Janet Planet underscore the frustrations of its few bad ones: Even an emotionally tumultuous childhood can be a lot more absorbing than the indulgences of the adult world.–Jesse Hassenger
3. The Fall Guy
Release Date: May 3, 2024
Director: David Leitch
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 125 minutes
The deceptive difficulty of action movies, comedies, and their intersection is being able to do something completely stupid with total straight-faced commitment. Like so many easily dismissed parts of film production, a punchline delivered with invested emotion is just as hard to pull off as a pratfall performed with total abandon. If either misses its mark by a hair, you fall flat on your face and leave the audience hating your smug performance or hyperactive flailing. It’s all the more impressive, then, that Ryan Gosling does it all in The Fall Guy. He plays stuntman Colt Seavers, living bruise, returning to action One Last Time in order to help his old flame Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) on her first directorial effort, Metalstorm. That’s the simple set-up, designed to showcase the jock rock of filmmaking: A stunt spectacular combining the technical prowess and meathead charm of the dirtbag daredevils behind every awesome car crash and killer fight scene. And, thanks to Gosling—playing his role like his schmuck detective from The Nice Guys accidentally found himself in a Mission: Impossible—the film breezily flits between a savvy behind-the-scenes pastiche and a committed action rom-com. Ok, The Fall Guy owes its success to far more people than its leading man. That’s kind of its point. Directed by longtime stuntman David Leitch (with this film, distancing himself from solely being the less impressive half of the John Wick team) and written by Drew Pearce (one of Leitch’s Hobbs & Shaw scribes), The Fall Guy works best as an anti-blockbuster. It wants to blow shit up and wow us with its ballsy choreography, but it also wants to take the shine off these feats of movie magic. Funnier and more effective than most movies built upon a foundation of car chases and fistfights, The Fall Guy is smart enough to showcase its dumb action in a new and exciting way. Its affection is infectious, whether that’s for the art of filmmaking, the haywire pleasures of being on set, the adrenaline rush of a well-made gamble, or for finding someone special to share your simple corner of the world. The ambitious meta-film overcomes the baggage of trying to be both the movie of the summer and the movie that comments on those kinds of movies, hitting a cinematic sweet spot and singing the praises of stunt performers everywhere.–Jacob Oller
2. Sing Sing
Release Date: July 12, 2024
Director: Greg Kwedar
Stars: Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San José, Paul Raci
Rating: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Greg Kwedar’s sensitive, joyous Sing Sing does more than simply dramatize the workings of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, it incorporates participants into the very fabric of the film’s DNA. Most of the cast is composed of former New York prisoners who had gotten involved in RTA during their incarceration, turning the film’s depiction of a prison theater production into a reflection of honest, shared experiences by the performers. But, while much of Sing Sing’s success is owed to the moving nature of these men’s reality, they are not used as props. Sing Sing is an emotional prison drama that doesn’t beg for your tears amid all of the typical heartstring-tugging signifiers that come with the genre’s territory. It represents these lives sincerely and avoids grandiose histrionics, melding the real experiences of these men within the fantasy of filmmaking to find graceful emotional truths. The element of unreality comes in the form of Sing Sing’s lead performer: Colman Domingo portrays an interpretation of the real-life John “Divine G” Whitfield, a long-time participant in RTA who now helps lead the program, alongside being a hobbyist playwright when he’s not working on how he’ll convince the review board that he deserves parole for the crime that he was wrongly imprisoned for. The heart of Sing Sing lives and breathes in the world of theater, but more broadly acts as a statement regarding the importance and universality of artistic creation. Cinematographer Pat Scola captures events on 16mm film, and the final product is wonderfully textured and vibrant. Flashy camera theatrics are abandoned for a concentration on the performers, and every first-time film actor populating the screen effortlessly fills out the frame. But, more than anything, Sing Sing’s most productive quality is how it builds out cathartic character development through the process of creating art, and in doing so carves out a space for men to express a level of emotional honesty that’s typically discouraged. In Sing Sing, healing is forever an ongoing process, but one you’re never alone in accomplishing. –Trace Sauveur
1. Longlegs
Release Date: July 12, 2024
Director: Oz Perkins
Stars: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, Kiernan Shipka
Rating: R
Runtime: 101 minutes
The first thing I wanted to do after seeing Longlegs is take a shower. Some horror movies have you looking over your shoulder on the way out of the theater, jumping at shadows in the parking lot. These are the horror movies that follow you. Longlegs doesn’t follow you. You’re drenched in Longlegs. It’s all over you—in your hair, on your clothes—by the time the credits roll. Its fear is less tangible than a slasher or a monster, even less than a demon. It’s just something in the air, in the back of your mind, like the buzz of a fluorescent lamp. Oz Perkins’ Satanic serial killer hunt is his most accessible movie yet, putting the filmmaker’s lingering, atmospheric power towards a logline The Silence of the Lambs made conventional. Precisely crafted and just odd enough to disarm you, allowing its evil to fully seep in, Longlegs is a riveting tale of influence and immersion. After FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) successfully, and mysteriously, locates a killer on little more than a hunch, her charming boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), assigns the quiet savant to a long-dormant investigation into a suspect known only by how he signs the coded letters found at the crime scenes: Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Only, the mystery to be solved isn’t Clue. You’re not filling in weapon, location, suspect. The question crawling under Longlegs’ skin is how grounded this case actually is, whether it’s a truly by-the-book procedural or whether that book is bound in skin and filled with spells. Lee is tight-lipped and uneasy in her own skin, a child’s soft voice wrapped in a blue FBI windbreaker. But she doesn’t balk at corpses, or head for the hills once she realizes she’s on Longlegs’ radar. Longlegs could also feel like familiar territory for Cage, at first glance. And that’s all we get at first, glances. Like any good monster movie, we’re denied a close look at Longlegs for a decent chunk of the movie’s three segments, but once we see him, that’s all you can think about. You see how a demonic seed has been planted and left to its own devices, down in some forgotten cellar, festering in the dark. As Perkins’ story progresses, you wonder where else those seeds have spread. It’s rotten Americana, every god-fearing Bible-thumper’s fears proven right. Longlegs contains a handful of impressively controlled performances, a dilapidated aesthetic rich with negative space, a queasy score, a methodical but always gripping pace, and one of the most original and upsetting horror villains in a long while. Perkins’ haunted vision is so convincing, you also might feel like scrubbing it off of you after you’ve hustled back to the safety of your home.–Jacob Oller
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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