The 10 Best New Movies (Right Now)
When searching for the latest and greatest cinematic offerings, the shifting distribution landscape makes one thing abundantly clear: No matter how badly we’d like for the big screen to be the place for the best movies, it’s simply not the case. Sure, the theatrical experience claims plenty of worthy films, but with on-demand video rental and the overwhelming number of streaming options—two areas where indie and arthouse cinema have been thriving as theaters shove them aside for more and more Marvel movies—alternative viewing methods bear consideration if you’re after a comprehensive list of the best new fare.
This list is composed of the best new movies, updated every week, regardless of how they’re available. Some may have you weighing whether it’s worth it to brave the theater. Some, thankfully, are cheaply and easily available to check out from your living room couch or your bedroom laptop. Regardless of how you watch them, they deserve to be watched—from tiny international dramas to blockbuster action films to auteurist awards favorites.
Check out the 10 best new movies movies right now:
10. Evil Does Not Exist
Release Date: May 3, 2024
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Stars: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani
Rating: NR
Runtime: 106 minutes
Evil Does Not Exist opens with the camera languorously tracking through treetops, seen from the ground, until interrupting itself abruptly with a music-stopping shot of Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), a grade-school-aged girl with her neck craned up – suggesting we were previously sharing her point of view. The implied closeness of that opening shot is the nearest the camera gets to its characters for a while; it’s 10, maybe 15 minutes before anyone in the movie is seen in anything resembling a close-up. We meet Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), Hana’s father, and figure out some details of their life, explaining the remoteness of the cinematography: They live in a woodsy Japanese village, broadly isolated but not alone, enjoying the quiet. We watch as Takumi performs outdoorsy tasks — chopping wood, hauling fresh well water — until we realize that, put together with minding Hana, they form his job, of sorts. Takumi and Hana aren’t that far from society; Takumi delivers the well water to a local udon restaurant, not exactly a strictly survivalist outpost. But there’s something pristine and untouched about their environment, making the interest of a company called Playmode both natural and horribly unnatural all at once. For a little while, it seems like Hamaguchi has made his own quiet, non-cutesy version of the story where the company man is tasked with steamrolling a small town, only to find himself charmed by its inhabitants and way of life. Evil Does Not Exist doesn’t exactly swerve away from that narrative; instead, it shifts again, slowly but surely, this time into more unsettling (and unsettled) territory. Hamaguchi’s previous film, his U.S. breakthrough and recipient of a Best Picture Oscar nomination, was the deliberate, sometimes mesmerizing Drive My Car. Evil Does Not Exist is only a little over half that movie’s length, and though it allows its characters a certain measure of soul-bearing conversation, it plays certain offscreen developments even closer to the vest. Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit. Even the most formidable steamrollers can’t always clear a path out of the wilderness.–Jesse Hassenger
9. 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
8. Daughters
Year: 2024
Director: Natalie Rae, Angela Patton
Stars: Hugh Bonneville, Ben Winshaw, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Nicole Kidman
Rating: NR
For ten long weeks, men who are incarcerated in a Washington, D.C. prison eagerly anticipate a rare opportunity to reunite with their daughters in the profoundly moving documentary feature Daughters. The film from co-directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton follows these fathers and their children as they prepare for a “Date with Dad” dance that will allow them to be reunited for six hours, a rare opportunity for physical connection as prisons across the board begin to limit in-person visitations. As part of the two-and-a-half-month lead-up to the dance, those eligible to participate complete a fatherhood coaching program, entailing an informal roundtable where the men are able to express their complicated feelings about their own upbringings and anxieties over their mandated absence. Rawly exposing the cruelty imposed upon predominantly Black children by the carceral state while also capturing the emotional whiplash of this fleeting encounter, Rae and Patton construct a visually stunning and narratively resonant portrait of love and longing. Lensed with love yet unabashedly committed to its nuanced depiction of familial strain—as well as the social systems that beget this separation—Daughters is a testament to the power of a father’s love and support, no matter the obstacle.—Natalia Keogan
7. Good One
Release Date: August 9, 2024
Director: India Donaldson
Stars: Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy
Rating: R
Runtime: 90 minutes
India Donaldson’s Good One trades in voyeurism, but not necessarily the type you’d expect from a nervy Sundance debut. Low-key in approach but deeply observant, much of the movie involves Sam (Lily Collias), a 17-year-old girl, watching and listening in plain sight. Sam’s dad Chris (James Le Gros) and his longtime friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) know that she’s there; sometimes, they even address her directly, or solicit her opinion about this or that, as the three of them embark on a camping trip. But neither of them are quite accustomed to how clearly Sam sees them, and how attuned she is to their middle-aged weaknesses, whether she’s amused or deeply disappointed. Chris and Matt seem to take their status as the adults in the room (or, in this case, in the woods) for granted, even as they’re giving lip service to Sam’s maturity. The audience better understands Sam’s watchfulness because Donaldson zeroes in on the face of her young lead, catching Collias in a range of expressions that far eclipse the stereotypical teenager repertoire of eyerolls and glowers. Those are there too, sometimes, but Sam also exhibits a kind of flickering skepticism over whether she can give these men the benefit of the doubt – or, in her father’s case, years of both love and frustration. Much of Good One plays like a cross between Kelly Reichardt and Noah Baumbach – with further crisscrossing between multiple modes of each filmmaker. There’s the modest, verdant-scenery male bonding of Reichardt’s Old Joy, plus the seething, stranded dynamic of Michelle Williams’ character in Meek’s Cutoff; similarly, the banter of a Baumbach comedy – the dialogue between Chris and Matt is often very funny – intersects with a lower-key version of Marriage Story tensions. Donaldson is closer to Reichardt in terms of incident and quiet; not overmuch of the former and plenty of the latter. Yet the movie does turn on a betrayal – a couple of them, even – with the clarity and grace of a perfectly wrought short story. Collias is a find, and Le Gros has become an expert at playing a certain type of muddling-through family man who convinces himself that certain selfish decisions are actually just him doing his best. The flipside of Donaldson’s close and careful observation is that even smaller developments start to feel inevitable in a quasi-literary sort of way. Once the story makes its biggest turn, the movie becomes more predictable, just a tiny bit easier to chart out, right up to its open ending – one moment that probably would work better with just the right closing sentence, rather than the particular image the movie lands on. Still, this is a striking introduction to Donaldson’s unflinching eye.—Jesse Hassenger
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- movies The 50 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now (September 2025) By Paste Staff September 12, 2025 | 5:50am
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