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. 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
9. 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
8. 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
7. Hit Man
Release Date: May 17, 2024
Director: Richard Linklater
Stars: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta
Rating: R
Runtime: 115 minutes
Armed with the kind of star wattage capable of outshining his co-stars, Glen Powell has cemented himself as a leading man. With the raucous comedy Hit Man (which he co-wrote with director Richard Linklater), Powell crafts a character that can ground its delightful and relentless series of plot twists. While Linklater and Powell’s last collaboration worked under the guise of an ensemble in Everybody Wants Some!!, Powell is the definitive protagonist of Hit Man. Gary (Powell) is a bumbling, lovable philosophy professor who works part-time with the undercover division of the New Orleans police department. He loves his cats, has a good relationship with his ex-wife and drives a sturdy, practical Honda Civic. When fellow detective Jasper (Austin Amelio), undercover as a hitman, is pulled from a case for misbehavior, Gary steps in, relishing the chance to immerse himself in another life, free from moral reasoning and the trappings of normality. Once he encounters the sweet and desperate Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants to rid herself of an abusive, domineering husband, his life spins into chaos. While the film weaves together colorful, tonally specific threads with relative ease, it is dominated by its romantic and comic impulses, following Madison and Gary’s relationship with unwavering focus. This requires unbidden chemistry between the two leads, a multi-hyphenate source of energy that both insulates them and propels the story forward. Powell and Arjona are up to the task, gravitating towards each other and leaning into every suggestive conversation with startling ease. Gary’s lessons in philosophy slowly coalesce with his personal experiences in Carrie Bradshaw-esque fashion. It is here that Hit Man feels somewhat shallow and underdeveloped, trying to shoehorn grander life lessons into a relatively simple relational set-up. While the ambition of such a storytelling move isn’t totally unwelcome, it does take the audience on an unnecessarily bumpy ride, forcing them to ascribe deeper meaning to a purely physical, chemistry-riddled expression of cinema. Arjona and Powell leave as the victors of this light excursion, following in the footsteps of Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, with shades of Cary Grant coloring Powell’s playful physicality. He is spry and breezy, thriving in the informality of the silly premise he and Linklater rip from real life (Hit Man is based on a Texas Monthly article by the same man who covered Bernie’s real-life inspiration). With such charming old-school performances, Hit Man peels back the layers of genre to reveal something alive–lovely in its full-bodied animation.—Anna McKibbin
6. 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
5. The People’s Joker
Release Date: April 5, 2024
Director: Vera Drew
Stars: Vera Drew, Lynn Downey, Christian Calloway, Griffin Kramer, Kane Distler, Nathan Faustyn, Phil Braun, David Liebe Hart, Scott Aukerman, Tim Heidecker, Maria Bamford, Bob Odenkirk
Rating: NR
Runtime: 92 minutes
A feat of parody so outrageous that its legend (and strongly worded letter from corporate) precedes it, The People’s Joker is an endlessly amusing, deeply personal, wildly inventive collision of genres all bent to the will of filmmaker Vera Drew. Her queer coming-of-age is filtered through the language and imagery of Batman media, her transition and alt-comedy leanings all given hilarious reflections in the Rogues’ Gallery of Gotham. But it’s through the combination of DIY greenscreen work and effervescent, scrappy animation captured in populist media like Minecraft and VR Chat that the film’s indie production wins you over. The resulting collage is like visiting your childhood bedroom, and relating the sticker-covered walls to your adult life. Also, all the stickers are voiced by people like Maria Bamford, Scott Aukerman, Tim Heidecker and Bob Odenkirk. Drew herself is a charismatic performer, as is Kane Distler, who plays her romantic foil (who is also a Joker), but it’s Phil Braun’s ridiculous Batman that always steals the show. The riotous, anarchic result is everything the corporate use of the Joker isn’t, and everything it could be. The People’s Joker is a deftly assembled reckoning of how we use art — ranging from the cribbed comic aesthetic to the film’s Lorne Michaels-skewering comedy scene — to craft ourselves.–Jacob Oller
4. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Release Date: April 26, 2024
Director: Joanna Arnow
Stars: Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti, Joanna Arnow, Michael Cyril Creighton, Alysia Reiner
Rating: R
Runtime: 88 minutes
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed begins with writer/director Joanna Arnow’s naked body curled up next to her character Ann’s dozing dom, Allen (Scott Cohen). She humps him slowly and awkwardly over the duvet, and quietly encourages his lack of interest in her own sexual gratification. It’s true that their sub-dom dynamic is largely focused on Allen’s pleasure, while Ann is merely his willing servant. It’s a dynamic that they’ve shared together since Ann was in her mid-twenties, with Allen at least 20 years her senior. But later in the film, Ann reveals that she can’t actually achieve climax from physical touch, anyway. Throughout the film, Ann hops between a small handful of BDSM relationships—the only kinds of relationships she’s ever been a part of—until she meets the soft-natured Chris (Babak Tafti). It’s here that Ann decides she’s done with the sub-dom life and is finally willing to try “real” dating. For as chaotic as this arc sounds, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is an incredibly still film. There is hardly any non-diegetic music, and characters do not say very much. These ordinary scenarios are completely hypnotic to watch and to hear. Despite Ann being something of a wallflower, her low voice and deadpan delivery are utterly alive, and there is also life in New York, even when the city is not jumping from the screen like it usually does in movies. The molasses feel of the film is such a welcome contrast to the normal stereotype of New York City as fast-paced, on-the-go and constantly interesting. Arnow also makes these boring parts of life seem so daunting. The job that won’t get better, the sex that won’t get better, the family that won’t get better; the love that might get better but could still fall apart at any moment. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Past beautifully observes how the ridiculous mundanities of being alive are some of the most difficult.–Brianna Zigler
3. Challengers
Release Date: April 26, 2024
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
Rating: R
Runtime: 131 minutes
There’s no need to know, or even enjoy, anything about the sport of tennis to find enjoyment in director Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. Still, tennis is inextricably knotted to its sensuous love triangle, which evolves over the course of 13 tumultuous years, climaxing with a match between two estranged players whose love story eclipses the more overt romance between the pair and Zendaya’s tennis prodigy, Tashi Duncan. But it is a story of desire, love, power and co-dependency between three gifted young athletes who all hold that nagging fear, even in their early 30s, that their best years are behind them. The only thing that can reinvigorate their lost sparks is base, animalistic competition, like that which fueled their chaotic threesome over a decade prior to the lowly Fire Town challenger tournament in New Rochelle, New York. We first meet Tashi and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), married and with a mostly neglected young daughter, after Tashi’s best tennis-playing days are behind her (due to a consequential leg injury) and Art is all but bereft of his mojo. In an effort to get his head back in the game and out of early retirement, Tashi enrolls him in a challenger: A small, U.S. Open qualifier that should be beneath an athlete whose face adorns ads the size of building facades. The goal is to have Art compete against players who are obviously below him in order to loosen him up and regain his confidence. The only problem is, it’s the same kind of minor sporting event that attracts a hard-up guy like Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Thirteen years earlier, Patrick and Art were both just two young tennis studs who once jerked off together (what guys can’t say the same?), in love with the same beautiful woman. Thirteen years later, one of them got the girl, the other is cosplaying as poor, and the former two haven’t spoken to the latter in years. The film is just as dynamic as its stars. Rapid cuts give the film a cohesive, kinetic rhythm that keeps the story in a near-constant state of momentum, and none of the frames the camera cuts to are superfluous compositions. This is matched by the occasionally dizzying camerawork from Gudagnino’s Suspiria cinematographer (also Apichatpong Weerasethkul’s on Memoria) Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Challengers surprised me. It’s a grandiose, propulsive, erotic follow-up to the dull, Tumblr-core emo of Bones and All, and I found myself enthralled by Guadagnino’s latest, in which three of our hottest young actors convincingly, tantalizingly explore alternating dynamics of power and sexuality. Challengers isn’t really a film for tennis fans—it’s a film for fans of guys being a little gay for each other, and also fans of the kind of explosive yearning that’s even hotter than the sex scenes we all like to complain don’t exist anymore.–Brianna Zigler
2. I Saw the TV Glow
Release Date: May 3, 2024
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Stars: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 100 minutes
I Saw The TV Glow takes filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s canny observations about how pop culture can create identity and applies them to a warped world of dysphoric digital nightmares. On its face, the film follows the stunted Owen (an incredible, committed Justice Smith), who bonds with fellow outcast Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over a Buffy-ish genre show. As the movie and its inhabitants evolve, changing but perhaps not growing up, it becomes like a bad trip to Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse, where the grim setlist is composed of neon static. The film features performances from Phoebe Bridgers and Kristina Esfandiari, as well as small appearances by two men who are discomfort personified: Conner O’Malley and Fred Durst. Just typing their names so close together gave me a little anxiety. Interconnected with the film’s crushing reality is that of the campy series its characters obsess over, its haunted creatures (one of which looks a bit like if Mac Tonight was a sex offender) allowing real-world problems to be mapped onto their cartoonish make-up. If I Saw The TV Glow doesn’t awaken something in you, you probably didn’t grow up hiding your personality behind your favorite pieces of media. The result is a captivating feat of audiovisual style, unconventional storytelling, and pervasive emotional pain.–Jacob Oller
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Director: George Miller
Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne
Rating: R
Runtime: 148 minutes
If you ever took a class on the Greek classics, you might remember that the epics of Homer are defined by their first words. The Odyssey is the story of a “man,” while the Iliad is a story of “μῆνις,” which is often translated as wrath, rage…or fury. The epics of George Miller barely need words at all, yet Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the Iliad to Fury Road’s stripped-down Odyssey. The latter’s elegant straight-line structure is replaced with lush chapters, documenting the interconnected systems of post-apocalyptic nation-gangs through the years. Through it all, a Dickensian hero clings to this world’s seedy undercarriage. Reducing Furiosa down to a single word does it as little justice as it does the sagas it scraps, welds and reuses like its countless Frankenstein vehicles. But understanding George Miller’s Fury Road prequel as the story of war—of sprawling futility, driven by the same cyclical cruelty that turned its deserts into Wastelands—makes it far more than a satisfying origin story. (Though, it’s that too). Furiosa speaks the language of epics fluently, raging against timeless human failure while carrying a seed of hope. What we learn, we learn through the eyes of Furiosa, from the moment she’s ripped from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child, to the second before she tears out of Immortan Joe’s Citadel, smuggling Fury Road’s stowaways. As Furiosa grows from traumatized child (Alyla Browne) to damaged adult (Anya Taylor-Joy), she survives the slave-labor bowels of the Citadel, claws her way into a position aboard a trade caravan and waits for the perfect moment to enact revenge upon her initial captor, the chaotic, power-hungry biker warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Pushing back on the various men who hunt them, Browne and Taylor-Joy’s performances work in stunning tandem, steadily heating the steely young girl’s resolve until it turns molten. When you match the most powerful eyes in the business with Miller’s evocative framing (Furiosa is shot a bit like Galadriel’s brush with evil in Lord of the Rings—somewhere between avenging angel and Frank Miller cover), you get all the character you need. Each action scene, whether another amazing chase or a desperate rescue mission deep in enemy territory, is driven just as deeply by visual logic as by spectacle. These stunning visions of neo-medieval torture in Hell’s junkyard only work if we can make sense of it all. Furiosa is a film well-planned and deeply dreamed. Miller’s movies strip folkloric epics down to their basic mechanical parts, functional skeletons that run on raw emotion like the war machines running on piss and guzzolene.–Jacob Oller
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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