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.

Apr 24, 2025 - 03:13

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.

April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

Like Beginning, April also carries the mark of reality, mediated. The director is inspired by fictionalized stories gleaned from the real world––especially her hometown, a village at the foot of the Caucasus mountains in Georgia and its people. Beginning’s sparse dialogue, long takes, and atmosphere of violence closing in on the main character––a Jehovah Witnesses pastor’s wife played by the new film’s lead, Ia Sukhitashvili––made space thicken and swell, while April breathes. Arseni Khachaturan’s patient, somehow insistent camera uncovers a world that is both familiar and uncanny: a world split between rumbling storms, rainfall, a gorgeous sunset seen from angles almost as low as the grass itself, and a rotting patriarchal society that squashes female independence with its body politics. Nina (Sukhitashvili) is an OBGYN who, despite best efforts, has to report a newborn’s death as the result of a previously unregistered pregnancy. The local woman’s husband demands an investigation, well aware of rumors that Nina performs illegal abortions in the village––something the patriarchy cannot allow. – Savina P. (full review)

The Encampments (Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker)

A document of a moment in time for a story very much still unfolding, The Encampments is a thorough, engrossing portrait of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, created by Columbia University students last year, calling for their university to divest from U.S. and Israeli weapons companies. With insights from those most directly involved in the protests––including many fearing for their safety and future as America’s newly-instated fascist regime continues to strip away rights––the documentary becomes a sobering, infuriating look at the dismantling of free speech and the nefarious ways those in power will go to any lengths to silence those that are of opposing interests. If there’s any positivity to be gleaned, The Encampments is a powerful portrait of collective action and, as other universities and organizations drew inspiration, how acts of courage can cause ripple effects across the world. – Jordan R. (full review)

Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

“In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure, but Guiraudie has a way of making that dynamic feel egalitarian, as thrilling for those watching as it is for those being watched.” – Leonardo G. (full review)

No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)

Despite the horrors shown throughout No Other Land (all prior to October 7), it’s the Israeli bulldozers calmly retreating post-demolitions that I cannot shake. Beyond the secret document proving that “converting” Palestinian villages like Masafer Yatta into army training grounds was to drive inhabitants out, or an Israeli courtroom––devoid of jurisdiction as illegal settlers––ruling to reject Arab permit requests while evicting families with roots going back almost two centuries, all that’s necessary to understand the terrorism at play are those trucks blindly destroying private property before rolling away. Because it’s not about these occupiers “needing the land” or “enforcing the law.” It’s about control. About laughing at Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian Basel Adra, knowing their only recourse is creating devastatingly crucial documents like this. So prove it’s enough by watching, absorbing, and refusing to remain silent––once a distributor finds the courage to let you. – Jared M.

One to One: John & Yoko (Sam Rice-Edwards, Kevin Macdonald)

If there’s one thing you absolutely cannot miss in Kevin Macdonald’s electrifying ’70s-set New York City music documentary One to One: John & Yoko, it is, unsurprisingly, the music. Thanks to son Sean Ono Lennon’s supervision, the remastering of the iconic couple’s only full concert––and what would be John’s final performance, eight years before his assassination––sounds like an avalanche of near-mythical music history. And, as if hearing it anew isn’t enough, for the first time we can see it. What could only be partially heard on Lennon’s posthumous 1986 album Live in New York City can now be seen and heard in crisp, clear beauty across one giant, riveting, unforgettable cinematic experience. – Luke H. (full review)

Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois)

The relationship the queer community has with an ever-expanding and rotating lineup of pop divas goes back decades, even if the current iteration of that relationship in the social media age––via the wars between unhinged stan accounts and, of course, endless posts about flop stars doomed to the “Khia asylum”––feels like an entirely new evolution in parasocial fandom. The decades-spanning pop industry satire Queens of Drama might skip over the present day altogether, spending more time reflecting on the mid-2000s dominance of stars manufactured by the Simon Cowell machine than anything more contemporary, but it feels completely of-the-moment for how it establishes the ways in which cultural backlash has transformed for the digital age. It’s reductive to view this as solely a product of the pearl-clutching right when this toxicity can often originate within the queer community––particularly for openly queer artists, who tend to receive just as much vitriolic scrutiny within the LGBTQ community as they do those wanting to erase them from existence. – Alistair R. (full review)

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

If any single thing distinguishes directors from auteurs, the capacity to put oneself into the film might be a strong dividing line. Few living directors have defined themselves so strongly as David Cronenberg, and while this sets expectations that can very well engender confused responses, it’s all the more opportunity to surprise––such as a sold-out New York Film Festival crowd being hushed into stunned silence when they realized his new film, The Shrouds, was less of the Videodrome or Scanners variety than an unsparing film about grief and loss, albeit a study spring-loaded with doppelgängers, vaguely futuristic tech, and dense conspiracy plotting. When all is said and done, The Shrouds might very well emerge one of Cronenberg’s best films. – Nick N. (full interview)

Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

Yet Sinners mainly feels so refreshing when this richness of text can easily be overlooked for enjoyment of an unholy hybrid of period drama and horror freakout, Coogler showing as much reverence for the genre as he does the centuries of music which guide this story (and Ludwig Göransson’s excellent score). Most importantly, he remembers that the archetypal vampire tale is an inherently horny one, and he pulls some tricks from Luca Guadagnino’s book for making sexually explicit stories which play even more erotically from what they withhold. Every sex scene features fully clothed actors, but all contain dialogue, or specific kinky details, which serve to remind us that, Dracula onwards, the best vampire stories are carnal ones where characters’ lust is baked into the premise. – Alistair R. (full review)

Viet and Nam (Trương Minh Quý)

A beautiful, haunting romantic drama, Trương Minh Quý’s second feature Việt and Nam was a stand-out at last year’s Cannes and now it’s finally arriving stateside. Luke Hicks said in his NYFF review, “The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from one corner of the screen to the other. He has another boy on his back. A dream is gently relayed in voiceover. Then, without the frame ever having truly revealed itself, it’s gone.”

More Films Now Playing in Theaters