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.

Dreams (Michel Franco)

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Some images have become metonymic by nature, reflecting the political problems of today with little to no context needed. Such a shot opens Michel Franco’s newest offering, Dreams, and it is one of a huge truck abandoned next to a railway: illegal border-crossing. It rattles and shakes with the screams of people locked inside, clamoring for help; one already anticipates the dire condition the fugitives all are in once the police break open the back door. One of those “illegals” manages to escape amidst the chaos: a youngish, strong-looking man (Isaác Hernández) whose determination is made clear by every step he takes on that desolate road. We don’t know who he is, but he surely knows where he’s going, and there’s a fierceness to him that overpowers the pain he’s obviously in. – Savina P. (full review)

Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

Languorous without becoming laborious, meditative without becoming meandering, abstract without becoming abstruse, Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf is a road movie unlike any other. It follows Irakli (David Koberidze), a father in search of his daughter, a sports photographer whose sudden disappearance is less of an enigma to solve than a vehicle for Koberidze’s imagination to serenely drift. Featuring Giorgi Koberidze’s charming, addictive score and shot on a Sony Ericsson, the fuzzy look of which transforms mundane landscapes into foreign-seeming textural images and hypnotic sequences, Dry Leaf, at 186 minutes, actively heightens our perception to its bucolic territory, its singular wavelength. It’s the kind of film where the destination is less important than the journey, where submission to its logic is more meaningful than a resistance, and where, like a vivid dream, its numinous sensations linger long after viewing. No matter the resolution, Koberidze has established himself as a modern enchanter. – Nirris N.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Baz Luhrmann)

The postscript of Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert—the extravagant, divisive Australian wunderkind’s first documentary, and hopefully not his last—says something essential about the late Elvis we witness afresh with new eyes and ears: the rock n’ roll legend gave everything he had to his Vegas-era. In a way, EPiC is the most naturalistic film Luhrmann’s ever made, unconventionally employing the traditional layout of a tell-all music doc. But that’s a misnomer under the singular, kinetic eye of the Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet director, who brings a dazzling energy—as show-stopping in cinematic terms as The King’s concerts were in the musical—to the well-worn documentary style that electrifies the viewer into a state of ecstasy from start to finish. – Luke H. (full review)

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (Gore Verbinski)

From the moment Sam Rockwell busts into a full diner clad in what can only be described as a do-it-yourself time-travel outfit comprising steampunk gadgets covered with a filthy clear raincoat, it’s clear you’re not in for a movie made by committee. What begins as a possible hostage situation quickly turns into a quest to save all of humanity from a rogue AI that is on the brink of total human takeover––if you can believe a word coming out of Rockwell’s mouth, among them a complicated scenario involving resetting the timestream with a very specific combination of companions pulled from this very diner. If he picks the right group of people, perhaps humanity can be saved. If not, he’ll just have to try again and again and again until he gets it right. – Eric V. (full review)

Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold)

Christian Petzold’s fifteenth feature Miroirs No. 3 marks his fourth with Paula Beer, the actor-muse he first directed in 2018’s Transit, a film that shares significant themes with his newest––chiefly that of total strangers inexplicably recognizing each other and immediately feeling a deep, soulful bond with nary a word. Needless to say Miroirs No. 3 is, like the others, an enigma. – Luke H. (full review)

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (Matt Johnson)

The funniest, most unpredictable, “no, seriously, how the fuck did they do that???” movie of the year is about two guys, an RV, and a dream to play the Rivoli. Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll’s big screen take on their cult-classic web (and later cable) series is perfectly legible for newbies, throwing off enough gags across the spectrum that something will land, be it a particular movie seen in a theater to a stray comment from a passerby. As much a triumph of low-budget/mockumentary filmmaking as it is one of sheer audacity, it simply must be seen to be believed. – Devan S. (full review)

Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir)

You almost believe Amir (Dhafer L’Abidine) wants the village perspective when asking his chauffeur Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) to explain the Palestinian experience outside the city to a collection of landowners at his table. He’s barely able to get the preamble out before one of the guests reminds him of his place: it’s them who pay British taxes while the farmers never pay off their debts. There’s no clearer picture of just how powerful a role greed plays in our world’s tone-deaf political discord. They ignore their kin’s real issues while wondering if “Zionism could be a good thing,” since their property matters most. – Jared M. (full review)

Pompei: Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi)

With Mount Vesuvius looming over southwestern Italy’s idyllic region of Naples, both in history and imagery, one might reasonably think Gianfranco Rosi’s Below the Clouds is about the storied volcano, active and enormous. Yet the title announces Rosi’s focus clearly: Below. In the shadow of Vesuvius––an ominous, peripheral character in the film’s mosaic of curios and quiet charismatics––the vast, densely populated terrain the ancient volcano lords over is teeming with distinct and peculiar modern life. Through a welcome litany of characters and occupations, Rosi shows us around Naples with an invasive interest, like a father bestowing a passion to his child. – Luke H. (full review)

The President’s Cake (Hasan Hadi)

Among the best things in The President’s Cake are the colors. There’s the deep red of a rooster’s comb as it peeks out from a young girl’s carrying pouch; there’s the white decorations that adorn her uncle’s blue car; and then there is the opening vista, in which a deep evening sky is disturbed by the roar of two American fighter jets. We’re somewhere in the ’90s, the country is Iraq, and the decorations are for its president, Saddam Hussein. Soon the camera will peel away to reveal a group of villagers lining up for water. If this is the length people are going for basic requirements, you soon begin to wonder: what chance does anyone have of finding baking soda? – Rory O. (full review)

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord and Chris Miller)

As existential sci-fi, Project Hail Mary doesn’t live up to the mid-2010s blockbusters it’s attempting to emulate, but it does eventually soar when it allows the hangout buddy comedy to take center stage. It’s a gorgeous feat of practical effects on a gargantuan scale, but its biggest pleasures lie in the most intimate character moments. – Alistair R. (full review)

Sirat (Oliver Laxe)

For the French-Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, a competition berth in Cannes has been a long time coming. Laxe was here in 2010 (You All Are Captains), 2016 (Mimosas), and 2019 (Fire Will Come) without once going home empty-handed, and he now rises to the occasion with Sirat, his grandest, most adventurous work yet: the kind of bold, auteurist arrival that seems to happen more here than any other festival. The story takes place in Morocco, which provided the backdrop of Laxe’s first two films, and follows a father searching for his daughter amidst the dust and drugs of an illegal rave scene in and around the Atlas Mountains. There’s a delicious touch of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore to that setup, but Sirat is more in the lineage of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, even Mad Max: a story about a ragtag group attempting to move some monstrous vehicles over a landscape so unforgiving it might actually be hell. If I see a better film in Cannes, it will have been a very good year. – Rory O. (full review)

Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)

When Donbass arrived in 2018, sandwiched between the start of the 2014 Russian-backed conflict in the titular eastern Ukrainian region and full-scale invasion of the country four years since its release, the world Sergei Loznitsa trained his camera on was a surreal, decaying wasteland. It’s not that the film was necessarily prophetic about the atrocities that would later spread across Ukraine. But it spoke to concerns that now feel especially of-the-moment, the same that have long served as a cornerstone of the Belarus-born, Kiev-raised director’s oeuvre. While Donbass was a work of fiction, its preoccupations with the way truth can be manipulated also haunt the archive-based documentaries for which Loznitsa is arguably best known. From Blockade (2006) to The Kiev Trial (2022), the director hasn’t exhumed USSR-era footage as a sort of time machine, but a means to reappropriate history from the regime’s official narratives. Which is why to salute Two Prosecutors as the filmmaker’s “return to fiction,” as the Cannes Film Festival did upon welcoming Loznitsa’s latest to its Official Competition, is both technically accurate and somehow misleading. – Leonardo G. (full review)

What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo)

The last time Hong Sangsoo failed to feature in a Berlinale program, Childish Gambino’s “This is America” was in the charts and Green Book was on its way to beating Roma at the Oscars. (2019 notwithstanding, you have to go back to the Obama years to find a selection without the South Korean’s name.) In just those six years, the festival has witnessed three different creative directors, weathered a global pandemic, and buckled under the weight of its own political fealty. Which is to say: some things change, but the Hong remains the same. He is still tiring to his detractors. He is still a reassuring ever-presence to his devotees. If, like I, you happen to be one of the latter, you’ll probably find much to enjoy in What Does that Nature Say to You, the director’s latest comic melodrama and the closest he has yet come to remaking Meet the Parents. – Rory O. (full review)

More Films Now Playing in Theaters

Read all reviews here. For our NYC-specific repertory round-ups, including many films that will tour the country, bookmark NYC Weekend Watch.

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