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New Movies in Theaters (2024)

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8 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.

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By The New York Times

In space, no one can hear you groan.

A woman with a gun stands in front of an android who holds her shoulder. They are on a space station.

‘Alien: Romulus’

The newest entry in this sci-fi horror franchise, this one directed by Fede Álvarez, follows a mistreated contract worker (Cailee Spaeny) and her glitchy android friend (David Jonsson) as they face off against the eponymous extraterrestrials.

From our review:

“Alien: Romulus” is a nuts-and-bolts action-adventure horror story with boos and splatter. It doesn’t have much on its mind but it has some good jump scares along with a disappointingly bland heroine, a sympathetic android and the usual collection of disposable characters who are unduly killed by slavering, rampaging extraterrestrials. … Álvarez spends a lot of time showing off his sets, which are more engaging than the writing.

In theaters. Read the full review .

‘The Purge’ meets the Powerball.

A near-future Los Angeles holds a Grand Lottery: the winner then must fight off losers who can legally kill them to get the cash. An unsuspecting transplant (Awkwafina) gets the golden ticket and must turn to a bodyguard (John Cena) for protection.

The concept provides a convenient vehicle for the characters to learn helpful lessons about human decency and trust. But “Jackpot!” does not quite stick the landing. Directed by Paul Feig from a screenplay by Rob Yescombe, the movie sustains an admirably zany energy, though its jokes often feel underwritten. (“You can’t just steal people’s panic rooms. What are you, Jodie Foster?”) Worse, though, it seems intent on mixing its metaphors.

Watch on Amazon Prime Video . Read the full review .

Bowdlerized but still bold.

‘caligula: the ultimate cut’.

Thomas Negovan re-edited this (ahem) colorful cult classic originally released in 1980. It follows the rise and fall of the Roman emperor and stars Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren.

Even more crucial is the belief that a masterpiece lurks within the mangled original release. Now attempting to prove that theory is “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” the latest iteration of a film that has gone through an unfathomable number of edits over the decades. This is the rare re-edited version of a movie that features less graphic sex and violence than the original. What kind of world are we living in?

Through a child’s eyes, darkly.

‘red island’.

This drama from Robin Campillo centers on Thomas, a young comics fan (his favorite superhero is named Fantômette) living on a military base in Madagascar, and his observations of the world and people around him.

It’s understandable that Campillo spends so much time on Thomas, but this child’s story is too vaporous when compared with the adult dramas simmering around him and particularly in light of the postcolonial history Campillo struggles to incorporate. And while the fantasy sequences in which Fantômette comes alive add narrative texture, they’re not nearly as charming or revelatory as they’re obviously meant to be. There’s an interesting story nested deep in “Red Island,” but it’s too sketchily realized to have much of an impact.

Mission: Insipid

‘the union’.

When intelligence agent Roxanne (Halle Berry) and her team need to enlist a low-profile Joe Shmoe for their top-secret mission, she turns to her high school ex, Mike (Mark Wahlberg), in this action comedy directed by Julian Farino.

The gimmick is that “The Union,” in addition to being an action film, is also a sort of comedy of remarriage for Roxanne and Mike, except that the screenwriters, Joe Barton and David Guggenheim, haven’t brought much in the way of levity to the relationship. Nor have they applied much ingenuity to the big set pieces.

Watch on Netflix . Read the full review .

Improvisation doesn’t equal authenticity.

‘close to you’.

Elliot Page stars as Sam, a trans man revisiting his hometown for the first time since his transition, in this drama from Dominic Savage.

Back in his childhood home, Sam fields clumsy overtures of love and support from his parents and grown siblings in a series of one-on-one encounters. It’s here that the film demonstrates its greatest asset: a nuanced understanding of the way queer people are often obliged to allay the anxieties, contrition and discomfiture of their loved ones rather than vice versa. But as attentive as “Close to You” is to family dynamics, its dialogue, which the actors largely improvised, rarely achieves verisimilitude.

Halfway between Hallmark and heartfelt.

‘the good half’.

This drama directed by Robert Schwartzman follows the emotionally avoidant Renn (Nick Jonas) as he meets a love interest (Alexandra Shipp) while traveling home to plan his mother’s funeral with his sister, Leigh (Brittany Snow).

When, and to which female listener, Renn will confront his demons is the question that drives “The Good Half,” which feels caught between “Terms of Endearment” and a Hallmark movie. Wry gags, like a hoarder priest, butt up against heartfelt exchanges. Snow, as the daughter who always played second fiddle, brings real feeling to her role — suggesting that she may in fact be the good half of this insipid drama.

In theaters. Read the full review.

Total wipeout.

‘the greatest surf movie in the universe’.

Directed by surf documentarians Nick Pollet and Vaughan Blakey, this animated comedy features voice acting from real wave-riding athletes like Mick Fanning and a plot about vaccines erasing the world’s memory of the sport.

These figures (the animation makes the puppetry of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “Team America: World Police” look like “Fantastic Mr. Fox”) enact an asinine story of how a vaccine eradicated all memory of surfing, and a mission to bring the activity back. The line “Ten years ago a sport existed, it was called surfing, and you dominated it” — emphasized with an expletive — is repeated more times than anyone would be amused to hear it.

Compiled by Kellina Moore .

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