New and Notable Movies to See in Theaters, From ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ to ‘Smile 2’
For those who romanticize the theatrical experience or just prefer seeing the latest blockbuster on the biggest screen in town, movie theaters are still the preferred way to watch new releases with a community of fans.
Horror reigns supreme at Cineplexes in October with moviegoers buying tickets for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Terrifier 3, Smile 2, and The Substance to get into the Halloween spirit. Superhero fans still celebrating the success of Deadpool & Wolverine will want to check out Venom: The Last Dance — the final chapter in the Venom trilogy starring Tom Hardy. Also playing at theaters is the religious mystery-thriller Conclave, the animated hit The Wild Robot, Francis Ford Coppola’s labor of love Megalopolis, and more.
Which of the following movies warrant a trip to the Cineplex for you?
Venom: The Last Dance (2024)
Kelly Marcel’s Venom: The Last Dance is the third and purportedly final chapter in the Venom trilogy as well as the fifth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. In The Last Dance, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and the alien symbiote Venom go on the lam as beings from both of their worlds try to hunt them down.
Although the PG-13-rated The Last Dance — a rare superhero flick directed by a woman — is marketed as Hardy’s swan song as Venom, the actor indicated at New York Comic Con that he would “never say never” to battling Spider-Man in a future SSU or MCU movie.
Conclave (2024)
In the PG-rated mystery-thriller Conclave directed by Edward Berger, Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal who uncovers a series of secrets at the Vatican after the pope’s unexpected death, and the cardinals gather to select a new pontiff for the Catholic Church. Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Isabella Rossellini all play clergy members in the movie.
Berger says that Fiennes’ character, Cardinal Lawrence, is having a crisis of faith in Conclave.
“It has nothing to do with the election of the new pope,” says Berger, “but complicates it for him. He has stopped believing he’s the right person to be a cardinal. He asked permission to leave Rome and go to a monastery to try to rediscover his faith, but the Pope denied his request. He’s riddled with doubt that he must continually overcome.”
Smile 2 (2024)
In the horror sequel Smile 2, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is a pop star suddenly having disturbing visions and experiences that threaten her upcoming tour. Ray Nicholson, the son of Jack Nicholson, plays Skye’s deceased former boyfriend and can be seen everywhere in posters for Smile 2 flashing a sinister grin that makes him a dead ringer for his father in The Shining.
Smile 2 opened at number one at the box office and may be the rare sequel that critics prefer to the original, which came out in 2022 and is now streaming on Paramount+.
The Wild Robot (2024)
In the animated sci-fi movie The Wild Robot directed by Chris Sanders, a shipwrecked service robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) must adapt to the remote island where she finds herself and build relationships with the indigenous wildlife. Pedro Pascal, Mark Hamill, Kit Connor, and Catherine O’Hara all lend their voices to the PG-rated film’s colorful characters.
The Wild Robot received universal praise and is a strong contender to win this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar. The DreamWorks Animation movie arrives on the 30th anniversary of the company and is DreamWorks’ most captivating release in decades.
Terrifier 3 (2024)
Damien Leone’s supernatural slasher Terrifier 3 features Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) painting the town red on a new holiday: Christmas. Lauren LaVera returns as Sienna Shaw, the survivor of the previous film who decapitated Art.
Although the Terrifier movies are notorious for extreme gore effects, not enough credit is given to Thornton for his terrifying performance as a mute boogeyman whose facial expressions and gestures simultaneously mirror and mock those of his victims. Terrifier 3 is not rated by the MPA, but it makes the Saw series seem quaint by comparison.
After this horror indie opened at number one at the box office, Leone announced that a fourth chapter is in the works.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
In Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice, everyone’s favorite bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), gets loose in the land of the living after Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and her family return to Winter River following a familial tragedy. Catherine O’Hara returns as Lydia’s artsy stepmother, Delia, and Jenna Ortega plays Lydia’s teenage daughter, Astrid. Monica Bellucci plays Betelgeuse’s soul-sucking ex-wife who is on a revenge rampage.
The ghoulishly fun horror-comedy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is still going strong at the box office leading up to Halloween and helped Burton get his groove back.
“After the first movie, there was lots of talk about maybe a sequel, and there have been different ideas over the years, but nothing for me really clicked,” says Burton. “And so, all this time goes by, 35 years, and what really got me interested and excited is… life. It’s like, what happened to the Deetz family? Things happen to all of us as we get older and change — relationships, children — all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me. It was quite emotional for me to revisit these characters.”
The Substance (2024)
In writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body-horror film The Substance, Demi Moore plays an aging star who uses a dangerous underground drug to create a youthful version of herself (Margaret Qualley). Like most drugs — legal or otherwise — the seemingly magical serum has unexpected side effects.
Critics praised Moore’s career-best performance and her willingness to poke fun at her own public image. The Substance holds up a mirror to society and offers a uniquely feminist perspective on aging.
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Just when you thought the MCU was on life support after a string of underperforming movies such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine dropped and has made more than $1.3 billion worldwide. In the third film in the Deadpool series, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) teams up with a Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from another universe to save the former’s universe.
Gleefully irreverent and profane, Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine delivers laughs and shocking sequences that will make you say, “Wow, they really went there!”
“It’s a different tone,” says Jackman. “I knew [the movie] would be something different. Ryan is one of my closest friends. He’s incredible, and his portrayal of Deadpool is so perfect. I felt that those two characters together on-screen would have a dynamic that would be so much fun to play, and I knew the fans would love it.”
Megalopolis (2024)
In Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis, Adam Driver plays a visionary architect with the power to stop time who clashes with the corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) of New Rome about how to revitalize the metropolis.
Coppola spent $120 million of his own money to finance Megalopolis, a labor of love that had its genesis in the 1980s.
“I had cooked up this idea,” says Coppola. “Everyone knows America is a reincarnation of Republican Rome because our founders didn’t want a king but wanted it to be like Rome’s republic. You can’t go to New York without realizing it is covered with Roman buildings. So, my intent was to write a Roman epic set in a contemporary New York that’s copied ancient Rome.”
Although critics are split on Megalopolis, an opus of this magnitude begs for a big-screen presentation. Coppola fans should catch the R-rated epic in theaters while they can.
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
In this sequel to 2019’s Joker, Joaquin Phoenix reprises his titular Oscar-winning role as the DC villain and Lady Gaga plays his romantic interest, Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn. The jukebox musical mostly takes place in the head of Arthur Fleck/Joker in Arkham State Hospital as he awaits his trial for the crimes he committed in the first movie.
The decision to make Joker: Folie à Deux an R-rated musical turned off comic book fans, but Phoenix and Gaga inject a lot of energy into the musical numbers and will appeal to those who aren’t allergic to random singing and dancing in movies.
“If we were going to do [a sequel], we knew we had to swing for the fences,” says writer-director-producer Todd Phillips. “We wanted to make something as crazy and fearless as Joker himself. So, Scott Silver and I wrote a script that delved further into the idea of identity. Who is Arthur Fleck? And where does the music that’s inside of him come from?”
Saturday Night (2024)
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is about what happened backstage in the 90 minutes before the 1975 debut of Saturday Night, later known as Saturday Night Live. The R-rated biographical dramedy stars Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, and Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd.
As Saturday Night Live struggles to find its footing in its 50th season on TV, the origin movie Saturday Night captures the essence of the late-night sketch show on the day of its first broadcast. Variety described the movie as “a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage.”
Transformers One (2024)
The animated Transformers One features the voice talents of Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm, to name a few. The kid-friendly PG-rated flick tells the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron when the two “robots in disguise” were actually friends.
Critics seem to prefer Transformers One‘s animation and humor to the bombastic live-action series that aims for a slightly older audience. Although The Wild Robot snatched some of Transformers One‘s audience at the box office, there is still time to see both animated robot features in theaters.
Magpie (2024)
Sam Yates directs the neo-noir thriller Magpie starring Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley as a wife and mother named Anette who stays home with her newborn as her husband (Shazad Latif) chaperones their older daughter to a movie set. Anette suspects that her husband is having an affair with the movie’s popular star (Matilda Lutz), which threatens to destroy their family.
This slow-burn, R-rated thriller shines a light on how parenthood can become a prison that exposes a marriage to opportunities for infidelity. Magpie premiered at the 2024 South by Southwest festival and the Shout! Studios-distributed movie will have a limited run in theaters.