The best movies new on Netflix, Max, Prime and Hulu this August

August is finally here, which means we are approaching the final weeks of summer and getting ready for fall. There are so many exciting new releases to look forward to this month, including M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror film Catch, Borderlandthe horror thriller with Hunter Schafer in the leading role cuckooFede Alvarez Alien: Romulusand much more.

If you’re looking for the best movies to stream from home this month, don’t worry. We’ve done the hard work of sorting the wheat from the chaff so you don’t have to, and compiled a list of the best movies new to streaming this August. We’ve got a classic comedy starring the legendary Leslie Nielsen, the streaming premiere of the latest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise, an inimitable Paul Thomas Anderson classic, and those are just a few examples!

Here are the new movies on streaming services you should watch this month.

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Editor’s recommendation: The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad!

Where to watch: Prime Video
Genre: Crime comedy
Director: David Zucker
Pour: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, OJ Simpson

Some comedies are funny because of the precise combination of a perfect script and just the right actors. They seem like a once-in-a-million miracle that would be impossible to repeat. Other comedies work because three or four of the funniest people in the world happen to be friends and they just happened to get a studio to give them enough money to make a movie, and you feel like pretty much everything they say is hilarious. The Naked Cannon clearly falls into the latter category.

Written by David and Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft, The naked cannons is a parody of cop dramas that includes everything from a conference of America’s greatest enemies to an assassination attempt on the Queen to some shocking scenes involving OJ Simpson – who was best known at the time as a very famous football player. The film is full of ridiculous and hilarious jokes, but what really sells it is the brilliant, deadpan performance by Leslie Nielson, one of the comedy world’s biggest stars of all time. —Austen Goslin

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New on Netflix

The Stag King

Genre: Fantasy adventure
Directors: Masashi Ando, ​​​​Masayuki Miyaji
Pour: Shin’ichi Tsutsumi, Ryoma Takeuchi, Anne Watanabe

A fantasy epic created by many former Studio Ghibli members. The Stag King adapts a series of fantasy novels into an anime epic that in many ways feels like a version of Princess Mononoke made for a more adult audience.

From the film recommendation of our colleague Tasha Robinson:

The visuals are rich and majestic in equal measure, with intense scenes like the mine escape alternating with more leisurely, beautifully detailed sequences of the everyday lives of people far from the war and able to live outside of it. It’s a fascinating film: at its best, more impressive, more visionary and more adult than most anime fantasies of the past few decades, and more visually beautiful. Even when it struggles, it’s always more a matter of too much ambition than too little.

New on Hulu

Planet of the Apes: Kingdom

Genre: Sci-Fi Action
Director: Wes Ball
Pour: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand

The prequel series to “Planet of the Apes” is one of the most popular and least appreciated film series of the last decades. Planet of the Apes: Survival brought Caesar’s story to a close and seemed to put a capstone on the series, but this year’s latest entry proved to be a surprisingly entertaining addition.

In contrast to the last two films, which were mostly grey war films about the confrontation between humans and apes, Planet of the Apes: Kingdom is a full-blown adventure film. The film is about Noa (Owen Teague), a young ape whose village is taken over by an ape warlord named Proximus (Kevin Durand). Noa, along with a few people he meets along the way, such as a disciple of Caesar (Peter Macon) and a young human (Freya Allen), sets out to make his way through the post-human world in the hopes of saving Noa’s family. It’s a sweet, entertaining, action-packed film and looks absolutely great. If Planet of the Apes: Kingdom the future of the series, then I am very happy about the continuation of the franchise. —AG

New at Max

Beetlejuice

Genre: Comedy Horror
Director: Tim Burton
Pour: Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton

Tim Burton returns in September with the long-awaited sequel to his 1988 horror classic BeetlejuiceSo what better time than now to relive and enjoy the scary original?

Starring Michael Keaton as the mischievous namesake, the film was Burton’s direct follow-up to his directorial debut Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and a breakthrough success for the then 29-year-old director. Burton’s aesthetic signature is evident in almost every frame of the film, with twisted, otherworldly corridors reminiscent of the experimental set designs of German Expressionism, the eerie colored lighting of the giallo horror film, and the incredibly creepy and silly effects of stop-motion claymation.

The commercial and critical success of Burton’s second film is directly responsible for the nearly decade-long series of fantastic films he would later produce, including Batman, Edward with the scissor handsand more. If you are looking for a horror comedy film that is bursting with visual personality and offers plenty of laughs, or if you are new to Tim Burton and want to get to know his artistic abilities, then you cannot go wrong with Beetlejuice…Crap, he’s right behind me, right? -THE

New on Prime Video

The body snatchers are coming

Genre: Science fiction horror
Director: Don Siegel
Pour: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates

It’s really shocking how scary the original 1956 version is The body snatchers are coming is today. The classic sci-fi story about a small town slowly being replaced by pod people is certainly disturbing enough on the whole, but the true horror of the film lies in the initial reaction to the Snatchers’ takeover. Seeing the panic on people’s faces as they realize that the face in front of them is no longer the soul and person they knew and loved is a magical kind of terror that still resonates nearly 70 years later. —AG

New on Criterion Channel

magnolia

Genre: theatre
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Pour: John C Reilly, Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore

Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama is one of the most extreme examples of “Six Degrees of Separation” in all of cinema. With an extensive ensemble cast including Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Juliane Moore, magnolia is a tragicomic epic that focuses on the suffering, disappointments and personal breakthroughs of a handful of people whose lives intersect in random and unexpected ways.

Paul Thomas Anderson took the carte blanche for his breakthrough with Boogie Nights and in doing so created a confusing and heartbreaking mosaic film about love and life in the San Fernando Valley. It’s a confusing and unashamedly serious film that is completely unlike anything Anderson has created before or since. As if that wasn’t enough, it also has a beautiful score by Jon Brion and several vocal performances by Aimee Mann, whose music inspired Anderson when writing the screenplay. If you’ve never seen magnoliaYou owe it to yourself to at least take the time to watch it once. -THE