25 Best Movies New to Streaming in August: Lightyear, Prey, Licorice Pizza a

 Posted on September 1, 2024  |  18 minutes  |  3750 words  |  Larita Shotwell

The summer movie season is winding down, and streaming will be more needed than ever this month as Sony’s “Bullet Train” is the only major studio tentpole releasing in theaters. Family audiences are in luck as Pixar’s “Lightyear” arrives on Disney+ after underwhelming at the box office earlier this summer. Some box office pundits believed that families became more inclined to watching Pixar films at home after “Soul,” “Luca” and “Turning Red” all skipped theaters and debuted on Disney+, which means “Lightyear’s” popularity could be getting a much-needed boost this month.

Elsewhere on streaming, indie movie lovers are getting a big win with the arrival of dozens of A24 movies on HBO Max. Studio favorites such as “The Spectacular Now” and Oscar winners “Amy,” “Room” and “Ex Machina” are all making their debuts on the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed platform. And Prime Video subscribers will finally be able to stream Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent directorial effort, “Licorice Pizza.”

Check out Variety’s rundown below of the best streaming offerings this August.

  • Lightyear (Aug. 3 on Disney+)

    “Lightyear” was a rare miss for Disney and Pixar at the box office, especially since it had ties to the billion-dollar “Toy Story” franchise, but perhaps the movie will find a larger audience on streaming this month as it debuts on Disney+. The film was the first Pixar release to debut in theaters after the studio took a streaming approach with “Soul,” “Luca” and “Turning Red” during the pandemic. Chris Evans voices Buzz Lightyear in a movie that acts as the inspiration behind everyone’s favorite “Toy Story” toy. From Variety’s review: “‘Lightyear’ is eminently conventional and likable… Evans does a creditable job of recreating Buzz’s pilot-as-game-show-host-of-his-own-legend persona, though a bit of that Tim Allen snap gets lost. The character seems less funny, a notch more ordinary.”

  • Licorice Pizza (Aug. 5 on Prime Video)

    Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is finally available to stream on Amazon Prime Video at no extra cost to subscribers. The comedy-drama stars Cooper Hoffman and Alan Haim as two wayward souls from the San Fernando Valley in 1973 who find connection while coming of age. Bradley Cooper and Benny Safdie co-star. The movie earned three Oscar nominations earlier this year, including best picture and best director. From Variety’s review: “A pair of terrific first-time performances — from Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman — propel the director’s most endearing movie yet, a throwback to early-’70s Southern California… the film delivers a piping-hot, jumbo slice-of-life look at how it felt to grow up on the fringes of the film industry circa 1973, as seen through the eyes of an ambitious former child actor plotting how to follow up his early screen career.”

  • Prey (Aug. 5 on Hulu)

    “10 Cloverfield Lane” director Dan Trachtenberg revitalizes the “Predator” franchise with “Prey,” which is set in the Comanche Nation in 1719. From Variety’s review: “A Northern Great Plains setting and a young tribal hunter out to prove herself almost make the latest ‘Predator’ sequel look less schlocky than the others…The rippings and slashings, first of animals and then of humans, arrive right on cue, and they’re brutal enough to have earned the film an R rating. As an alien-attack thriller, “Prey” is competent and well-paced, though with little in the way of surprise.”

  • On the Count of Three (Aug. 17 on Hulu)

    Jarrod Carmichael’s impresses with his feature directorial debut “On the Count of Three,” an existential buddy comedy of despair. It opens with Val (Jerrod Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott) standing outside a strip club in the middle of the day, pointing handguns at each other in what looks like a tense Mexican standoff. But the two aren’t enemies; they’re on each other’s side. They’re trying to do each other a favor by killing each other. The movie then flashes back to earlier that day, when it will explain why these two lifelong bros, now in their early 30s, have colluded in a plan to do themselves in.

  • Thirteen Lives (Aug. 5 on Prime Video)

    Ron Howard’s Thai cave rescue thriller opened in select theaters on July 29 but arrives on streaming via Amazon Prime Video at the start of the month. Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton play the save-the-day heroes in this ticking-clock survival drama that finds Howard putting a new variation on his beloved “Apollo 13” formula. From Variety’s review: “With ‘Thirteen Lives,’ the director goes for a different approach: grittier, more immersive… Back in the ’90s, Howard brought us such white-knuckle spectacles as ‘Backdraft’ and ‘Apollo 13.’ More recently, he helmed emphasize-the-positive disaster docs ‘Rebuilding Paradise’ and ‘We Feed People.’ So he’s got plenty of experience in this arena.”

  • The Lost City (Aug. 10 on Prime Video)

    Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum’s romantic-comedy adventure movie “The Lost City” has grossed $105 million at the U.S. box office and just over $190 million worldwide. Those grosses are pretty remarkable for an original romantic-comedy, a genre that has been on life support in recent years. Following its streaming debut on Paramount+ in May, the movie now becomes available for Amazon Prime Video subscribers at no extra cost. Bullock plays a romance novelist who gets kidnapped, while Tatum is her book cover model who sets out a mission to save her. From Variety’s review: “I can’t be the only one who’s been craving a good old-fashioned treasure hunt, where the leads throw sparks and the ladies’ makeup never smudges, no matter how close to the volcano they get. After a long stretch without such a big-screen Hollywood adventure movie (at least, not one without ties to a video game or theme park ride), ‘The Lost City’ makes for welcome counter-programming.”

  • Love & Basketball (Aug. 1 on Netflix)

    Gina Prince-Bythewood is getting her biggest cinematic canvas yet with Sony’s upcoming warrior epic “The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis and in theaters Sept. 16, so it couldn’t be a better time for the filmmaker’s feature directorial debut “Love & Basketball” to hit Netflix. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan play next door neighbors whose love for basketball is just the beginning of their burgeoning romantic relationship. From Variety’s review: “Debuting filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood shows an admirable command of the technical aspects of filmmaking in ‘Love and Basketball,’ a slick romantic drama about two L.A. athletes… The movie is so well directed and the lead performance by Sanaa Lathan so charismatic that it’s impossible not to root for the central duo.”

  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Aug. 10 on Prime Video)

    Paramount struck box office gold this spring with the release of “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” which opened to $72 million in April and has since grossed $161 million at the U.S. box office and over $323 million worldwide. The “Sonic” sequel stands as the highest grossing video game movie ever made. After streaming exclusively on Paramount+ starting in May, the “Sonic” sequel arrives on Amazon Prime Video this month. Variety film critic Peter Debruge called it “a fun, fan-service ‘Sonic’ movie” in his review, adding, “When the film nods to ’90s-era action-movies homage, it shows how much fun [director Jeff] Fowler and writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller can have with the character, who’s once again voiced by smart-alecky comic Ben Schwartz.”

  • Luck (Aug. 5 on Apple TV+)

    “Luck” marks the first feature-length animated movie from David Ellison’s Skydance Animation, a company that is also employing former Pixar boss John Lasseter after he left the studio due to misconduct. Lasseter’s involvement with “Luck” has made it a somewhat controversial title. The film stars the voices of Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Flula Borg and Lil Rel Howery. The plot centers on an unlucky girl who follows a black cat into the world of good and bad luck, where luck is manufactured and a dark evil lurks. From Variety’s review: ”It’s not easy developing both a pipeline and a project that could compete with the Disneys and DreamWorks out there. (And yet, this was famously the film that Emma Thompson quit in protest when the company hired ex-Pixar honcho John Lasseter.) While the new studio’s debut can’t touch ‘Toy Story,’ it’s an auspicious start for a talented group of storytellers.”

  • The Princess (Aug. 13 on HBO Max)

    “The Princess” is described as “a visceral submersion into Princess Diana’s life in the constant and often intrusive glare of the media spotlight.” Ed Perkins (“Black Sheep”), who directed the film, used only television news footage and other public records to retell the story of the people’s princess. It also tackles the relationship of Diana and Charles, the Prince and Princess of Wales, which served as tabloid fodder for nearly two decades through their wedding, the birth of their two sons and their bitter divorce. “The Princess” first played at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews. In Variety’s review, chief film critic Owen Gleiberman called “The Princess” a “perfectly timed, compulsively watchable once-over-lightly documentary.”

  • Spider-Man 2 (Aug. 1 on Netflix)

    Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy is now streaming on Netflix, and the first two entries of the Tobey Maguire-starring franchise remain high points of the comic book movie genre. Here’s Variety’s review of “Spider-Man 2,” widely considered one of the greatest superhero movies of all time: “Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone’s ever made using comic book characters. The 2002 original grossed $822 million worldwide in theatrical release — $404 million of that domestically — and there’s no reason to believe this one won’t generate that much and more.”

  • Skyfall (Aug. 5 on Netflix)

    “No Time to Die,” Daniel Craig’s last outing as James Bond, just debuted on streaming last month via Amazon Prime Video, but “Skyfall” remains the high-point of Craig’s tenure as 007. The first Bond movie to crack $1 billion at the global box office, “Skyfall” pushed the relationship between Bond and M (Judi Dench) to the forefront and got elevated by another dazzling collaboration between director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins. Variety hailed “Skyfall” as “a smart, savvy and incredibly satisfying addition to the 007 oeuvre” and said the movie put the Bond franchise “on par with Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy as a best-case example of what cinematic brands can achieve.”

  • The Nice Guys (Aug. 9 on Netflix)

    “Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling score in Shane Black’s latest lethal weapon, a crackerjack ’70s comedy of aggression,” wrote Variety in its review of “The Nice Guys.” Gosling is currently the star of Netflix’s $200 million action tentpole “The Grey Man,” but this freewheeling detective comedy is a far better showcase for Gosling’s strengths as an actor. Gosling plays a private detective and Crowe is a violence-prone enforcer. The two link up to solve the mystery of a kidnapped girl. Variety praised the film as “a smashingly disreputable mystery-comedy free-for-all directed with a wink of trashy zest.”

  • Dope (Aug. 11 on Netflix)

    Rick Famuyiwa’s 2015 comedy “Dope” is one of the more overlooked coming-of-age movies of the last decade. Shameik Moore gives a breakthrough performance as a Los Angeles teen who gets sent on an adventure through the city after deciding to attend an underground party with his two friends. Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Tyga, Zoë Kravitz and ASAP Rocky co-star. From Variety’s review: “The cast, drawn from comedy, rap, TV, modeling and other spheres, is sharply on form throughout, as is Famuyiwa’s direction; the pic’s esprit is amplified by every editorial trick in the book, from split-screen to freeze-frames. Rachel Morrison’s widescreen lensing provides plenty of equally antic eye candy, abetted by colorful design contributions.”

  • Day Shift (Aug. 13 on Netflix)

    Jamie Foxx is back on Netflix after the streamer’s “Project Power” with a new original movie titled “Day Shift,” in which he plays a hardworking dad out to provide for his daughter by entering the lucrative business of hunting and killing vampires. The action-comedy also stars Dave Franco, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Meagan Good, Karla Souza, Steve Howey, Scott Adkins and Snoop Dogg. Martial artist J.J. Perry directed the movie after working in the stunt departments on films such as “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “Gangster Squad” and “Django Unchained,” which bodes well for the movie’s many action scenes. With a reported $100 million budget, “Day Shift” is hoping to be an original action hit for Netflix in a month where there’s not too many offerings of the like in theaters.

  • Disobedience (Aug. 26 on Netflix)

    Sebastian Lelio (the filmmaker behind Oscar winner “A Fantastic Woman” who will return to Netflix later this year with his Florence Pugh-starring TIFF premiere “The Wonder”) directs Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams in this striking, nuanced tale of same-sex love within the Orthodox Jewish community. Weisz stars as a woman who returns to her Orthodox community after the death of her father, but her arrival and attraction to another woman (McAdams) causes friction within the community. The drama begins as a case study in religious repression and gradually evolves into something much richer. It’s a striking and warmly nuanced portrait of the kinds of women whose internal lives are rarely portrayed on screen.

  • Me Time (Aug. 26 on Netflix)

    Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart have both had Netflix successes on their own. Wahlberg was the star of “Spencer Confidential,” which ranked as one of Netflix’s 10 most watched original movies for an extended period of time. Hart, meanwhile, starred in the streamer’s dramedy “Fatherhood.” Now the two A-list stars join forces for Netflix’s “Me Time,” a comedy in which Hart plays a stay-at-home dad who finally gets a bit of “me time” when he joins an adventurous friend (Wahlberg) for a birthday getaway. “I Love You, Man” director John Hamberg is behind “Me Time,” so here’s hoping Netflix has a late summer comedy surprise on its hands.

  • A Most Violent Year (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    J.C. Chandor channels Sidney Lumet to tell a timeless tale of New York City in the grip of a violent crime wave and mass institutional corruption. “A Most Violent Year” stars Oscar Isaac as a businessman struggling to keep his family business away from corruption in 1981 NYC. Jessica Chastain is the family’s chilly matriarch, who holds far more power than she lets on. From Variety’s review: “In his third turn behind the camera, writer-director J.C. Chandor has delivered a tough, gritty, richly atmospheric thriller that lacks some of the formal razzle-dazzle of his solo seafaring epic, ‘All Is Lost,’ but makes up for it with an impressively sustained low-boil tension and the skillful navigating of a complex plot.”

  • Belle (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    “The pleasures of Jane Austen and the horrors of the British slave trade make a surprisingly elegant fit in Amma Asante’s handsome period piece,” reads Variety’s review of “Belle,” which featured a breakthrough performance from a then-mostly unknown Gugu-Mbatha Raw. The actor stars as the mixed-race daughter of a British admiral who plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England. The review adds: “On one level a classically Hollywood tale of white aristocrats deigning to help end Black suffering, this handsome period piece nonetheless tells a continually fascinating, unusually layered story located at the juncture of three different lines of oppression (race, class, gender), and grounded by a protagonist with one hell of an identity crisis.”

  • Ex Machina (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    “Alex Garland’s brittle, beautiful directorial debut is a digital-age ‘Frankenstein’ refashioned as a battle of the sexes,” Variety’s review of “Ex Machina” reads. Domhnall Gleeson plays an unassuming tech worker who gets the chance to interview a billionaire’s (Oscar Isaac) artificially intelligent robot (Alicia Vikander), but the power dynamics among the three prove far more twisted than anticipated. The review adds: “A worthy companion piece to ‘Under the Skin’ and ‘Her’ in its examination of what constitutes human and feminine identity — and whether those two concepts need always overlap — Garland’s long-anticipated directorial debut synthesizes a dizzy range of the writer’s philosophical preoccupations into a sleek, spare chamber piece. It’s subtly challenging, exquisitely designed and electrically performed by Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson and particularly Oscar Isaac.”

  • Enemy (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    Denis Villeneuve convinces Jake Gyllenhaal to undertake a journey into the subconscious with “Enemy,” a simultaneously unsettling and exasperating work of speculative fiction different enough in subject, pacing and tone from everything else out there that it’s no wonder the movie became a cult favorite and constant source of Reddit fan theorizing. Gyllenhaal plays a mild-mannered history professor shocked to discover his doppelgänger —  that’s about the only thing that can be said with certainty about this loose adaptation of Jose Saramago’s “The Double.” To its advantage, “Enemy” is mysterious enough that many viewers will insist on seeing it twice.

  • The Spectacular Now (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley have such convincing chemistry in “The Spectacular Now” that the film really does feel like an intimate snapshot of young teenage love. The two play mismatched high school students drawn to each other’s vulnerabilities. Teller’s Sutter is the high school hot shot with an alcohol problem and a broken family. Woodley’s Aimee is the quiet loner. Together, their high school soulmates with a genuine, soulful connection. From Variety’s review: “Skillfully adapted from Tim Tharp’s novel, evocatively lensed working-class neighborhoods and tenderly acted by Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, this bittersweet ode to the moment of childhood’s end builds quietly to a pitch-perfect finale.”

  • Under the Skin (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    Scarlett Johansson plays an alien roaming the streets of Glasgow who lures unassuming men back to her apartment and harvests their bodies for her home planet. That’s the set-up for Jonathan Glazer’s beguiling masterpiece “Under the Skin,” which remains one of cinema’s most profound meditations on what it means and feels like to be human. Variety’s review reads: “Glazer, whose background is in music videos, has lost none of his ability to generate strikingly original images… Glazer’s intriguing formal conceit is that Johansson — reasonably well disguised under a dark wig and British accent — is one of the few actors here, interacting with real unawares Scotsmen, all of it captured by small digital cameras mounted in and around the van.”

  • Whiplash (Aug. 1 on HBO Max)

    “J.K. Simmons lands the role of his career as a conservatory conductor who drums the fear of failure into his students,” Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote in his rave review of Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” the intense musician drama that won Simmons the Oscar for supporting actor. Miles Teller stars as an aspiring drummer who goes to extreme lengths to contend with his sadistic music instructor, played by Simmons. The review adds: “The film demolishes the cliches of the musical-prodigy genre, investing the traditionally polite stages and rehearsal studios of a topnotch conservatory with all the psychological intensity of a battlefield or sports arena.”

  • Belfast (Aug. 5 on HBO Max)

    Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical drama “Belfast” comes to HBO Max this month after earning seven Academy Award nominations earlier this year, including for best picture and director, and winning Branagh the Oscar for original screenplay. The director uses the film to parse his own memories of being a child growing up through the Troubles. From Variety’s review: “‘Belfast’ avoids many clichés in favor of a more personal look back at the era through child’s eyes. The affectionate cine-memoir is rendered all the more effective on account of young discovery Jude Hill and its portrayal of a close-knit family (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench and stay-put grandparents) crowded under one roof.”

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