Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of August’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
New to Amazon Prime Video
‘Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter’ Starts streaming: Aug. 20
Now that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have retired, the Serbian tennis champion Novak Djokovic is the last man standing from a trio of star players who dominated their physically and psychologically demanding sport for 20 years. The director Jason Hehir, best-known for the Emmy-winning Michael Jordan docuseries “The Last Dance,” considers Djokovic’s life and career in “The Wolf in Winter,” exploring the origins of his drive to succeed — and what it has cost him, in terms of his personal life and his public reputation. This film takes a deep look at a complicated athlete, from his living through the horrors of the Yugoslav Wars as an adolescent to alienating some fans with his ferocious push for greatness.
Also arriving:
Aug. 1 “Primate”
Aug. 5 “Sterling Point” Season 1
Aug. 9 “The Chosen in the Wild With Bear Grylls”
Aug. 12 “Reacher” Season 4
Aug. 19 “Is God is”
Aug. 21 “Back to the 90s” “Good Fortune”
Aug. 26 “The Last Sunrise”
New to AMC+
‘Buffet Infinity’ Starts streaming: Aug. 21
This has been a strong year for creative low-budget horror movies, like “Obsession” and “Backrooms.” To that list you can add the writer-director Simon Glassman’s deeply weird “Buffet Infinity.” The film is constructed as a series of excerpts from local TV commercials and news reports, which gradually form a story about a too-good-to-be-true all-you-can-eat restaurant that is gradually taking over one city in Alberta. There are secondary stories that also develop through the snippets, including one about a freaky religious cult taking a stand against the restaurant’s menace. “Buffet Infinity” has the feel of a late-night TV sketch comedy at first, but it grows darker and more surreal as its scattered pieces come together.
‘The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only — Live’ Starts streaming: Aug. 23
A big part of the “Interview With a Vampire” sequel “The Vampire Lestat” involves the decadent bloodsucker Lestat (Sam Reid) becoming a rock star. As part of a promotion for the series earlier this year, Reid and a band performed some of Lestat’s punchy, catchy songs — written by Daniel Hart — in a concert at the Beacon Theater in New York, putting the character’s theatrical flair and dangerous edge in front of a live audience. That concert is now being released on AMC+, as a special for the fans who helped make “The Vampire Lestat” one of the most talked-about TV series of the summer.
Also arriving:
Aug. 7 “The Yeti”
Aug. 13 “Hollywood Crime Story: The Mob Takes Over the Movies”
Aug. 14 “Hellcat”
Aug. 21 “The Fence”
Aug. 28 “Penny Lane Is Dead”
New to Apple TV
‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Starts streaming: Aug. 5
Three years after this Emmy-winning comedy signed off seemingly for good, its star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis is bringing it back, with a slightly different spin. Season 4 picks up with the can-do coach Ted Lasso (Sudeikis) living in Kansas City, Mo., a few years after retiring from managing the English soccer club AFC Richmond. Ted’s old Richmond boss, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), jets into Missouri with an offer for him to coach her new women’s team, setting in motion another underdog sports story. Though some of the old “Ted Lasso” cast members return, this new season introduces new characters, as Ted again tries to overcome his anxiety and get back to inspiring athletes to be their best.
Also arriving:
Aug. 12 “Women in Blue” Season 2
Aug. 21 “The Dynasty: UConn Huskies”
Aug. 28 “Dark Matter” Season 2
New to Disney+
‘Time and Water’ Starts streaming: Aug. 1
The documentary filmmaker Sara Dosa was nominated for an Oscar for her moving and visually stunning 2022 film “Fire of Love,” about a married couple who died while researching volcanoes. Dosa’s fascination with the planet’s more extreme landscapes continues with “Time and Water,” a documentary about Iceland’s vanishing glaciers. The movie follows Andri Snær Magnason, a writer who composed the text for a plaque commemorating the first Icelandic glacier to melt away. Dosa explores Magnason’s family and his work, comparing his country’s changing environment to the physical decline of his parents and grandparents. It’s a film that celebrates beauty while pondering whether any of our natural wonders will be remembered by future generations.
‘Star Wars: Visions Presents — The Ninth Jedi’ Starts streaming: Aug. 5
Since 2021, the anthology series “Star Wars: Visions” has presented an eclectic batch of animated short films set in the “Star Wars” universe. Now the series has a spinoff, “Star Wars: Visions Presents,” which will expand some of those original shorts into multipart mini-series. The first installment is “The Ninth Jedi,” based on two “Visions” shorts that introduced the character Lah Kara. Her father is a craftsman, who makes lightsabers in a galaxy that has become hostile to the scattered remaining Jedi and their weapons. With a handful of heroes by her side, Kara travels through space searching for her father, who has been captured by the Empire’s darkest forces.
Also arriving:
Aug. 1 “Big Dreams: Little League World Series 2024” “The Book of Manning” “Eight on Eight”
Aug. 5 “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place” Season 3
Aug. 7 “Flex X Cop” Season 1 “Flex X Cop” Season 2 “Pokémon: Indigo League” Season 1
Aug. 8 “Chibiverse” Season 4
Aug. 14 “Camp Rock 3” “This Is What They Want” “Tim Richmond: To the Limit” “Venus Vs.”
Aug. 16 “Disney Princess: The Ultimate Concert Celebration”
Aug. 21 “LEGO Disney Princess: Magical Mayhem”
Aug. 22 “Big City Greens” Season 5
Aug. 26 “The Simpsons: Yellow Mirror”
New to HBO Max
‘Monsters of God’ Starts streaming: Aug. 6
The director Eric Goode (“Tiger King,” “Chimp Crazy”) makes his most personal documentary yet with “Monsters of God,” a five-part investigation into the illegal reptile trade. As Goode explains in the first episode, he has long felt guilty that his youthful fascination with exotic snakes, lizards and turtles may have in some small way helped fuel criminal enterprises. The people involved with smuggling animals into the United States — and brokering sales to private collectors and zoos — have in some cases also been a party to violence and drug trafficking. In “Monsters of God,” Goode exposes the industry’s sordid history, talking to the colorful people who compete to procure the best beasts and to the frustrated government agents who have had trouble getting their bosses to take these crimes seriously.
‘Lanterns’ Season 1 Starts streaming: Aug. 16
The title characters of this DC Comics Universe series are Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), two Earthlings who work for the intergalactic Green Lantern corps, overseen by the altruistic extraterrestrials known as the Guardians of the Universe. “Lanterns” isn’t really about superheroes in costumes, flying around with the aid of magic rings — though there is some of that. Instead, the show’s co-creators Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy and Tom King tell a detective story, set mostly in a small Nebraska town, where Hal and John clash with the local sheriff (Kelly Macdonald) and her militia-affiliated father (Garret Dillahunt) as the Lanterns look into a series of murders that may involve an ancient alien threat, predating all the Green Lanterns.
Also arriving:
Aug. 4 “Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Seattle Seahawks”
Aug. 7 “The Strangers: Chapter 2”
Aug. 14 “Normal” “Whitmer Thomas: Terminal Crew of Dudes”
Aug. 21 “Conan O’Brien Must Go” Season 3 “Mother Mary”
Aug. 28 “The Producer” Season 1
New to Hulu
‘The Shards’ Starts streaming: Aug. 5
The novelist Bret Easton Ellis rose to prominence in the 1980s with “Less Than Zero,” a fictionalized take on his own life as a privileged, hard-partying teenager in Los Angeles. His 2023 novel “The Shards” revisits that time in a way that’s both more overtly autobiographical and more wildly sensationalized. This time Ellis is the main character: a rich private school brat whose female classmates are being stalked by a serial killer known as the Trawler. In the TV series adaptation — cocreated by Ellis and the prolific writer-producer-director Ryan Murphy — Igby Rigney plays Bret, who drifts from one drug-fueled hangout to another, dryly commenting in voice-over narration about the hangups and hypocrisies of his peers. He becomes obsessed with one of his school’s popular new students, Robert (Homer Gere), who Bret believes to be the Trawler.
Also arriving:
Aug. 1 “Untitled Home Invasion Romance”
Aug. 3 “Futurama” Season 14
Aug. 4 “Betrayal: Dirty Secrets” Season 4
Aug. 13 “Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear”
Aug. 17 “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” Season 18
Aug. 27 “Adults” Season 2
New to Paramount+
‘Lioness’ Season 3 Starts streaming: Aug. 2
In the opening scene of Season 3 of the writer-producer Taylor Sheridan’s spy drama “Lioness,” the C.I.A. officer Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) is doing an intense physical workout at her pleasant suburban home, as troubling news reports from various international hot spots fill the soundtrack. That kind of chatter has always been the backdrop to this show, which is about how Joe and her bosses (including her direct supervisor, played by Nicole Kidman) try to keep the troubles of the world away from their own doorstep, by fighting terrorists and criminals abroad. In Season 3, Joe and her team of undercover operatives — mostly women — find themselves deployed in new and more politically unstable regions, and discover that despite their best efforts, some of their problems do end up following them home.
Also arriving:
Aug. 5 “The Challenge” Season 42
Aug. 6 “Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live)”
Aug. 19 “Average Joe” Season 2
The post The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, AMC+, Apple TV and More in August appeared first on New York Times.
