Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. 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.)
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ Season 2 Starts streaming: Aug. 5
Netflix’s ambitious adaptation of the novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realist masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” reaches its conclusion, with eight episodes that wrap up the story of the rise and fall of the Buendía family and their hometown, Macondo. Like the book, the series is packed with incident, as each successive generation of the Buendías gets swept up in romance, heartbreak, success and scandal, all while occasionally enduring supernatural phenomena that suggest the whole lineage is cursed. Márquez’s sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo García Barcha have been involved with this series as executive producers from the beginning, assuring that it captures the scope, wonder and specificity of the source material.
‘The Last House’ Starts streaming: Aug. 7
The science-fiction thriller “The Last House” begins with the unemployed engineer Jason Delgado (Wagner Moura) coming home to his loving wife, Ann (Greta Lee), and their two kids, before a rainstorm begins. He then discovers that for some unknown reason everyone in his house — and his neighborhood — is trapped inside. And as the days of isolation stretch into weeks and months, the Delgados have to figure out how to make do with their dwindling resources, and how to survive the mysterious forces outside. Written by Matthew Robinson (“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”) and directed by Louis Leterrier (“Now You See Me”), “The Last House” has a premise that might resonate with anyone who remembers the feeling of being stuck at home during the Covid pandemic, leaning on loved ones and plucky ingenuity to get through another day.
‘A Child of My Own’ Starts streaming: Aug. 13
In 2009, a Mexican woman named Ale was arrested in a kidnapping case in which a baby was taken from a hospital. The documentary “A Child of My Own” offers her side of the story. After multiple miscarriages, Ale faked a pregnancy to placate her family, and she says she had an agreement to take an unwanted baby from a woman who later claimed she made no such deal. The film’s director, Maite Alberdi, has been nominated for an Oscar twice for Best Documentary (for “The Mole Agent” and “The Eternal Memory”). Her approach here initially is to rely exclusively on soapy re-enactments with actors, dramatizing the societal pressure on Ale. But in the movie’s second half, Alberdi shifts to interviews with the people involved, who raise surprising questions about what actually happened and describe how the whole experience changed the way they think about parenthood.
‘My Brilliant Career’ Starts streaming: Aug. 13
Miles Franklin’s semi-autobiographical 1901 novel “My Brilliant Career” is one of Australia’s best-known, best-loved books, and was the inspiration for a 1979 Gillian Armstrong film that is considered a landmark for Australian New Wave cinema. A new TV mini-series adaptation offers a modern approach to Franklin’s story, with fast-paced editing and pop music deployed to make a century-old text more current. The plot remains the same, following a free-spirited aspiring writer named Sybylla (Philippa Northeast) as she leaves her family’s bucolic early-20th-century farm life behind to live with her brusque high-society grandmother, who expects her to learn good manners and to find a husband. But what has made Sybylla such an enduring character is her refusal to be domesticated.
‘Don’t Say Good Luck’ Starts streaming: Aug. 14
Sunny Sandler, the teenage daughter of Adam Sandler, gets the biggest role of her young career as the high school theater kid Sophie Birenbaum, who overhears terrible news from her dad (Max Greenfield) right before she goes onstage to audition for her class’s production of “Waitress.” An emotional Sophie gives such a strong performance that she lands the leading role in the musical, and then has to fight her self-doubt — plus a lot of stress at home, where her mom (Melanie Lynskey) is battling cancer — to justify the faith her drama teacher (Stephanie Beatriz) has put in her. Directed by Julia Hart (“Fast Color,” “Stargirl”) and co-written by Hart with her husband, Jordan Horowitz, and the novelist Laura Hankin, “Don’t Say Good Luck” is about escaping into the arts to endure hard times.
Also arriving:
Aug. 1 “Clueless” “The Fast and the Furious” “2 Fast 2 Furious” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” “Fast Five” “Fast & Furious” “Fast & Furious 6” “Furious 7” “Marie Antoinette” “Minions” “National Security” “Nightcrawler” “Selma” “Speed” “Zero Dark Thirty”
Aug. 3 “Eighth Grade” “Sing”
Aug. 4
“Badly in Love” Season 2 “Best Medicine” Season 1 “Beyond the Lights” “The Cocktail Lab” Season 1
Aug. 5 “1670” Season 3 “Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy” “Inside the Trustor Scandal” “Let’s Marry Harry” Season 1
Aug. 6 “My Life With the Walter Boys” Season 3
Aug. 7
“Alley Cats” Season 1 “Death Inc.” Season 4 “Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War” “Our Sticky Love”
Aug. 8 “The Ribbon Hero”
Aug. 10 “Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish” Season 3
Aug. 11 “Mourinho” “Rory Scovel: Show Must Go On” “What’s Eating Dan?” Season 1
Aug. 12 “Conversations With a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes” “Nando Between Two Worlds — A Sintonia Film”
Aug. 13 “MLB Field of Dreams: Phillies vs. Twins” “This, That and Everything in Between” “Tires” Season 3
Aug. 14 “Moria” “My Best Friend, His Girlfriend and Me” “To the Max” “Umthetho” Season 1
Aug. 15 “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” “The Shallows”
Aug. 18 “Kelsey Cook: Happy Hour” “Take a Hike!” Season 1
Aug. 19 “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing” “Here the Whole Time” “Swiss Army Man”
Aug. 20 “Blood Sacrifice” Season 1 “Chompoo: Lost & Forgotten” “Outer Banks” Season 5 “S&X” Season 1
Aug. 21 “Facing El Chapo”
Aug. 23 “Talamasca: The Secret Order” Season 1
Aug. 24 “M3GAN”
Aug. 25 “Martha Cooks” Season 1 “Stamptown” “Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young”
Aug. 26 “Mom Knows Best?” Season 1
Aug. 27 “Leanne” Season 2
Aug. 28 “All the Truth in My Lies” “Graveyard” Season 3 “The Secret Woman” “The Whisper Man”
Aug. 29 “Four Hands, Two Sonatas”
Aug. 31 “Sex Lives of College Girls” Seasons 1-3
The post The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in August appeared first on New York Times.
