Thirty-three seasons of The Game are leaving Netflix this month. That’s what the list says. It’s almost certainly supposed to read Seasons 1-3, but nobody’s correcting it, so let’s all just sit with the image of a sitcom that ran longer than most marriages.
That’s August on Netflix in miniature: a pile of franchises, a few genuinely great movies buried in the middle, and some administrative chaos around the edges.
The franchise dump is real
Fast and Furious. The Child’s Play and Chucky saga. Both Speeds. The Hitman’s Bodyguards. And, yes, the Daddy Day Cares. Plural.
You know exactly what you’re getting with all of it. Some months that’s the whole point.
But the actual reason to look at this month’s additions is the smaller stuff sitting next to the sequels: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Eighth Grade, Ingrid Goes West, Nightcrawler, Swiss Army Man. That’s a real shelf.
Aubrey Plaza has never been scarier
Ingrid Goes West puts Plaza in the role she was built for: an unbalanced, obsessed fan spiraling through a parasocial nightmare. The dark comedy digs into the nasty pitfalls of turning yourself into a “brand.”
Elizabeth Olsen, Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff and O’Shea Jackson Jr. co-star. That’s three MCU alums in one biting, surprisingly funny fable, which feels like its own kind of joke.
Bo Burnham’s first movie still hits differently
Between directing stand-up specials for Chris Rock and Jerrod Carmichael and making Inside, Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade.
It’s the natural double feature with Ingrid Goes West. Both are about how social media builds unhealthy fixations and impossible ideals, just from opposite ends of the age range.
Elsie Fisher, later of Castle Rock and The Bear, plays a middle-schooler picking her way through internet landmines and peer pressure. The film is authentic, sweet and searing about the tools and tech that isolate us.
Two horror originals, one big question
The Last House stars Greta Lee (Past Lives, The Studio) and Wagner Moura (Narcos, The Secret Agent) as a married couple with kids who suddenly find themselves sealed inside their own home. Louis Leterrier, of Fast X and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, directs the paranormal mystery thriller.
Then there’s The Whisper Man, with Adam Scott, Robert De Niro and Michelle Monaghan. Scott plays a widowed novelist whose son is kidnapped, forcing him to turn to his retired police detective father for help.
It’s based on the bestselling novel by Alex North, and the supporting bench is loaded: Michael Keaton, John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac, Fargo) and Hamish Linklater (Midnight Mass, Widow’s Bay).
Horror has owned the multiplex this summer. Whether that carries over to people watching on their couches is the month’s actual experiment.
Ricky Gervais made a cartoon about cats and death
Alley Cats is a six-part adult animated series written by and starring Gervais, about foul-mouthed felines who ruminate on life, death and the absurdity of their existence.
He drew on Cheers and Only Fools and Horses, aiming for a classic British sitcom filtered through his fascination with cats. Diane Morgan, better known as Philomena Cunk, co-stars alongside Tom Basden of The Ballad of Wallis Island.
The Sandler-adjacent one
Don’t Say Good Luck is a coming-of-age dramedy about Sophie (Sunny Sandler), who lands the lead in her high school musical and then gets buried by family drama at home.
Adam Sandler co-produces. The cast is stacked with people you’d follow anywhere: Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets), Max Greenfield (New Girl), Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers) and Steve Buscemi.
Leanne returns for Season 2 as well.
And then there’s the corpse movie
Before the Daniels swept the Oscars with Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan made Swiss Army Man.
Paul Dano is stranded on an island. Daniel Radcliffe is a corpse, deployed in various cartoonish ways to help him survive the elements. It remains the purest expression of Radcliffe’s post-Potter “I’ll do whatever project I wanna do” era.
Wacky, delightful and full of fart. Er, heart.
What you’re losing
Borat, Ex Machina, the original Spider-Man trilogy and Labyrinth all exit this month, along with those aforementioned thirty-three seasons of The Game.
Watch Ex Machina before it goes. And while you’re doing the math on Netflix raising its prices again, consider that the best thing arriving in August is a nine-year-old movie about a flatulent dead body, and it’s still better than most of what you’ll scroll past.
