The listings say thirty-three seasons of The Game are exiting Netflix this month. Someone almost certainly meant Seasons 1-3, but the typo stands uncorrected, so we’re all free to picture a sitcom that outlasted most marriages.
Consider that a miniature version of August on Netflix: franchises stacked high, a handful of genuinely excellent films tucked in among them, and a bit of administrative mess along the margins.
The franchise dump is real
Fast and Furious. The Child’s Play and Chucky saga. Both Speeds. The Hitman’s Bodyguards. And the Daddy Day Cares — yes, more than one.
None of it will surprise you, and in certain months that predictability is exactly the appeal.
Still, the real argument for scanning this month’s additions is what’s parked beside all those sequels: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Eighth Grade, Ingrid Goes West, Nightcrawler, Swiss Army Man. That’s a serious shelf.
Aubrey Plaza has never been scarier
Ingrid Goes West hands Plaza the part she was made for — an unstable, obsessive fan unraveling inside a parasocial nightmare. The dark comedy picks at the ugly consequences of turning yourself into a “brand.”
Co-starring are Elizabeth Olsen, Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff and O’Shea Jackson Jr. Three MCU alumni sharing one caustic, unexpectedly funny fable reads like a punchline of its own.
Bo Burnham’s first movie still hits differently
Somewhere between helming stand-up specials for Chris Rock and Jerrod Carmichael and making Inside, Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade.
Pair it with Ingrid Goes West and you have the obvious double feature. Each film examines how social media manufactures unhealthy fixations and unreachable ideals — they just approach it from opposite ends of the age spectrum.
Elsie Fisher, who would go on to Castle Rock and The Bear, plays a middle-schooler navigating internet landmines and peer pressure. The result is authentic, sweet and searing about the tools and tech that isolate us.
Two horror originals, one big question
In The Last House, Greta Lee (Past Lives, The Studio) and Wagner Moura (Narcos, The Secret Agent) play a married couple with children who abruptly find themselves sealed inside their own home. Directing the paranormal mystery thriller is Louis Leterrier, of Fast X and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
The other is The Whisper Man, featuring Adam Scott, Robert De Niro and Michelle Monaghan. Scott is a widowed novelist whose son is abducted, pushing him to seek help from his father, a retired police detective.
The source material is Alex North’s bestselling novel, and the supporting bench runs deep: Michael Keaton, John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac, Fargo) and Hamish Linklater (Midnight Mass, Widow’s Bay).
Theaters have belonged to horror all summer. Whether that appetite follows viewers to the couch is this month’s real experiment.
Ricky Gervais made a cartoon about cats and death
Alley Cats is a six-part adult animated series written by and starring Gervais, following foul-mouthed felines as they mull over life, death and the absurdity of their existence.
His reference points were Cheers and Only Fools and Horses — a classic British sitcom run through his fascination with cats. Diane Morgan, best known as Philomena Cunk, co-stars with Tom Basden of The Ballad of Wallis Island.
The Sandler-adjacent one
Don’t Say Good Luck is a coming-of-age dramedy centered on Sophie (Sunny Sandler), who wins the lead in her high school musical only to be swamped by family drama at home.
Adam Sandler co-produces. The cast is packed with people worth following anywhere: Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets), Max Greenfield (New Girl), Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Bebe Neuwirth (Cheers) and Steve Buscemi.
Leanne also comes back for Season 2.
And then there’s the corpse movie
Long before the Daniels cleaned up at the Oscars with Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan made Swiss Army Man.
Paul Dano is marooned on an island. Daniel Radcliffe is a corpse, put to a range of cartoonish uses to keep him alive against the elements. Nothing captures Radcliffe’s post-Potter “I’ll do whatever project I wanna do” phase more purely.
Wacky, delightful and full of fart. Er, heart.
What you’re losing
On the way out this month: Borat, Ex Machina, the original Spider-Man trilogy and Labyrinth — plus the aforementioned thirty-three seasons of The Game.
Catch Ex Machina before it disappears. And as you work out the math on yet another Netflix price hike, sit with this: August’s finest arrival is a nine-year-old film about a flatulent dead body, and it still beats most of what you’ll scroll past.