What’s Streaming August 2016

Considering this is a pretty eventful year for movies and shows in general, August is about to begin a slower month or two of releases. Besides Suicide Squad next weekend, there’s not much out in theatres, and sadly there’s also not as much new streaming this month as usual. What is coming is great, though, so let’s get to it.

Sleepy Hollow

I absolutely love Sleepy Hollow, but that could be because it has a few things I also absolutely love: Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, and music by Danny Elfman. Worth checking out if you love even just one of those things.

Sliding Doors

I randomly caught this late one night, and even though I’m super iffy on Gwyneth Paltrow, it had John Hannah (of bumbling-younger-brother Jonathan in The Mummy fame) and so I watched it all. For a romantic dramedy, it’s actually a unique and interesting concept.

Star Trek: Nemesis

The good: Star Trek, Patrick Stewart. The bad: A meh story-line that pulls a Serenity with some much beloved characters.

Funny or Die Presents: Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie

Ok, all I have to say about this is: Johnny Depp dressed in orange face playing The Drumpf. You’re welcome.

The Little Prince (August 5)

The first ever animated version of the amazing and beloved French story, and I must say from the trailer it looks pretty amazing. If anything, it’s one of my favorite stories and thus I will definitely check it out. It also has a great voice cast to go with wonderful looking animation.

The Get Down (August 12th, first part)

Watch the trailer, because this Baz Luhrmann-created Netflix original looks fantastic.

The Road (August 25)

Based on a bestselling novel and starring Viggo Mortenson, this eerie post-apocalyptic film follows a man and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who we all just saw as Kurt Wagner in X-Men Apocalypse) as they try to survive in the wastelands and make their way to the sea.

Once Upon a Time: Season 5 (August 26)

I only managed to keep up with the first half of the latest season of Once, and I’m really eager to catch up before the new season starts in September because they’re bringing Aladdin into the Storybrooke family, and I love Aladdin an embarrassing amount.

Some Notables Leaving Netflix in August:

Addams Family Values

The Sandlot

Inside Lleweyn Davis

A Coen Brothers’ movie that had a lot of critical acclaim, if you missed this when it came out (like me) catch it to see what all the praise is about!

Matrix Trilogy

The Matrix is coming to Amazon! Always worth a watch, now you can see them on streaming if you don’t own them. And if you’re like me, you really watch these so you can catch the Rob Dougan in the soundtrack and admire genius and awesomeness.

The Others

I’m not one for horror, but this movie so wonderfully captures suspense and internal anguish that I love it. If you scare easily, watch this one with the lights on during the day, but definitely watch it.

The Piano

Ok, I love this movie but… I’ve only seen it once. It’s one of those movies that is so amazing it stays with you without multiple views. It’s so incredibly tough to watch, and yet worth it because of how it captures one of the worst times in our recent history.

Say Anything…

A classic 80’s teen romance, starring John Cusack and directed by Cameron Crowe. Perfect with popcorn after a long day, when you really just need assurance that life can work out.

Scarface

Another classic worth seeing at least once, if anything else for the iconic scenes that are referenced frequently in other media and the performance of Al Pacino.

Scent of a Woman

Another classic Al Pacino film, this one is more heartwarming than Scarface, and features a famous and iconic tango scene with Gabrielle Anwar of Burn Notice fame.

The Night Of

I apparently missed the fact that this has already been on, but this intriguing crime drama will be airing its finale on August 28, so there’s time to catch up before then.

Notables Leaving HBO (Aug 31):

Alpha Dog – a suspense with the late, great Anton Yelchin (*cries*)

Snatch

Spaceballs

 

If you’d like a full list of everything coming to Netflix, click here.

Advertisement

Favorite Truth Altering Moments

Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means to say something is true, which is a story for another time. In thinking about the idea of truth it made me think about the movies I have seen or stories that I have read where in the end truth seems to be a flexible idea. So here for your consideration are some of my favorite truth altering stories.

Science Fiction and Religion – Prophecy, Part 2 (Science Fiction)

So recently I wrote a part 1 about prophecies in fiction – mainly in Fantasy. Prophecy is a frequent plot scheme in Fantasy, playing a big or small part, and generally about the main character and/or the main plot. The prophecies are generally old, and predate the plot itself – often causing the plot, as the villain takes action based on it (like Harry Potter), or else just pointing to our main character as a chosen one.

That all sounds a lot like the Bible, full of prophets and prophecies of the Messiah. And thinking of villains taking action based on the prophecy, I referenced that as well (via the Inhumans) – Herod, killing the babies to try to kill the Messiah. All of which to say is that these prophecies in Fantasy have a strong cultural connection to the Judeo-Christian tradition. We’re rarely following the action of the prophet themselves – which is some of what makes Dominic Deegan so much fun!

From http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2011-08-17

In Science Fiction, however, it seems like if there is prophecy – which is rare – you often get to meet the prophet as well. And here, prophecy is less supernatural, and more explained in science – in a quantum way, or a mathematical one. But when it comes to prophecy in Science Fiction, there’s one that stands well above the rest as an example – and which has a lot to say about religion as well. And that’s Dune.

New YouTube Find: Couch Tomato

Movies? Check. Comparative? Check. Short and funny? Check. All elements that make it so that we have been loving the videos from a recent YouTube channel find, Couch Tomato. I think that the channel was recommended by CinemaSins and that’s how we first found it.

I kind of think this one was deliberate…

Each video they give 24 reasons why two movies are the same. A simple enough conceit! It’s sometimes plot, sometimes characters, generally a lot of both. Some are stretches, or all in how you phrase things… but often that just makes you realize that it’s basically the same character just now slightly different.

And having done a bunch of these, there was also a recent one talking about how two movies that you might think were the same weren’t…

We’ve been enjoying Couch Tomato, so hopefully you will too! What do you think about some of the videos or comparisons?

Science Fiction Today – Knowledge

Throughout history the way we acquire knowledge has grown and evolved. The invention of the printing press gave us the ability to spread knowledge far and wide, increasing how many people have access to knowledge exponentially. With all the new technologies available this access just keeps increasing. In many ways knowledge is power, but it can be used in such interesting ways. It is not just about the acquisition of knowledge, but also about whether knowledge is made available.

There are many times in science fiction stories where the key to a problem is knowledge either being withheld or disseminated. Sometimes the problem comes around because knowledge has been lost over time due to destruction or other world changing events. The loss of knowledge can have such a huge impact for what the future holds.

Access to Knowledge

One of the big things in the future is the potential for greater access to knowledge. With the Internet today we already have access to so much at our fingertips and as technology evolves that access will just increase. The Matrix is a great example of the acquisition of knowledge with ease. Just plug your brain into a machine and suddenly you have the knowledge of that thing. This is seen in other movies as well, but sometimes it comes at the cost of other memories that might already be stored. The idea with that is that there is only so much knowledge a brain can hold.

The other side of access to knowledge is the idea that those in power try to block access to knowledge. They limit what is actually available because they believe it is better for society. A lot of this is seen in tyrannical sort of societies where they limit the knowledge because by limiting knowledge you can hold the citizens down.

Lost Knowledge

The other side to this is what happens to the future when knowledge is lost? When something so catastrophic happens that we loose the knowledge that we have gained over history. Usually the futures presented in these stories are not that pleasant. The world has practically been destroyed and yet there are remnants of the past that can be found all over these worlds. At the same time they will find items or things that came from a time long past and no one has any idea what they are or what they are for. Often the reveal that it is the far future is a big spoiler, so I’ll avoid giving many examples.

One of the ways these stories play out is that someone from the past travels to the future and they think they are in an entirely different place, but then they find something that shows that they are actually far into the future, like in Planet of the Apes. At the same time the biggest thing that can be noticed with this loss is that we tend to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The greatest power that knowledge provides is that of a knowing choice.

This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, and also part of our occasional series on Science Fiction Today. You can read an explanation of both here. We are striving to keep these posts short, and know that we have not covered every example or angle – plenty of room for discussion!