What to Watch in August 2017

It’s been five years since Kathryn Bigelow, the first and so far only woman to win Best Director, released her operatic takedown of Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty. Far from cutting lose with something fun, Bigelow found an even weightier subject matter for her latest film: race in America. In Detroit, Bigelow offers that rarest of late summer birds, a no-holds-barred, intellectually bracing look at police brutality and African American resistance by way of the 1967 Detroit riots. There are no super heroes saving the day here, just the tragic consequences and harrowing reality of our country’s original sin. In theaters August 4; detroit.movie.

What’s August without some picturesque foreign locales and waistline-expanding Mediterranean feasts? Thankfully, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have reteamed for another round of their signature gastronomic repartee with the third entry in Michael Winterbottom’s  shaggy dog travelogue series. By now the team knows they have a winning recipe, and they don’t dare deviate from it: mouth-watering food porn and dry British wit topped off with some creative class mid-life crises. And don’t forget the dueling impressions: this round features Roger Moore, Anthony Hopkins, and the holy grail of impressions, Marlon Brando. Nothing revolutionary here, just pure cinematic comfort food. In theaters August 11; ifcfilms.com.

While August sees the blockbuster bandwagon slow a little, that opening also gives up-and-coming filmmakers a shot at a wider audience. The big contenders this year are the Safdie brothers, whose intense, beautiful, and mesmerizing crime thriller Good Time apparently earned a standing ovation at Cannes. Robert Pattinson stars as a hard up thief who must keep his mentally challenged brother out of jail after a bank heist gone wrong. Pattinson has long yearned for a powerful role that sheds all those squeaky clean Twilight associations, and if early reviews are to be believed, he might finally have found it. In theaters August 11; a24films.com.

Somehow when indefatigable auteur Steven Soderbergh claimed he was retiring from filmmaking after Behind the Candelabra, no one took him seriously. Sure enough, after two seasons working on Cinemax’s The Knick, Soderbergh is back on the big screen with this low rent heist caper that feels like a calculated riposte to the effortless glamour of his Ocean’s trilogy. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver star as two endearingly incompetent blue-collar brothers with an ingenious and ambitious heist idea: robbing a NASCAR race. This time around, Soderbergh eschews high-tech gadgetry and perfectly timed planning in favor of clueless bravado and Southern grit. In theaters August 19; loganluckymovie.com

With shows like Mr. Robot and Queen of the South, USA long ago shed its reputation as cable’s home for frothy and forgettable series. Now it’s taking Jessica Biel along for the ride: in this closed-ended series, Biel plays an affluent mother living a seemingly perfect life in bucolic upstate New York who randomly stabs a man to death at the beach one day. Directed by Antonio Campos, the indie master of dread behind Simon Killer and Christine, the disquieting pilot piqued critical interest at Tribeca, with special notice for Biel’s unsettling turn as a woman driven to violence in a mystery whose biggest question isn’t “What?” but “Why?” Premieres on USA August 2; usanetwork.com.

Who could ever match the effortless grace of John Travolta and Gene Hackman in Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 adaptation of Elmore Leonard novel Get Shorty? Thankfully, Epix apparently doesn’t even try, veering far from the original’s breezy tone with Chris Dowd taking up the mantle of Travolta’s mobster-turned-movie producer. Created by Davey Holmes, an executive producer on Showtime’s raucous, rough-and-tumble series Shameless, the new show promises the down and dirty thuggery that Sonnenfeld’s original film only hinted at, but with Dowd as the anti-hero it should all go down smoother than a good Irish whisky. Premieres August 13; epix.com.

Romanian Cinema, get ready for your close-up. Perhaps the most out-there series premiering this summer, Comrade Detective purports to be a slick, anti-capitalist 80s Romanian cop show, forgotten after the fall of the Berlin Wall and newly rediscovered with fresh dubbing by Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But, with a supporting voice cast that includes Jenny Slate, Jake Johnson, and Mahershala Ali, among many, many others, Comrade Detective is actually the kind of bold, comedic concept that becomes this summer’s guilty binging pleasure. However it may turn out, you can’t fault writers Brian Gatewood and Alex Tanaka for lack of originality. Available on Amazon Prime August 4; a24films.com.

Given all the Russian hijinks dominating the headlines daily, Bryan Fogel couldn’t have picked a better summer for his debut documentary. His tell-all documentary earned raves at this year’s Sundance film festival, winning the fest’s inaugural Orwell award. Fogel formed an unlikely bond with Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the man at the center of Russia’s infamously state-sponsored Olympic doping regime, and together they revealed the full extent of Russia’s actions in one of the most astounding doping scandals ever to hit sports—guaranteeing that at least one Russian plot will be fully uncovered this summer. Available on Netflix August 4; netflix.com.

House of Cards may get all the glory, but unapologetic binge-watchers know that Netflix’s revival of cult comedy hit Wet Hot American Summer really put the streaming service on the map. Bizarre, insane, and addictive, the limited series proved a perfect example of what streaming could accomplish that regular T.V. couldn’t even conceive of. Now creators David Wain and Michael Showalter have returned to Camp Firewood yet again with the sequel to the prequel that trades in the 80s nostalgia for 90s gaudiness. Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later reunites the gloriously spastic nutcases when Janeane Garofalo’s camp director decides to sell the beloved Camp Firewood. Available on Netflix August 4; netflix.com.

Leave it to Stephen King to throw some serious shade on the dog days of August. After years as the King of Horror, King decided to try out the detective genre to predictably successful results. Now T.V. king David E. Kelley adapts this tale of a washed-up detective battling a psychopath responsible for an out-of-control Mercedes that plows into a crowd and kills eight people. As if King and Kelley weren’t reasons enough to watch, the criminally under-appreciated Brendan Gleeson plays the lead, gifted the kind of generous leading man screen time that he made a feast from in John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary. Premieres August 9 on AT&T AUDIENCE Network, available on DIRECTV and DIRECTV NOW.