11 movies to check out on Netflix in August 2023

In this Fatal Attraction for the pandemic era, two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank plays a police detective who has a one-night stand with a married man (Michael Ealy) who soon regrets his decision after becoming tangled in her latest police investigation. The A.V. Club’s Jesse Hassenger describes the 2020 thriller Fatale as an “entertainingly dumb noir.” Swank might not have picked up a third Oscar for playing a predatory cop here, but it’s not the worst way to spend a hot summer night.

It’s not really summer unless you watch Liam Neeson take action using his “very particular set of skills” in his unique niche as a senior action star. In 2014's Non-Stop directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Neeson plays an air marshal on a transatlantic flight who receives text messages saying that someone on the plane will die every 20 minutes if the texter isn’t wired $150 million. The A.V. Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote, “Non-Stop took the Liam Neeson thriller to new heights of dumb-smart fun.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as a cyborg from the future in the fifth film in the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Genisys, but in this timeline, it’s Game Of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke who takes over the role of Sarah Connor from Linda Hamilton. Although this 2015 reboot didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, the Alan Taylor-directed movie starring Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney, and J.K. Simmons does a pretty convincing job of re-creating certain scenes from the 1984 movie and changing them to create a new timeline in the Terminator universe.

Tiger 24 is a documentary directed by Warren Pereira about a tiger that killed several men who entered its territory, resulting in the big cat being locked up in a zoo. The animal being sentenced to “tiger jail” for following its basic instincts caused an uproar among activists, who took their fight to the streets, online, billboards, and eventually the Supreme Court.

Bruce Willis apparently had a lot of movies in the can before he announced that he was stepping away from acting due to health reasons. In 2019's Trauma Center, Bruce Willis plays a police lieutenant who tries to protect an injured woman (Nicky Whelan) in a locked-down hospital where two killers are after the bullet evidence in her leg that can implicate them in a murder.

The Furnace is an adventure-drama written and directed by Roderick MacKay and set in the western Australian outback during a gold rush in the 1890s. The story follows an Afghan cameleer (Kaushik Das) and a gold thief on the lam (Ahmed Malek) who try to survive their journey through the outback while avoiding Gold Squad officers hell-bent on capturing them. The movie was nominated for several AACTA Awards—they’re kinda the Oscars of Down Under—including Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Direction, and Best Actor for Malek.

The adventure-thriller River Wild is being marketed as both a reimagining and a modern-day stand-alone sequel to the 1994 Kevin Bacon-Meryl Streep film The River Wild. Directed by Ben Ketai, River Wild is about two estranged siblings (Leighton Meester and Taran Killam) who embark on a whitewater-rafting trip with their childhood friend (Adam Brody) and other tourists. Things get more turbulent than anticipated when they discover that they’re trapped alongside a killer intent on sabotaging the trip to prevent past secrets from surfacing.

In the 2017 drama The Wife, directed by Björn L. Runge, Glenn Close plays a hopelessly devoted wife who begins to question her life choices as she accompanies her husband (Jonathan Pryce) to Stockholm so he can accept the Nobel Prize in Literature. The A.V. Club’s Katie Rife wrote, “It’s Close’s wonderfully subtle characterization of Joan that lifts The Wife above its cliché setups and neat role reversals, which is really rather ironic. Once again, it’s the wife doing all the hard work. At least this time, she gets top billing.”

If you’re upset that you may never see Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman on-screen again outside of cameos in other DC movies, at least you can check her out in the spy thriller Heart Of Stone. In this big-budget action flick, Gadot plays international intelligence agent Rachel Stone, who’s tasked with protecting a mysterious MacGuffin known as “The Heart.” The movie, directed by Tom Harper, was filmed in Italy, London, Reykjavík, and Lisbon, so Netflix sank a lot of money into this, hoping it’ll kickstart a new Mission: Impossible-esque franchise for Gadot.

2014's Paddington features the voice of Ben Whishaw as the titular bear traveling from Peru to London in search of a home. The A.V. Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote, “It’s visually busy, but not frenzied, and if the film seems head-and-shoulders above the average effects-driven family-matinee flick, it’s because it never gives the impression that it’s trying to be anything more (or less) than good-natured and fun to watch.”

If you have been missing Adam Sandler, Netflix is doing you a solid in August with the premiere of the Sammi Cohen-directed comedy You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah. The movie, based on the 2007 young-adult novel of the same name by Fiona Rosenbloom, is about two young female friends whose plans for having epic bat mitzvahs go awry when they fight for the attention of the same boy. Adam Sandler’s real-life daughter, Sunny, plays his on-screen daughter in the movie, which also stars Adam’s other daughter, Sadie, as well as his wife, Jackie. Got Sandler? Netflix sure does!