10 of the best films to watch in August

Including Alien: Romulus, The Crow and the latest from M Night Shyamalan – this month’s unmissable movies to watch and stream.

Daughters is an acclaimed documentary about the “Date with Dad” program in a Washington DC prison. What happens is that inmates are given a rare chance to bond with their children at a semi-formal “Daddy Daughter Dance”. These brief reunions are as shatteringly emotional as you might imagine, but they go on to affect the four girls at the heart of the film in a range of poignant ways. “It’s hard to imagine a sharper critique of our dehumanising prison system than this bighearted, deeply empathetic tearjerker by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae,” says Tomris Laffly in Harper’s Bazaar. “Their vérité-style documentary will make you ugly-cry. But more importantly, their clear-eyed film, which follows its subjects over years, will unflinchingly demonstrate that the purpose of a healthy legal system should be to rehabilitate hearts, not to irreparably harden them by denying prisoners human needs like the embrace of a loved one.”

Released on 14 August on Netflix

This rude and raucous comedy drama, written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, tells the true-ish story of Kneecap, a rebellious hip-hop trio from West Belfast who rap in the Irish language. Edited in the gimmick-laden, hyperactive style of Trainspotting, the film shows how Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh go from being drug dealers to punky underground stars to unlikely political figureheads, dodging paramilitaries and police detectives along the way. Michael Fassbender makes a cameo appearance as the father of one of the band-members, but the most surprising thing about the casting is that the trio play themselves – and they do so with such skill that you would assume they were experienced actors. “Bursting with unruly energy that practically escapes the confines of the screen, Kneecap is a riotous, drug-laced triumph in the name of freedom that bridges political substance and crowd-pleasing entertainment,” says Carlos Aguilar in Variety.

Released on 2 August in the US, 9 August in Ireland and 23 August in the UK

Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut stars her fiancé Channing Tatum as a tech billionaire, and it co-stars Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat as the two unsuspecting women he invites to his private island. At first they revel in their luxurious surroundings, but then their memories start fading and people start disappearing. Blink Twice sounds like another dark satire about wealthy hedonists in danger on exclusive islands – see also Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, Infinity Pool – but Kravitz says that her inspirations included The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, Pulp Fiction and Boogie Nights. “The concept of the island was I was trying to find ways to isolate people, and thinking about things like the Garden of Eden and the serpent,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “And then, of course, there are other things that happen that we all know about on islands, and people think [the film is] about that, but it becomes something else. It’s pretty trippy.”

On general release from 23 August

Based on James O’Barr’s gothic comic-book series, The Crow was notorious even before its release in 1994, because its star, Brandon Lee, was fatally wounded by a prop gun during the production. Nonetheless, the superhero film was followed by three sequels and a spin-off television series, and now comes a reboot directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell). Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise in the IT films, stars as a rock musician who is out with his girlfriend (FKA twigs) when they are killed by a criminal gang. He is then brought back from the dead to avenge their murder. “Audiences see Skarsgård’s Eric and Twigs’s Shelly tumble into love before she comes to her gruesome end,” says Madison Vain in Esquire. “Only then does his quest begin. It wrestles with doubt and desperately claws at life’s big questions. Why are we here? What happens to us when we die? What would you give up to save the one you love?”

On general release from 23 August

Michael Morpurgo is best known for War Horse, a novel that became a hit play and a Steven Spielberg film. Another of his novels, Kensuke’s Kingdom, has now been turned into a hand-drawn animation scripted by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. (Morpurgo is a former British Children’s Laureate; Cottrell-Boyce holds the position today.) It’s the story of an 11-year-old boy (voiced by Aaron MacGregor) who is sailing with his parents (Cillian Murphy and Sally Hawkins) when he is tipped overboard in a storm, and washes up on a remote island. The only other human inhabitant is Kensuke (Ken Watanabe), an elderly Japanese man who protects the orangutan population from hunters. Kensuke’s Kingdom is ideal for anyone “looking for animated films that tackle weighty themes and ideas… rather than just offering empty noise and thrills,” says Wendy Ide in Screen Daily. “It’s a handsome production… and the message – that we should work together despite cultural differences to protect the natural world – is more relevant than ever.”

Released on 2 August in the US and the UK

M Night Shyamalan pitched his latest thriller as “Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert”. The idea is that a doting dad named Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is taking his daughter (Ariel Donoghue) to see a pop superstar in concert – a superstar who just happens to be played by Shyamalan’s own daughter, Saleka Shyamalan. While the show is underway, he hears that the whole event is actually a sting operation, and that the building is thronging with police who are closing in on a serial killer. “I want the industry to move towards more original storytelling,” Shyamalan told Empire magazine. “I think audiences would really like it. Look, I know there’s safety in IP [intellectual property]. But it’s really important that we come to the movies and see something we’ve never seen before. I’ll keep fighting for that.”

Released on 2 August in the US and Canada, and 9 August in the UK and Ireland

The Alien films have grown bigger and grander over the years, culminating in the last two epics directed by Ridley Scott, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). But the latest instalment is due to be a back-to-basics affair, complete with all the dark corridors and practical effects that distinguished Scott’s 1979 original. Directed by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus is set aboard an almost deserted space station that is visited by a group of young colonists played by Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), David Jonsson (Rye Lane) and others. “Really, the movie is a survival horror, just like the first one,” Álvarez told Total Film. “This is the way this movie works: if you haven’t seen any Alien movie ever, you’ll have a great time. You won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything. But if you’ve seen one or more – oh, boy, you’ll have a blast. The reality is that it is a standalone story, but it’s filled with references to every movie.”

On general release from 16 August

Nathan Silver is one of the most prolific writer-directors in US cinema today. Beginning with The Blind in 2009, he has made 12 films in quick succession, most of them concerning Jewish family life. But his latest rollicking comedy, says Richard Brody in The New Yorker, “reveals a striking new vein of thought and invention, both in his career and in American filmmaking at large”. It’s also starrier than Silver’s earlier work. Jason Schwartzman stars as Ben, a 40-year-old cantor, ie someone who sings the liturgy in services. But he hasn’t been able to sing, or to do much else, since his wife died the previous year. At his lowest ebb, he becomes friends with the 70-year-old Carla, played by Carol Kane, who was his elementary school music teacher. “Silver spotlights his splendid cast’s finely nuanced vigour,” says Brody, “whether in jolting asides or florid arias, but, above all, he revels in the script’s many scenes for Kane and Schwartzman together, whether by themselves or in a crowd. Their soulful duets seem to resonate from deep within.”

Released on 23 August in the US, the UK and Ireland

The Guardians of the Galaxy might have retired from galaxy-guarding, but Borderlands introduces another band of interstellar swashbucklers. Based on the video-game series, and directed by Eli Roth, this sci-fi action-comedy stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a mercenary who returns to her home planet, Pandora (presumably not the same Pandora that’s in James Cameron’s Avatar), to track down the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe (Edgar Ramirez). Other members of her rag-tag band are played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart and Ariana Greenblatt, while Jack Black voices a robot called Claptrap. “It’s bananas,” Roth told ComingSoon. “I really wanted to keep the spirit of the movie in the spirit of the games… So yeah, the film is fun. It is wild. It was a massive, massive undertaking.”

On general release from 9 August

At the start of Baltasar Kormákur’s soulful romantic melodrama, a retired Icelandic widower (Egill Ólafsson) is told by his doctor that he has the first signs of dementia. Determined to tie up loose ends while he still can, he sets off on a quest to find the long-lost love of his life. Meanwhile, flashbacks show how his younger self (Palmi Kormákur, the director’s son) got a job in a Japanese restaurant in London 50 years earlier, and fell for the owner’s daughter (Kōki) shortly before she disappeared. Adapted from a novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, Touch is set in 2020, when Covid-19 was spreading, making travel – and touching – more and more difficult. “A panoramic love story interrupted by time, mystery and the fallout of war, the elegantly crafted film knows when to curb its sentimentality and when to let it resonate,” says David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. “It deftly balances two strands separated by half a century, acted with great sensitivity by the four leads.”

Released on 8 August in Germany, 29 August in Italy, and 30 August in the UK and Ireland