August movies: What’s worth watchingBy If you’re heading to the cinema or just your couch, our reviewers have you covered with the new releases you need to know about each week.And don’t forget to sign up to our Screening Room newsletter for must-see movies, interviews and the latest news from the world of film. Popcorn not included!One Night Only, The End of Oak Street, Case 137.Stephen KiprillisLatest Posts11.33amOne Night Only ★★★By Jake Wilson(M) 102 minutesRomantic comedies set in science fiction dystopias aren’t exactly common. Indeed, I’m not certain the idea has ever been done before. But if anyone can bring off the challenge of merging Sleepless In Seattle with The Handmaid’s Tale, it might be Will Gluck – almost the only rom-com specialist remaining in Hollywood.By any standards, the premise of One Night Only is a lot. Travis Braun’s script is set in an alternate version of the present-day United States, where sex outside marriage has been outlawed, and every citizen over 18 is fitted with an electronic tracker that alerts the authorities of any transgressions.Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro in a scene from One Night Only.Universal PicturesAs a concession to liberals, the restrictions are lifted for one night a year (Braun seems to have drawn inspiration from the Purge films, in which there’s a similar annual opportunity to commit murder). Three years into the new regime, the night in question has become an unofficial erotic festival, with much of the adult population racing round town looking for the right person to hook up with.11.31amThe End of Oak Street ★★★½By Sandra Hall(M) 100 minutes In The End of Oak Street, Jurassic Park comes to the suburbs although, strictly speaking, it’s the other way around. The Platt family wakes one morning to find that their suburb, Flowervale, has been transported to some mysterious corner of the cosmos, where every species of dinosaur roams free with predatory intent.It comes as no surprise to learn that the disaster master, JJ Abrams, has had a hand in this. His company, Bad Robot, produced the film and it’s directed by David Robert Mitchell, whose low-budget horror movie, It Follows (2014), became a box-office hit and achieved cult status among horror’s ever-growing fan base.Jurassic Park comes to the suburbs – or vice versa – in The End of Oak Street.It’s set in the 1980s because Mitchell is out to recreate the spirit of Poltergeist and other Spielberg family pictures he loved as a child; he and his crew have done a deep dive into the period detail. As well as finding their Oak Street in Wisteria Gardens, a street in Atlanta that looks as if it has remained unchanged for the past 60 years, they have brightened the soundtrack with highlights from ’80s pop charts and planted 1980s commercials on the Platts’ TV. They eat Froot Loops for breakfast and there’s no sign of a computer.yesterday 3.24pmCase 137 ★★★½By Jake Wilson(M) 116 minutesWhatever anxieties anyone has about the supposed decline of attention spans, the ongoing popularity of police procedurals shows the public hasn’t lost interest in watching characters at work. Even work that amounts to a tedious grind.Much of Dominik Moll’s Case 137 is spent watching the heroine Stéphanie (Léa Drucker) interview suspects in a drab office or pore over video footage on a computer. There’s an ex-husband somewhere in the background, but her job seems to have consumed her life to the exclusion of almost everything else, aside from caring for her young son (Côme Péronnet).Léa Drucker as Stéphanie in Case 137. Based in Paris, Stéphanie works for the department of internal investigations, a job that makes for drama in itself. In her own eyes she’s a serious cop, committed to the profession – but it’s unavoidable that many around her will view her as the enemy.4.43pm on Aug 6, 2026Ice Cream Man ★★★★By Jake Wilson(R) 87 minutesChildren are central to Eli Roth’s modern fairy tale, Ice Cream Man, but this is hardly a film for the whole family, unless your family is an unusual one.If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Roth is among those horror directors whose extreme early work was labelled “torture porn” two decades ago. He’s since moved toward the mainstream with mixed success, most recently with the science-fiction flop Borderlands. But in Ice Cream Man, made on the cheap for his own production company, there’s nothing holding back his instinct for the kill.The sense of encountering a cursed object is much of the point. The look is aggressively clean and bright, shunning the shadows traditional to horror; Roth has got some flak for his use of AI, but it’s of a piece with his commitment to visible wrongness.12.13pm on Aug 6, 2026Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ★★★½By Sandra Hall(MA) 112 minutes The psychological horror movie covers a broad canvas these days. Eating disorders, homophobia, sexual obsession and the labyrinthine possibilities of the digital world have all been treated to a touch of the supernatural in the past few months by young filmmakers with big ideas and small budgets and most have proved astonishingly successfulJane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death is the latest – a brave and shamelessly batty satire on slasher movies that has similarly wide-ranging ambitions. Like Schoenbrun, Kris (Hannah Einbinder from Hacks), the main character, is a filmmaker who identifies as queer. She shares Schoenbrun’s longstanding horror movie fixation and she’s delighted when she’s hired to write and direct a new instalment of Camp Miasma, a slasher movie franchise she’s loved since she was a teenager.She’s also determined to reinvigorate it after a lacklustre series of sequels. And she believes the key to this plan depends on the casting of Billy Preston (Gillian Anderson), a reclusive actress who starred in the original.12.12pm on Aug 6, 2026Holy Days ★★★½By Sandra Hall(PG) 101 minutes It had to happen. In Holy Days, Jacki Weaver and Judy Davis are playing nuns. I don’t know why this should seem such a milestone. Between them, they have portrayed every other human emotion in their long careers. Now piety has joined the cavalcade.Not that Davis’ Sister Agnes and Weaver’s Sister Mary-Clare practise piety with particular strictness. It’s upstaged in their psychological make-up by compassion and a willingness to be irreverent when circumstances demand.Davis is the convent’s Mother Superior, which makes sense. She’s always possessed the necessary air of authority, while Weaver is the warmest and most approachable.5.09pm on Aug 5, 2026Super Troopers 3 ★★½By Jake Wilson(MA) 100 minutesThere are any number of arty 21st-century filmmakers who have cultivated a knowing taste for the no-frills, politically incorrect exploitation cinema of yesteryear. By comparison, there’s absolutely nothing arty about Super Troopers 3 – but it gets as close as anyone can today to the vibe of a laid-back comedy that might have screened at a drive-in in 1977, brought to us by a team who give the genuine impression of not trying too hard.The team in question deserve marks for persistence. Like the previous entries in this modest franchise, Super Troopers 3 is the work of Broken Lizard, a comedy troupe comprising five guys who met at university in upstate New York in the late 1980s and have collaborated on half a dozen features since.While the original Super Troopers struck a chord with the early DVD market in 2001, the crowd-funded sequel didn’t arrive until 2018. How far long-term fans have been clamouring for more, I can’t say – but from an outside perspective, this follow-up seems like less the culmination of a trilogy than an excuse for a group hang.Pinned post from 12.21pm on Aug 5, 2026August movies: What’s worth watchingBy If you’re heading to the cinema or just your couch, our reviewers have you covered with the new releases you need to know about each week.And don’t forget to sign up to our Screening Room newsletter for must-see movies, interviews and the latest news from the world of film. Popcorn not included!One Night Only, The End of Oak Street, Case 137.Stephen Kiprillis1 of 1