Movies to Add to Your August To-Watch List

This August, escape the heat and fit these must-watch movies into your summer plans.

From coming-of-age tales to cutting-edge comedies, here are five films for a cinematic escape this month.

In the mood for a summer fantasy? | Moonrise Kingdom

Set on the imaginary island of New Penzance during the summer of 1965, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is a tender-hearted summer romance. Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman), young teens in the first blush of love, run away together to live on the magical cove of Moonrise Kingdom, as the adults in their lives (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton, among others) rush to stop them. “The film's entire world is fantastical,” writes Roger Ebert. “But what happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.”

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In the mood for a feel-good sports movie? | Champions

In Bobby Farrelly’s Champions, Woody Harrelson plays Marcus Aldridge, a talented but temperamental minor-league basketball coach who finds himself court-mandated to lead a team of players with disabilities. On the court, Aldridge discovers a group of remarkable people who change his perspective on what it means to win. “He teaches them basketball, but they ultimately teach him to become a better person,” Farrelly says in the production notes. The Guardian writes, “What makes Champions a treat is the deftness with which Mark Rizzo’s script sidesteps sentimentality in favor of something more raucously truthful, conjuring fully rounded characters with believably messy lives, all delivered with Dodgeball-style sporting chutzpah.”

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In the mood for a modern coming-of-age tale? | Boogie

In Boogie, Eddie Huang borrows from his own background to craft a new kind of coming-of-age story. Alfred “Boogie” Chin (Taylor Takahashi) is a high school student caught between two worlds—that of his Taiwanese parents and that of his friends at a high school in Queens, New York. When his dream of being in the NBA appears to be a possibility, Boogie begins to wonder whose dream he is living. Huang told The New York Times how he struggled with a similar quandary: “My parents do things this way, my culture does things this way, but what choices would I make?” As a new take on being a teen today, The Hollywood Reporter writes, “Boogie’s got personal vision and swaggering flair to spare.”

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In the mood for an award-winning drama? | Promising Young Woman

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman was nominated for five Academy Awards, ultimately winning for Best Original Screenplay for her ingeniously conceived thriller. Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a woman whose dreams are cut short, devises cunning scenarios to bring male abusers to justice. Fennel’s style is as beguiling as Mulligan’s performance. “Promising Young Woman is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a revenge drama that looks like a romcom,” Empire writes. “There is molten fury running through the hot-pink veins of” the movie.

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In the mood for a heartwarming story about family? | Housekeeping for Beginners

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners transforms the traditional family story, writes Screen Daily, with “storytelling [that] is fresh, authentic and genuinely exciting.” When Dita (Anamaria Marinca) finds herself having to raise her girlfriend’s two children, a troublemaking little girl (Dzada Selim) and a rebellious teen (Mia Mustafi), she needs everyone in her extended family—including her roommate (Vladimir Tintor) and his boyfriend (Samson Selim)—to help out. “Stolevski’s actors deliver such naturalistic performances, and he writes such specific dialogue,” writes The Globe and Mail, “that you care deeply about what happens to these people.”

Stream Housekeeping for Beginners exclusively on Peacock!