Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Australia: August 2020

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video‘s Australian library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top picks

Knives Out (August 26)

>Rian Johnson has made a career out of recognising what makes certain genres work (noir, sci-fi, the people-pleasing latest Star Wars trilogy) and complicating them into something new and clever (Brick, Looper, Star Wars: The Last Jedi). This modern version of a retro whodunnit is no exception, blending the best Poirot and Marple plot twists with some sly commentary on class.

When a famous mystery author (Christopher Plummer) is suspected dead of foul play, a debonair detective (Daniel Craig) is assigned to investigate the man’s greedy aristocratic family (Jamie Lee Curtis!!! Don Johnson!! Toni Collette!! Michael Shannon!! etc.). The most cunning turn in Knives Out might be that its biggest twist comes so early, when the patriarch’s devoted nurse Marta (a terrific Ana De Armas) is quickly implicated in his death, throwing off mystery-loving viewers from the get-go.

Orphan Black Seasons 1 -5 (August 1)

Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany deserves every single award she ever scooped up for playing countless characters in Orphan Black, the BBC sci-fi drama about a troubled woman who learns that she’s a clone. It’s hard enough playing one character in a show as conspiratorially confusing and densely written as Orphan Black, but playing characters as diverse as suburban mom Alison, hipster scientist Cosima, and Russian assassin Helena? That’s acting magic. Now is a great time to lose yourself in Orphan Black’s complex mythology of warring institutions and the identical-looking women trapped between them.

Cats (August 29)

Don’t laugh, but by virtue of the coronavirus pandemic, Cats may be the greatest cinema experience I have for this entire year. Of course it’s awful, a tasteless CGI spectacle that more or less lives up to all the gleefully scathing reviews it received when it premiered on Boxing Day of 2019. But at least it’s awful in a transporting way, a star-studded, surreal failure of a screen musical that inspires gasps, laughs, and maybe even prompts some reluctant singing-along to its Andrew Lloyd-Webber melodies. Return to a simpler time (6 months ago); return to the Jellicle Ball.

All titles arriving on Amazon Prime Australia in August

1 August

The Office (UK) Christmas Specials S1-S2
The Matrix
The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Reloaded
Orphan Black S1-S5
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey
The West Wing S1-S7
David Makes Man S1
24 S1-S8