August is a great time to lay back, enjoy the end of summer, and catch up on a few movies that you may have missed when they were originally in theaters.
If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you likely know that the service features plenty of great titles for you to browse through. Sometimes those searches can be overwhelming, though, which is why it can be helpful to prioritize things that won’t be available for very long. These movies are all leaving Hulu at the end of August, and they’re ones you should definitely watch before then.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
A remake of one of the most famous Westerns in cinema history, 3:10 to Yuma lives up to the reputation of its predecessor. Telling the story of an outlaw who has been captured by the law and the ranch owner who volunteers to be part of his escort, 3:10 to Yuma is about the grudging respect that forms between the two men.
On top of that, though, the movie also features great acting by Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and Ben Foster, as well as plenty of great action set pieces as the criminal’s men pursue the escort in an attempt to rescue their friend. It’s a fairly tense movie from beginning to end, and one that serves as a firm reminder that making a great Western is still totally possible today.
Jurassic Park (1993)
In 1993, Steven Spielberg directed a movie that won Best Picture, Schindler’s List, and also released one of the biggest blockbusters in history. Jurassic Park, which is adapted from the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, tells the story of a scientist who builds a park filled with resurrected dinosaurs.
The less said about the sequels, the better, but the original Jurassic Park holds up almost perfectly as a taut thriller about a bunch of people who are amazed by dinosaurs, and then spend the rest of the movie trying not to get eaten by them. The craziest thing of all? The CGI here looks so much better than the graphics in modern blockbusters released 30 years later.
Borat (2006)
Not everything in Borat holds up perfectly, but the point of the movie was always that it was hugely provocative. Following star Sacha Baron Cohen in disguise as Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan who comes to America to understand the culture, the movie is really about the insidious, backwards thinking that is so common in America.
The movie makes that point by interviewing real people in the George Bush era, and there are moments when it feels like a trenchant reminder that the white supremacy that’s so common today didn’t come from nowhere. It’s also, generally speaking, quite funny, even if every joke doesn’t land.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Telling an idiosyncratic, strange love story about a mute woman and her love for a fish man, The Shape of Water is surprising in part because it’s so delicate. The Best Picture Oscar winner from director Guillermo Del Toro, who loves monsters more than anything, The Shape of Water feels like a fairy tale from the minute it starts, and that’s because it mostly is.
Featuring great performances from Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Richard Jenkins, as well as stellar effects work and an awesome performance from Doug Jones as the fish man, The Shape of Water is weird, but in totally disarming ways, and that’s what makes it such a delight.
Idiocracy (2006)
Another movie that feels surprisingly prescient, Idiocracy tells the story of a man of below-average intelligence who travels to the future and discovers that he is now the smartest man alive. It’s a brilliant setup for a pretty absurd comedy, but one that has a fairly sharp message about mindlessly trusting that everything around you is OK.
Featuring a genuinely great Luke Wilson performance, as well as some sharp jokes that are nonetheless incredibly stupid, Idiocracy is the kind of comedy that you should wish they made more of today.
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