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Paramount Plus has published its list of new shows and movies coming to the streamer this August, and it’s a typically eclectic bunch that ranges from A Time To Kill to Zodiac, via Hotel for Dogs.
If you’re looking for some guaranteed quality from this rather large selection, it’s never a bad idea to look for movies with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 90 plus: such movies are the best of their kind whether they’re comedies, dramas or big-bang blockbusters.
Here are three movies that should definitely be on your to-watch list in the coming weeks. You can expect these to land in our roundup of the best Paramount Plus movies but if you’re after something with a shorter runtime, then check out our picks for the best Paramount Plus shows instead.
Airplane! (1980)
- RT Score: 97%
- Age rating: PG
- Length: 88 minutes
- Director: Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker
- Arriving on: August 1
I honestly don’t think I’ve seen any other film as many times as I’ve seen Airplane!, and while any comedy loses its lustre after the first ten thousand viewings or so there are still some scenes that crack me up as much as they did first time around.
Nowadays it’s as much a museum piece as the po-faced disaster movies it took so many pot-shots at – and by today’s standards it’s quite slow in terms of its pacing –but it still delivers endless gags and sight gags in particular, serving up so many that you’ll never catch them all on your first flight.
City of God (2003)
- RT Score: 91%
- Age rating: R
- Length: 131 minutes
- Director: Fernando Meirelles
- Arriving on: August 1
Set in the favelas of Rio De Janeiro between the late 1960s and early 1980s, City of God tells the story of two men: budding photographer Rocket and ambitious drug dealer José “Zé” Pequeno.
It’s loosely based on real events and received widespread critical acclaim as well as four Oscar nominations. But it can be an uncomfortable watch: as Variety put it, the movie “delivers a bruising, visceral experience of the vicious spiral of violence that draws kids into a life of crime, brutality and murder as the only avenue open to them”. Empire was one of many reviewers to call it a masterpiece.
The original movie is streaming on August 1 on Paramount Plus, a few weeks before the HBO TV adaptation of the Brazilian epic is released on Max on August 28 as part of everything new on Max next month.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- RT Score: 97%
- Age rating: M
- Length: 80 minutes
- Director: Don Siegal
- Arriving on: August 1
This is the 1956 original, not the 1976 remake featuring an unforgettable performance by the late Donald Sutherland, but despite its age the original remains a truly terrifying slice of sci-fi. Based on the book The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, it tells the story of a small Californian town that finds itself utterly changed by mysterious seeds that have come to Earth from somewhere in outer space. The seeds don’t grow plants but people, perfect replicas of the humans they can imitate in every respect but their ability to feel emotions.
While the novel had a fairly optimistic ending, the movie does not. Depending on who you ask the film is an allegory for the cold war threat of communism, the terror of McCarthyism, the inhumanity of capitalism, fragile masculinity or just spending any time on the social network formerly known as Twitter.
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