What to Watch This Weekend: Four New Movies, Four Completely Different Moods

August is supposed to be the month the studios stop trying. Not this week. Four genuinely distinct movies opened wide (or wide-ish) on Friday, August 7, and for once the choice at the multiplex is not between a sequel and a slightly worse sequel. There is a big swing of a romantic comedy, a gleefully nasty slasher, a legacy comedy 25 years in the making, and the best-reviewed A24 release of the month in limited theaters. Whatever mood you are in, somebody made a movie for it.

If you are staying on the couch instead, we covered the month's best new streaming arrivals in our August streaming roundup. This guide is for people leaving the house.

The date night pick: One Night Only

Will Gluck, the director who helped drag the theatrical rom-com back from the dead with Anyone But You, is working with a premise built for arguments on the drive home: it is the one night of the year when premarital sex is legal, and two strangers who cannot stand each other keep getting shoved together by fate. Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown) and Callum Turner star, with a supporting bench that includes Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Molly Ringwald, and LeVar Burton.

It is R rated, it is from Universal, and it is exactly the kind of star-driven original comedy everyone claims they want more of. If you are the type who complains that they do not make them like they used to, this weekend is your chance to vote with a ticket.

Make your tier list right here

Five films, head-to-head. Tap the one you prefer and we will build your order, then label it S through D.

Which do you prefer?

Pulp Fiction

1994

VS

The Dark Knight

2008

Tap your favorite

The horror pick: Ice Cream Man

Eli Roth has said he carried this idea around for more than two decades, and it shows in the commitment: an idyllic suburban town called Bayleen Bay unravels after a mysterious ice cream man starts serving treats that turn the local kids homicidal. Early reviews describe it as an over-the-top gore-fest, which for Roth's audience is not a warning, it is the pitch.

This is the clear pick if your group treats horror as a contact sport. Bring the friend who laughed through Terrifier. Do not bring a first date.

The comfort food pick: Super Troopers 3

Twenty-five years after the 2001 original became a cult classic, Broken Lizard is back in uniform. Jay Chandrasekhar directs, all five members wrote the script and star, and the newcomers this time include Hannah Simone, Nat Faxon, Chace Crawford, and Andrew Dismukes. The plot: Farva gets engaged to Thorny's sister, the engagement spirals into chaos, and there is a new drug ring to crack somewhere between the wedding events.

Nobody is walking in expecting reinvention. You are walking in because a theater full of people laughing at a Farva bit is one of the more reliable good times American cinema offers. Searchlight put this in theaters instead of dumping it on streaming, which tells you they think so too.

The one critics actually love: Tony

The sleeper of the weekend is only in limited release, so check your listings. Tony is Matt Johnson's A24 film about the summer of 1975, when a 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain washed dishes at a Provincetown seafood restaurant and stumbled into the vocation that would define his life. Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) plays the young Bourdain, with Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, and Leo Woodall around him.

The reviews are the best of anything opening this week. Variety called it Sessa's first movie-star performance, and critics keep reaching for Richard Linklater comparisons to describe its hangout warmth. If it is not near you yet, it goes wide on August 21. If it is, this is the one to hunt down.

So which one wins?

Honestly, this is the rare weekend where the answer really is "what are you in the mood for." The interesting question is what happens after: a slate this varied is exactly what ranking movies head to head was built for. Log all four on Shortlist as you see them, stack them against The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, and the rest of the summer, and find out whether your gut agrees with the critics. Our money says Tony climbs everyone's summer list by Labor Day.

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