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Clockwise from top: Caught Stealing, Jaws, The Toxic Avenger, and Love Island USA reunion.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Niko Tavernise/Sony Pictures, Jocelyn Prescod/Peacock, Everett Collection
Summer is winding down, which accounts for the lack of blockbusters this weekend. No superheroes, just Benedict Cumberbatch trading his Doctor Strange cape for some loafers and some play-bickering with Olivia Colman. That sounds like a great use of time to me. No Batman or House of the Dragon, just Zoë Kravitz and Matt Smith orbiting Austin Butler as he runs around New York severely beaten up in a new Darren Aronofsky flick. But if you did want to spend your time off watching a blockbuster, there’s always the original blockbuster from 50 years ago, out again this weekend. And here’s everything else.
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Austin Butler is charged with babysitting a cat, and then his life goes to shit. Not the cat’s fault though! Based on Charlie Huston’s novel of the same name, Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, Caught Stealing, is a ’90s-set crime thriller with Butler as a bartender/former baseball player named Hank who gets wrapped up in his neighbor’s (Matt Smith) drug ring. What really makes Caught Stealing sing, though, is its incredible ensemble of characters played by the likes of Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bad Bunny, and Griffin Dunne.
Almost two full years after The Toxic Avenger first premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest, the remake of one of the ultimate cult classics is getting a wide release. Peter Dinklage stars as Winston Gooze, a janitor who gets transformed into a grotesque mutant after a bizarre accident. Now, he’s taking on criminals and the true inhuman freaks of the world: CEOs. If it’s anything like the original ’80s splatter film, it’ll be pretty disgusting and gross (complimentary). —James Grebey
A remake of the 1989 film The War of the Roses, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star as the increasingly volatile couple at the center of this black comedy. It’s a slightly odd pairing with an even odder cast, including Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as a couple with raging sexual chemistry.
British author (and Taskmaster contestant) Richard Osman’s best-selling series is getting a movie adaptation. Starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie, the Netflix release centers on a group of bored retirees who get together to solve cases. They end up pulled into a current mystery, and their past careers (psychiatrist, spy, nurse, union activist) inform their investigation. —Roxana Hadadi
Jaws has really been milking its 50th anniversary, but if you’re Jaws you can do that. You might as well honor the end of summer with the quintessential summer blockbuster in theaters. No shark movie has done it better in a half-century, after all. (A few have come close, though!)
“Winners are: Y2K updos, shirtless blazers, men falling asleep, Jeremiah’s reactions, the reality TV publicist industrial complex … And the phrase “standing on business.”
Vulture staff watched and detailed every single important moment from the Love Island reunion, which you can read here, while writer Caroline Framke reported from behind the scenes of the reunion here.
Thunderbolts* is kinda the best Marvel movie of the year. Fantastic Four is a close second, sure, but Florence Pugh leading a group of depressed villain castaways was the film that really felt like more of a return to form for the MCU. Too bad for Disney that Thunderbolts* didn’t exactly bring Marvel back to its box-office glory days. Still, a fun movie to check out, especially since this group is now the New Avengers. Whatever that means …
➽ Plus, have a scary double-feature night with the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot and Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s codependent body-horror film Together, now out on VOD.
Did you know that Thomas Vinterberg, the Danish director behind Another Round and early Dogme 95 classic The Celebration, recently made an entire TV show? And that all seven episodes of the miniseries — a handsomely shot reverse-refugee-crisis drama about the entire nation of Denmark being forced to leave behind their country due to climate change — have been on Netflix this whole summer? Well, it’s not your fault if you missed it (there’s been little to no discussion of it here on American shores), but now that you know about it, you have no one to blame but yourself if you skip what might be one of the best shows of the year. —Ray Rahman
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of August 22.
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