The Best New Amazon Prime Video Arrivals Of August 2019
Prime Day has come and gone, and there's more of July behind us than in front of us. It's time to take a look at the new offerings you should keep your eyes open for on Amazon Prime Video in August.
Just like its July menu, Prime has plenty of new action coming to the streaming service in August. There's lots of monster-themed action including Kaiju, Frankenstein's Monster, and a hero birthed in the deepest pit of Hell. There's also spies, Spartans, and space-age messiahs. Amazon's a bit more generous in the laughter department than it was in July, with computer geek improv and reincarnated snowmen. There's some screams and thrills, a man's search for his mysterious father, and a pair of familiar faces in a Victorian-era fantasy mystery.
If that's too vague, keep reading to find out what the best new arrivals are on Amazon Prime Video in August 2019.
Carnival Row - August 30
Amazon Prime's new original series Carnival Row mixes fantasy, mystery, and a politically tense environment that's unfortunately familiar at this point.
With a cast that stars Orlando Bloom as human Rycroft Philostrate and Cara Delevingne as the winged faerie Vignette Stonemoss, Carnival Row is set in a Victorian-era city where the kinds of fantasy creatures we're not used to seeing outside a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or a Lord of the Rings adaptation are an everyday fact of life. But while these creatures' existences are accepted, that doesn't mean the humans of this fictional world like them very much. The fantasy creatures of Carnival Row – like Vignette — are refugees from a war-torn land and are subjected to inhumane laws while living in the city. One freedom denied them is romance with humans, making the affair between Rycroft and Vignette a risky one. While the pair wrestle with that looming danger, they most also investigate a string of unsolved murders.
All eight hour-long episodes of Carnival Row will be released on Amazon Prime on August 30. With a premise as singular and promising as this, it's definitely worth checking out.
Action
If the surprise release of the trailer for next year's Top Gun: Maverick got you excited and now you're left with an itch that can't be scratched until 2020, Amazon Prime might have a partial solution for you with another Tom Cruise-led action flick. On August 23, last year's critically lauded Mission: Impossible — Fallout lands on Amazon Prime starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Ving Rhames.
Henry Cavill's career owes a lot to Zack Snyder, who directed the actor as comic book icon Superman in Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League. And Amazon Prime may be a favorite place for Zack Snyder fans in August. Snyder's war epic 300 will be Prime's very first new August arrival, while Sucker Punch arrives later in the month.
While none of Snyder's superhero flicks will arrive on Prime in August, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army will be there, and it will be joined by other monster-filled action flicks like 2014's Godzilla and Aaron Eckhart in I, Frankenstein.
August 2
300 (2006)
August 23
Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018)
August 31
Godzilla (2014)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
I, Frankenstein (2014)
Sucker Punch (2011)
The Fifth Element (1997)
Thriller/Horror
The process of buying a home isn't known for its lack of stress. But if you find yourself looking for a new place to hang your hat and find the whole thing impossibly frustrating, maybe drop by Amazon Prime at the end of August for 1986's Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Starring Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, and Heather O'Rourke, Poltergeist II is the second entry in the saga of the Freeling family — people who just can't get a break when it comes to where they plant stakes. Though they've moved from the home where vengeful spirits plagued them in 1982's Poltergeist, the family soon learns the truth of the old adage, "No matter where you go... there the creepy ghosts from the first movie are."
But if supernatural fears aren't your cup of tea, Amazon offers some scares based more firmly in the real world with 2013's Manuscripts Don't Burn. Made by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, the thriller follows a writer named Kasra as he attempts to escape Iran with his politically-charged writing after the country's authorities learn of his plans.
August 31
Manuscripts Don't Burn (2013)
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Drama
In 1996, former US Director of Central Intelligence William Colby disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Fifteen years later, the documentary The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby was released, directed and narrated by the late Colby's son Carl. Driven by a son's need to know the truth about his father and inevitably tied to some of the most important historical events of the 20th century, The Man Nobody Knew succeeds as what Philadelphia Inquirer's Steven Rea calls "a deeply personal film and an important historical document." The documentary arrives on Amazon Prime on Aug 31.
If you'd prefer something with a bit more distance from the present day, 1983's western drama Sacred Ground premieres the same day. The film is noteworthy both as "one of the precious few westerns produced in the 1980s" as well as character actor Tim McIntire's final film. Set the same year the American Civil War began, Sacred Ground revolves around the ostracism a white man and Native American woman face when they choose to live as man and wife.
August 31
Sacred Ground (1983)
The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby (2011)
Comedy
If you need some more laughter in your life, Amazon Prime is blessed with some unique humor offerings in August.
The indy comedy Computer Chess shows up on Prime at the end of the month, and 2013's critics couldn't get enough of it. Filmed completely on analog video and, as AV Club's Mike D'Angelo puts it, looking "like an industrial training film" from the '80s, Computer Chess is set in a "weekend tournament of chess programmers," a.k.a. the people who created the world we live in now. If you're enjoying that quirky, nerdy humor, keep things going and follow an atomic scientist to a town full of people-eating salesmen in 1999's comedy-horror Top of the Food Chain.
But if you don't want to spend a weekend with nerds, you can instead spend some time with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in the twisted black comedy mystery A Simple Favor. Or, for something a little sweeter and more family-friendly, watch as Michael Keaton dies and comes back to life as a snowman in 1998's Jack Frost.
Aug 21
A Simple Favor (2019)
Aug 31
Computer Chess (2013)
Jack Frost (1998)
Top of the Food Chain (1999)