August film preview: Gillian Anderson, Wile E. Coyote, and a couple of Idiots

Summer is speeding by, but fret not film fans, because movie theaters are ready for the dog days of summer with a little Teenage Sex And Death and the long-awaited trial of Coyote Vs. Acme. This month, we’re narrowing our preview focus. Instead of the typical 15-movie rundown, staff writer Matt Schimkowitz is streamlining things with the five August releases that are most worth your time. That means making some tough calls, so you’ll also find the rest of the month’s offerings in the section below the August film preview’s most anticipated picks.

Tony (August 7)

After delivering one of the best movies of the year so far with Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, writer-director Matt Johnson returns to his Blackberry roots. Tony, a biopic about the early years of legendary chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain, appears far more conventional than Johnson’s typical fare. But with The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa as the young culinary firebrand in a Cape Cod-set coming-of-age summer dramedy, this could serve as the year’s tasty second course from Johnson.

Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (August 7)

A meta-slasher from Jane Schoenbrun, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma delivers on its title and then some. When an up-and-coming film director (Hannah Einbinder) signs on to reboot the long-dormant Camp Miasma horror series, she knows exactly who she wants to star in it: original final girl Billy (Gillian Anderson). But this wildly funny and startlingly intimate slasher send-up is more than its title, too, as Schoenbrun personifies la petite morte with a personal and ingenious ode to watching horror movies that you’re too young for.

The End Of Oak Street (August 14)

When we last saw It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, he was snooping around Under The Silver Lake, decoding pop culture to the confusion of the dozens who saw it. Back nearly 10 years later with a sci-fi whatsit produced by J.J. Abrams, the filmmaker’s The End Of Oak Street stars Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway as suburban parents who have to explain to their children that their neighborhood traveled backwards through time to the Jurassic era. With dinosaurs outside their window, Oak Street is another big swing from Mitchell and, possibly, a late-summer popcorn movie delight.

Coyote Vs. Acme (August 28)

Arriving in theaters so late that it might be in contempt of court, Coyote Vs. Acme has been on the shelf for nearly three years, a victim of Warner Bros. Discovery’s tax loophole era. Now thanks to Ketchup Entertainment, audiences can finally see what was so objectionable about this Roger Rabbit-inspired comedy starring John Cena, Will Forte, and Wile E. Coyote. Based on a classic New Yorker article, Coyote Vs. Acme sees Wile filing a suit against the Acme Corporation after yet another product blew up in his face.