The Best 3 New Movies on Netflix in July 2020

The Old Guard

If you loved Netflix’s Chris Hemsworth action vehicle Extraction and are in the mood for some more A-list ass-kicking, set your sights on The Old Guard. Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights the lights filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood takes the sun-drenched mercenary riff and gives it an epic sci-fi spin with the story of a team of immortal soldiers of fortune who have shaped the course of history. The ensemble is led by Charlize Theron, who we know damn well can handle an intense action scene, and the trailer legit slaps. Netflix’s original action movies have been a mixed bag so far, some slight but entertaining a la Extraction, some heavy but thoughtful a la Triple Frontier, but in Collider’s official review, Matt Goldberg praised The Old Guard as Netflix’s best original action movie yet, which isn’t quite a surprise with a filmmaker as skilled as Prince-Bythewood at the helm, but it sure is exciting.

Available: July 10

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Writer: Greg Rucka

Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ip Man 4: The Finale

They may not be the box office presence in the US that they should be, but the Ip Man films have been some of the most consistent showcases of phenomenal fight choreography and commanding physical performances since 2008 – from franchise star Donnie Yen especially, though there’s a whole-ass litany of standouts along the way. Real talk, there’s definitely a lot of conversation to be had about how these films, especially the fourth one, convey a theme of xenophobia and how much that’s appropriate to the context of the historical setting vs. how much it’s an agent of contemporary propagandist messaging. But guess what, that’s a much longer and more nuanced conversation than we have space for in this blurb. Lest we get into historical fact vs. Wuxia-tinged fantasy, for goodness sake!

So for now, let’s stick to the basics and say that, like all the other films in the franchise, that’s all very complicated in Ip Man 4: The Finale. But the fight scenes absolutely own. Donnie Yen absolutely owns. From the choreography to the composition to the casting and performance, there are few martial arts franchises that have brought the vigor and technique that The Finale brings to the much-hyped Donnie Yen vs. Scott Adkins showdown. We’re talking a near four minutes of throwing ‘bows and chain punching between two of the best martial arts performers in the business. I adore superhero movies and the like, but there was a trade-off in expertise and technical focus when we swapped action stars for movie stars (that attention to craftsmanship is why we all love John Wick so much,) and it’s always a thrill to see how far the masters can take a well-crafted set-piece.

Available: July 20

Director: Wilson Yip

Writer: Edmond Wong, Dana Fukazawa, Chan Tai Lee, Jil Leung Lai Yin

Cast: Donnie Yen, Wu Yue, Vanness Wu, Scott Adkins, Kent Cheng, Danny Chan, Ngo Ka-nin

The Kissing Booth 2

The Kissing Booth arrived back in 2018 as the streamer was kicking into high gear on reviving the rom-com genre. And it. was. ridiculous. An unabashedly over-the-top teen romance that felt like ever fan-fiction you’ve ever read come to life on the screen, The Kissing Booth relished in the tropes of the genre and the act of embracing them so thoroughly made it a pretty dang fun movie, if not a very good one. A lot of that credit also goes to the wonderful Joey King, who’s extremely game in the lead role, swooning and hamming it up with a gleeful goofiness as Elle, a teenage girl who sets up fundraising kissing booth at her high school fair and winds up falling in love with her best friends bad boy older brother (Jacob Elordi, doing a much more endearing version of toxic masculinity than his genuinely terrifying portrayal in Euphoria.) The sequel picks up with Elle trying to balance their long-distance relationship, the new dynamics with her BFF, and a sexy new classmate.

Available: July 24

Director: Vince Marcello

Writer: Vince Marcello and Jay Arnold

Cast: Joey King, Joel Courtney, Jacob Elordi, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Taylor Perez, Molly Ringwald, Meaganne Young