Director Joe Carnahan’s new action-thriller The Rip with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck headlines this week’s streaming release schedule, accompanied by Sophie Turner thriller miniseries Steal, and the VOD debut of fantasy rom-com Eternity.
SERIES
Steal S1
21 January 2026 – Prime Video
Sophie Turner grabbed headlines yesterday with her first official reveal as Lara Croft in Prime Video’s upcoming live-action Tomb Raider TV series. That’s not her only big news for Amazon’s streaming service this week though. Steal is a new six-episode miniseries billed as “a high-octane thriller about the heist of the century and an ordinary office worker, Zara (Turner), who finds herself at the heart of it.” The show follows the chaotic events that unfold when a gang of thieves burst into a pension fund investment company and force the staff to execute their demands and steal billions of pounds from ordinary people’s pensions. Now, as somebody who actually works at a large financial company as part of my day job, I could point out that stealing money like this is practically impossible as everything can get rolled back with just a few keystrokes after the fact, but we don’t let a silly little thing like reality get in the way of entertainment around here!
The Beauty
22 January 2026 – Disney+
The world of high fashion is known for killer looks, but that takes on a literal meaning in The Beauty. The rather great pairing of Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall play FBI Agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett, who are sent to Paris to investigate a string of international supermodels dying in gruesome and mysterious ways. Thus far, this sounds like a pretty ordinary police procedural, but there’s a twist: As the agents unearth the horrific details of the case, they uncover the existence of a “sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into visions of physical perfection, but with terrifying consequences.” Yikes. Okay, not what I was expecting. In a twist, Ashton Kutcher – who previously played billionaire tech mogul Steve Jobs – plays a billionaire tech mogul known simply as “The Corporation” who has engineered “The Beauty”, a popular superdrug that is secretly at the root of all the deaths. And The Corporation will do anything to protect his trillion-dollar empire – including unleashing his lethal enforcer, “The Assassin” (Anthony Ramos). No, I am not making up these names.
MOVIES
The Rip
16 January 2026 – Netflix
Written and directed by John Carnahan and headlined by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Can somebody please explain to me how The Rip is seemingly flying under so many people’s radar? And I’m not even mentioning the supporting cast which the likes of Steven Yeun, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Kyle Chandler, and Scott Adkins. That’s a whole lot of talent stuffed into this action thriller, which follows the Miami-Dade Tactical Narcotics Team who make a drug bust (aka a “rip”) on a home, only to discover millions in cash that nobody else had expected or knew about. It’s the type of money that doesn’t just change lives but changes people, as the team starts to realize that they can’t quite trust each other when a small mountain of untraceable dollars is at stake. Get ready for a whole lot of tense standoffs and explosive action!
RENTALS/PURCHASES
The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:
Eternity
Purchase: Apple TV – R200
Rental: Apple TV – R170
If you don’t know who Callum Turner is, chances are you’re going to be finding out very soon. The young English actor is one of the hottest rising stars at the moment (not to be confused with other hot rising British star Josh O’Connor) and is the top pick by most bookies to be the next James Bond. And if you want a great example of his range, then check out Eternity. The fantasy romantic comedy stars Turner alongside Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller, as the most unconventional love triangle: When elderly couple Larry (Teller) and Joan (Olsen) die shortly after each other, they find themselves reunited in the afterlife – or at least the junction before the proper afterlife – restored to youth. But there’s a problem. In the junction, you have to pick where and with whom you spend the rest of eternity, and Joan’s first husband and Luke (Turner), who died young in the Korean War, is also there and has been waiting for her for 65 years. Now Joan has one week to make the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with or her first great love who sacrificed decades of his own heaven for her.
Regretting You
Purchase: Apple TV – R150
Rental: Apple TV – R45
Director Josh Boone knows how to make a weepy romantic drama, as evidenced with his much beloved The Fault in Our Stars. While his next directing effort was undoubtedly a misstep (sorry, The New Mutants), he’s back in the genre that made his name with Regretting You. Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s 2019 novel of the same name, Regretting You stars Allison Williams as Morgan Grant and McKenna Grace as Clara, the now-grown-up daughter Morgan had when she was just eighteen. Morgan and her sister Jenny both married their respective high school sweethearts, but when a devastating accident results in the death of her husband and sister, it brings Morgan and her brother-in-law Jonah (Dave Franco) closer. Unfortunately, this unearths a shocking family secret that throws Morgan and Clara’s life into chaos, exacerbated further by Clara’s fledgling relationship with her classmate Miller (Mason Thames) who Morgan does not approve of.
Muzzle: City of Wolves
Purchase: Apple TV – R150
Rental: Apple TV – R45
Aaron Eckhart has all the talent and physical gifts to have been one of Hollywood’s top leading men, except he is a bit of an ass. That’s not my opinion. That’s coming from Eckhart himself who admitted publicly that he’s notoriously difficult to work with and thus has squandered his A-list opportunities. Thus, the once-Golden Globes nominee has spent the last half a decade starring in a string of direct-to-streaming low-budget action movies that cater to dads. His latest is called Muzzle: City of Wolves, which is a title so bad that it becomes good, and honestly is about 60% of the reason I’m including it today. The other 40% is due to the fact that this sequel to 2020’s Muzzle (don’t worry if haven’t heard of it before) changed primary shooting locations from the original’s Louisville, Kentucky in the USA to right here in Cape Town! Yeah, so expect to see a few familiar places and faces in this action thriller about an LAPD officer and his retired K9 partner who gets pulled into a brutal gangland battle to protect his loved ones.