Bite-sized Reviews

'North Water', 'Marilyn' & 'Shining Girls': Five things to stream now

Colin Farrel's finest performance, a look at the death of the Hollywood star, and an SA author's sci-fi murder mystery all come to the small screen

01 May 2022 - 00:00

By Tymon Smith

Image: Showmax Colin Farrell in The North Water.

THE NORTH WATER

Colin Farrell gives arguably his finest performance to date in this Victorian-era survivalist drama as a dangerously untrustworthy harpooner on a whale ship sent on a suicide mission to the arctic.

Where to stream it: Showmax

How much time you'll need to binge it: 5 hours

WOMEN OF THE MOVEMENT

Adrienne Warren offers a defiantly moving portrayal of Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of murdered African American teenager Emmett Till whose 1955 lynching and his mother’s fearless search for justice helped to ignite the Civil Rights movement.

Where to stream it: Showmax

How much time you'll need to binge it: 5 hours

CATHERINE THE GREAT

Helen Mirren has the time of her life playing the Russian Empress during the last years of her life when she faced threats to her throne and the scandal of an affair with the much younger Grigory Potemkin in this sumptuously realised political-intrigue period drama.

Where to stream it: Showmax

How much time you'll need to binge it: 4 hours

SHINING GIRLS

Elizabeth Moss brings South African author Lauren Beukes’s Shining Girls protagonist Kirby Mizrachi to troubled, intriguing life in this engaging and suitably head-scratching adaptation of the time-travelling psychological thriller.

Where to stream it: Apple TV +

How much time you'll need to binge it: 3 hours

THE MYSTERY OF MARILYN MONROE:
THE UNHEARD TAPES

It doesn’t deliver enough in its promise to unravel truth from conspiracy theory in the 1962 death of its subject, but director Emma Cooper’s documentary succeeds in offering a thoughtful overview of the star’s early life and personal tragedies that shaped her brief but brightly burning ascension to pop-culture immortality.

Where to stream it: Netflix

How much time you'll need to binge it: 100 minutes