SURPRISE! It’s alive!! And by “it”, I mean Claira’s Corner, my little corner of Substack. Yaaaaay! I can hear you all cheering! (please clap)
It’s been almost exactly a year since my last post and a big part of why I left this space alone for so long is because I felt, and still do feel, very much like I absolutely HAD/HAVE to do a write-up on the last episode of The Last of Us season two because I did one for literally every other episode in the season. However, consider this everyone reading and also the me who thinks that, I really did not like the finale and I really don’t want to have to rewatch it again to write about it… TLDR; disappointing, really messy, VERY worried for Season 3. Maybe someday I will revisit it for the sake of completion.
In the meantime, I would really like to use this space more consistently! There’s a sense of freedom tied to the idea of Substack that I find really refreshing. Typing away on here reminds me a lot of the years I spent writing One Direction Imagines on Tumblr (lol) or Warrior Cats and Winged Wolf RP on Freewebs dot com (RIP Freewebs dot com). I can imagine some of y’all’s eyebrows are raised at the thought of 10-to-18-year-old me spending my time writing such things and now you want to know more. Well, we don’t have time to talk about that sort of lore right now because I want to talk about some of the movies I was watching in April.
So we’re going to do that! This is a breakdown of the new releases in April that I watched in order of how much I liked them + the new releases in May that I’m looking the most forward to! New to me watches are not included for the sake of time and length, but please know I watched some really exceptional films this past month. Also, huge shoutout to The Pitt season two. What a great show. I talked about it quite a bit for our podcast’s Patreon :)
At the time I’m writing this, I’ve seen 18 of the films released in April 2026. There are quite a few I’ve missed— some intentionally (Balls Up, Outcome), others with varying degrees of “ah, well” (Normal, Fuze, Pizza Movie) and even more with great sadness (Mārama, Mad Bills to Pay, Our Hero, Balthazar). A lot of the films I have seen are admittedly titles I saw at festival screenings, but I remember movies really well— arguably freakishly well— so I am including them.
[read this in a Mario voice, except not Chris Pratt’s Mario voice, do a different Mario voice] Here we go!
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Honestly, I’m surprised we were able to talk about this movie for as long as we did on the podcast. There’s no story and there’s also way too much going on and all of it is really not good. I started playing Super Mario Galaxy for the first time earlier this year and I am floored by how disinterested the film is in pursuing the story offered there. Not to get too into gaming on a post about movies, but I actually don’t really love SMG as much as I thought I would either. I am such a big Mario game guy but there’s something about that one that doesn’t quite hit the same for me. I think it’s because of the 3D level designs. I’m honestly finding it pretty disorientating to play. But maybe that’s because I turn 30 in less than a month (aka skill issue).
ANYWAYS! Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Every year, I have a little collection of movies that I have affectionately started referring to in my head as the Forget-Me’s. They’re the movies I see in any given year and then by the end of the year, I completely forget they came out that year. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is already turning into a Forget-Me of 2026. I keep having to remind myself it came out this past month. No other Forget-Me has ever become a Forget-Me so quickly.
Thrash
I love shark movies. The thing about shark movies though is there’s only so many places to go with this type of movie, especially as scientific understanding of sharks has improved over time. As a result, the world of gonzo-ridiculous shark movies has really flourished. These are movies that are content with being as outrageous as they can be for the sake of chaos and some good, old hungry-hungry-shark sequences. Special shoutout to Avalanche Sharks (2012) for being sooooooo bad and also so unreal ridiculous. Sharks on a mountain eating women in bikinis!!! What are we doing!!
Thrash commits the worst sin of all when it comes to shark movies. It tries to be both deep and ultra-ridiculous. I bet you’re thinking, “But, Claira, can’t a movie do both?” and it’s like yeah, technically, obviously, but also I am the boss and I am saying that shark movies cannot really be both if they want to be so ridiculous, at least to the degree Thrash is attempting. Part of this stems from me being mad I had to watch an hour of disaster sequences. I have a very big fear of tornadoes and tsunamis and hurricanes. Disaster movies are the one kind of movie that I’m not seeking out. I’ll watch anything, except maybe the disaster movies. The other part of this stems from the fact Thrash is just not very good at all. I do like that it includes Stacy Clausen in its cast though. I think it’s great that he has a Netflix release (this) and an upcoming horror release (Leviticus) in the same year.
The explanation of why the sharks show up in Thrash made me LOL (necessary props to them for using bull sharks instead of great whites) and the end of Thrash made me LMAO. Ridiculous movie. I would probably watch a sequel.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
[blowing raspberry noise] What a stinker! We talked about it plenty on the podcast, but I am so bummed this wound up being such a poor film. I’m still willing to give other contemporary versions of monster movies a try, but my wariness of them grows stronger with each new attempt. Wolf Man wasn’t good either, but it’s at least trying to offer a new point-of-view to see its horrors through. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy can’t even manage that.
Michael
Technically speaking, it would make sense to shift Michael a little higher up the list, but it’s all just so noticably devoid of depth that I can’t justify having it anywhere else. The film’s unwillingness to offer any sort of complexity in how it portrays Michael Jackson as a person is its greatest failing. We talked about all the issues with this one on the podcast as well. I don’t think I have anything else to offer by talking about it more at this point.
14. Apex
So the thing about Baltasar Kormákur’s new film is that it begins with Eric Bana falling off of Troll Wall. It’s just like the beginning of the movie Fall (2022) except it happens on a mountain called Troll Wall. I really like that there is a mountain in Norway called Troll Wall and that it killed Eric Bana like seven minutes into the movie. Very economical of Troll Wall. Admittedly, this movie does lose points for giving me Eric Bana and then taking him away so quickly. Movies don’t understand that they all need more Eric Bana in them. Eric Bana, if you are reading this, please confirm that you are working on the film adaptation of Jane Harper’s “Exiles”, the third and final installment in the Aaron Falk trilogy!!!!!
The other thing I like about Apex is there’s a scene near the beginning that feels like a homage to Australian creature feature Razorback (1984). In both Razorback and Apex, a woman is threatened by men at night while alone in the Australian wilderness and in both instances, a larger, more threatening predator watches from the shadows. The difference here lies in the fact that Charlize Theron’s Sasha is a woman destined to save herself whereas Judy Morris’s Beth Winters is a woman destined to be devoured, but it was a real treat to see how similar the sequences felt when I was watching Apex. In general, I appreciate how the film as a whole feels very much in conversation with other Australian-set films of its kind. Razorback, Wolf Creek, and now this each balance the horrors of humanity against the backdrop of Australia’s unforgiving landscapes in really interesting and continuously evolving ways.
Beyond that though, I don’t think there’s much here to write home about.
Roommates
April was the month of Chandler Levack and this is the first of two features from her that are on this list. It’s also, obviously, the weaker of the two. There’s a lot of different reasons why Roommates falters so much, but I would argue none of them necessarily have to do with Levack’s direction. The problems here are ultimately story and performance problems. The biggest detractor from Roommates is how the film is framed through Sarah Squirm telling a roommate horror story to Ivy Wolk and Storm Reid. The actual story surrounding Sadie Sandler and Chloe East isn’t perfect either, but every time we have to cut away from them to go back to Squirm and Co. making some poor attempt at comedic commentary about their experiences, the entire flow of the story is derailed. The film in general takes on a bizarrely mean-spirited approach in the back-half that I found really hard to stay on board with. What works so well in Levack’s other films is that her characters are awful, and while that awfulness is called out and there are consequences for it, it never feels laced with an air of superiority like how Roommates does, which I think comes down to the fact this wasn’t written by Levack.
Omaha
Cole Webley’s directorial feature debut premiered last year at Sundance to quite a mixture of responses from my peers. I fell in the middle with this one, finding myself a fan of the cast’s performances (especially Molly Belle Wright’s) but wary of how exactly the film chose to execute its heartbreaking premise. Omaha feels reminiscent to something like Left-Handed Girl because both films tell their stories through the perspectives of their young leads. However, part of what helped make Left-Handed Girl work so well was the fact it was willing to show as much about its characters as it could despite the limited perspective it conveyed these details through. Omaha makes attempts at this, trying to widen our understanding as it progresses, but it’s so glued to this one specific trip that the realities of the characters outside of this journey feel flimsy and impossible to incorporate. In most instances, this would be frustrating, but for something like Omaha, whose entire premise hinges on our ability to understand these characters and their specific breaking point, the unwillingness to fully recognize its characters as individuals who exist outside of their trauma is especially frustrating. I think that fact means the film as a whole is a disservice to what it’s trying to portray.
You, Me & Tuscany
Ugh!! I wanted to love this so much! My heart yearns for more rom-coms in theaters. The death of the rom-com could be accredited to the fact most of them get sent straight to streaming now. You, Me & Tuscany isn’t a standout of the month, but I know for a fact I would have liked it even less had I seen it at home alone. The communal experience of sitting in a theater always makes these sorts of films more fun and that’s especially true here. I was let down by Halley Bailey and Regé-Jean Page’s chemistry and individual performances. I found them both oddly wooden with each other and individually, something that was made even more glaring by the fact all the different side characters involved here are so bubbly and alive and fun to watch. I like the modern spin on While You Were Sleeping, even if in some ways this version is even more ludicrous than the 90’s classic.
Exit 8
It’s so rare for video game adaptations to be actually good. On paper, Exit 8 could have easily fallen into the same category as most other adaptations of its kind, particularly because the game itself has such a limited premise. Part of the appeal of the game lies in that simplicity, as it often does for games sitting in the indie-horror space, but that thin of a story can’t support the weight of a film, at least if you want the film to be good. The construction of a more extensive narrative in Exit 8 allows the film to lean less on its scares as the focus, making those moments hit with more efficiency. I do think sometimes the film gets a little too caught up in the story it’s built, but I’d rather have too much than too little in that regard. I was initially a little annoyed that NEON waited to release the film for so long after scooping it up last August after its Cannes premiere, but now I think that was a wise choice. Released in the same year as Return to Silent Hill and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Exit 8’s success as an adaptation only looks even more impressive. Only time will tell if it winds up being the best of its kind this year… although, at least right now, it seems like that accolade might just go to Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil due later this year.
Bunnylovr
Of all the April releases I’ve seen, Bunnylovr is easily the film with the quietest release. A real shame because I found Katarina Zhu’s debut to be quite powerful in how it portrays the experiences of a modern sex worker. On Letterboxd, the synopsis uses the word “drifting” to describe the film’s protagonist and I can’t think of a more appropriate word. There’s a dreamlike apathy tied to how Rebecca navigates her life, and that apathy is directly linked to a lifetime of growing up online. Everything is bathed in the blue light glow of computer screens, pretty but eventually the cause of painful strain. Zhu very thoughtfully dissects misogyny, power dynamics, and the differences between action and words here. In some ways, this feels like a darker companion to Bob Trevino Likes It. Also, the movie has a really cute bunny in it. I wish more people had seen it!
Over Your Dead Body
Samara Weaving and Jason Segel trying to murder each other? Sign me up! Their comedic timing and chemistry in this US remake is such a blast. Or it is until the film sticks way too long on a sequence about sexual assault. By no means is the film endorsing the act, but the way it lingers on this impending threat and tries to lace the situation with humor does take the wind out of the film’s sails for a bit. I haven’t seen The Trip, the Norwegian film this is remaking, but my understanding is this specific sequence is handled with a little more tact in that instance. Beyond that issue, I did really enjoy the film. The film’s writers, Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, have had a busy month between this and their other film, Pizza Movie, both coming out in April. I’m still really impressed by how fun most of the film is despite how often each new reveal grinds the entire forward motion of the film to a halt and jolts us backwards again and again. The rhythm is such an odd one and yet it’s still easy to fall into step with.
Mother Mary
The one that almost got away from me. I kept putting off sitting down with David Lowery’s latest, which I can’t explain given the fact I am such a massive fan of A Ghost Story, The Green Knight, and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. I’m a sucker for a good ghost story and while Mother Mary insists it is no such thing, I do find the ways it has ghost-like specters coursing through its veins particularly striking. Its beauty hides something dark and nasty in its depths that I really enjoyed plunging into. There is a certain air of poetic pomp here that I can imagine doesn’t land quite as nicely for others, but for me, the inability to conceal its musings made the film all the more fun. Michaela Coel is so great here, her movements and expressions conveyed with a sort of jerk that I associate with flighty, small birds, always a second away from flitting away in the name of self-preservation. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway is so drenched in sadness, she’s perpetually sinking, the weight of her woes always obvious in the way she moves and speaks. I loved it!
The Drama
Again, we talked about The Drama at length on the podcast, but it’s worth repeating that I think this is the most romantic movie of the year so far. I’m really glad I rewatched this film because it really solidified all the reasons why I liked it. There are certainly flaws here, but overall it’s a really solid film that remains quite thought-provoking.
Faces of Death
In a similarly hyperbolic sense as The Drama, Faces of Death is April’s biggest surprise. Hell, it might be one of the biggest surprises of the year. I can’t believe how much I adored this. It manages to honor its predecessor while approaching its central premise from a completely new, fully-updated angle. Sometimes I think horror specifically can really struggle at tying its scares together with modern technology, but Faces of Death meets the challenge with eagerness and manages to be quite frightening, in part because of the incorporation of social media. The films Barbie Ferreira has been in post-Euphoria have created an impressively diverse portfolio that more than proves that she has the range to do it all. I thoroughly enjoyed her work here, especially when she’s getting to bounce directly off of the also very impressive Dacre Montgomery. Their final moments on screen together are jaw-dropping.
The Christophers
Recent statements about generative AI that I vehemently disagree with aside, Steven Soderbergh’s newest release is a fantastic conversation about legacy, art, and the role of the critic within artistic spaces. It’s breezy and simplistic rather than intense and overwhelming and it’s all the better for that sort of approach. Again, Michaela Coel is just divine here, playing a very different sort of role than the one seen in Mother Mary. It’s been a great month to admire her range. Ian McKellen’s performance as a cunty artist is a real treat as well. Their back and forth with one another feels almost cosmic, two generations of talent colliding to create something that leaves a lasting mark.
Erupcja
The last year or so has been, in part, all about Charlie XCX’s introduction to the world of acting with small performance after small performance. Her other performances that I’ve seen are all ones that I’d dub as “passably fine”, but her work in Erupcja is on a whole different level. I think her ability to take on the role of Bethany so authentically stems from Pete Ohs’s approach to filmmaking. Erupcja feels inherently collaborative because it was, the cast coming up with the details of the story as they went along, which speaks perfectly to each character’s own form of noncommittal living. The narration as well as the way the film is edited reminds me endlessly of some of Mike Mills’s best work. I love how the film wraps itself up, finding a form of finality that still alludes to the unknowability of life. I also checked out Ohs’s other film, The True Beauty of Being Bitten By a Tick, this month and it was almost just as great as this. Shoutout Letterboxd for offering the film via Letterboxd Video Store. I am loving the way Ohs creates films and I’m quite keen to check out more of his work this year.
Mile End Kicks
It’s a double Michaela Coel month, a double Chandler Levack month, AND a double Barbie Ferreira month! How lucky are we! In Mile End Kicks, Ferreira’s work as a messy mid-20s freelance music critic hits close to home on a multitude of levels. The time period, her struggles to connect with others, the men she throws herself at, and her desire to write all feel familiar and yet uniquely explored. She’s so me!! Levack’s ability to present deeply flawed characters in a way that is honest and yet still compassionate really shines through here when looking at the film’s protagonist, Grace, and the asshole musician she falls for along the way, Chevy. Also, Devon Bostick is sooooooooooooo sexy in this movie, it’s a little outrageous. I find the work he’s done post-Diary of a Wimpy Kid to be almost as impressively diverse as Ferreira’s post-Euphoria, although I do think he has a harder time trying to shake Rodrick Heffley’s image from audience’s memories when they watch him.
Blue Heron
Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron is the film of the year. I hate saying things like that when it’s only May and there are so many months left in the year, but it’s true. It was one of my absolute favorite films I saw last year and it’s one of the films I’ve thought about the most so far this year. It’s endlessly evocative. I can’t fully wrap my head around how clever it is at playing with form and our relationship to memory. It’s all just so unbelievably effective. There’s very little like it. Aftersun has been an apt, and frequent, comparison, although I do think the level of honesty found within Blue Heron elevates it slightly above Aftersun.
I want to, and easily could, write a whole essay just on Blue Heron and all that it manages to convey, but I also recognize that the film was on the limited side with its release. I really, really, really want people to see this one and I don’t want to go too in-depth when so many haven’t gotten to experience it yet.
Romvari is one of those filmmakers that I think I’ll look back on 30 years from now and be very, very grateful I was seeing her films in theaters as they came out. I believe she will become one of the driving voices of the medium going forward. If you weren’t aware, her short films were recently re-added to the Criterion Channel. It’s a treasure trove of a collection, full of similarly invigorating technical achievements and moving explorations of our relationship to memory and our loved ones. Still Processing is my favorite of the bunch and I also really love In Dog Years and Grandma’s House, but you truly can’t go wrong with any of her work.
Looking to the future, my most anticipated May releases are:
Silent Friend - Few films feel more “made for Claira” than a film about a tree observing the world around it across many decades. This movie was made for me! I’ve only seen one other film directed by Ildikó Enyedi, On Body and Soul (2017) (would definitely recommend), and I’m deeply curious how that film’s use of dreams as a point of connection will converse with her latest’s use of a tree in a presumably similar manner. I’m in the midst of reading (among several other books) “The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape” by Katie Holten, which is a collection of musings about and appreciation for trees of all shapes and sizes written by an expansive group of botanists, authors, artists, philosphers, etc. that I think is likely the perfect written company to what Silent Friend will be. I love trees and I can’t wait to see this movie.
Is God Is - I’ve been growing really fond of films adapted from plays in recent years, especially films adapted from plays that are also directorial feature debuts. Annie Baker’s Janet Planet was my favorite film of 2024 and I had such a blast with Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits from last month. Trailers for Aleshea Harris’s directorial debut started playing at the AMCs I frequent recently and the energy behind what they’re showing so far seems absolutely electric. The visual aesthetic of the film and the distinctive characters its introducing remind me of The Harder They Fall, which absolutely rips. Plus, it’s a film about sisterhood and reckoning with the horrors of girl/womanhood, which are almost always a guaranteed win in my book.
Forge - Jing Ai Ng’s directorial feature debut fell onto my radar a couple of months ago and I’ve been excitedly waiting for it ever since. After how much I loved The Christophers, I’m keen to see how Forge tackles the world of forgery, particularly because of how different an angle its approaching things from. I’ve also been thinking about how great of an actor Kelly Marie Tran is again ever since this past January when I watched another film she stars in, Rock Springs, virtually at Sundance. I’m really looking forward to seeing her play an FBI Agent tasked with investigating art forgery. My one fear is that I’ll wind up missing this one. It opens in LA while I’m in Cannes and I’m worried it will already be booted out of nearby theaters by the time I get home. Fingers crossed that’s not the case.
Saccharine - I loved the squirmy, painfully bleak way Relic sought to depict the realities of losing family members to memory loss, so my hopes are very high for the latest from Natalie Erika James. Interweaving our fixation around diet culture with our knee-jerk aversion to death is an intriguing idea and I’m hopeful it will prove to be a worthwhile and thought-provoking watch. I’m kind of pretending Apartment 7A doesn’t exist because it felt so shackled to Rosemary’s Baby in a way that felt very studio-influenced.
I’m heading to Cannes in T-6 days so there are also a lot of titles premiering there that I’m excited for! I figured I’d save Cannes talk for a future post of some kind instead of making this even longer than it already is though.
I would love to hear from you if you’ve read this far! What were your favorite watches of April? What are you most excited to see in May? I asked on Instagram, but it’s worth asking here too: what type of posts would you like to read on here in the future?
Yay, yippee, yahoo! Thanks for stopping by my corner of Substack :) TTYL!