Movies I saw in April: Normal, Apex, Over Your Dead Body

The movies I saw in April were full of violence: violence between spouses, violence between a woman and her captor, and, in my least favorite of the four, violence that takes over an entire town:

Normal (In the theater, 4/18/2026) Grade: D.

I like Bob Odenkirk so much, I could watch him eat oatmeal. And I bet I would enjoy that more than this movie, which I only gave a passing grade because of a squeaky leather jacket and my never wanting to give Odenkirk an “F.”

So instead of bothering with this movie, I would suggest you watch another dark and violent crime drama set in snowy Minnesota called “Fargo,” because that story at least has a thick coat of quirkiness, and a warm, beating heart hiding under all the violence.

Apex (Netflix, 4/25/2026) Grade: B-.

I like Charlize Theron, and would have enjoyed a lot more of her just eating noodles at her beautiful campsite, and a lot less of her fighting with and fleeing from a seriously warped human.

And while I certainly appreciate that the movie did not make our heroine a damsel in distress,  I did bristle at the notion that the bad guy had to be super depraved to scare us. Because for most women alone in the wilderness, any man she encounters can be a threat: Statistically bigger, stronger, faster and more likely to know basic fighting moves, most men can terrify most women by their mere presence.

But even more offensive to me was all the CGI. The beginning of the movie reminded me of the documentary The Dawn Wall, which centers on two climbers trying to scale El Capitan, spending days and days in a tent perched precariously on a rock face because one of the men can’t complete a difficult section, and the other refuses to leave his partner behind.

The documentary is a compelling story beautifully shot, and I can’t help but feel sadness for the incredibly skilled people we forget about in those movies: The ones also on the mountain filming. 

Much like how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and wearing heels, the camera operators are also climbing, plus wrangling heavy equipment while constantly angling for compelling scenes and framing. But now their hard-won skills are quickly being replaced by technology that can supposedly generate scenery that is just as jaw-dropping.

But not to me; I can’t be awed if I can tell a computer created it, especially not when I feel more and more each day that artificial intelligence will be the Apex predator for humans. And our captor didn't even need to drag us to its cave for dinner; no, this one we invited into our cave, letting it quietly nibble away at anything it wants until we realize far too late that even if we could still escape to the outside world again, we will find that we allowed it to evolve beyond us, willingly engineering our own obsolescence. 

Over Your Dead Body (In the theater, 4/25/2026). Grade: A-.

This movie was a bit too long and I could have done without ever seeing a lawn mower used as a weapon, but it also gave me the first big belly laugh since the reboot of Anaconda. 

And I can forgive a movie almost anything if it lets two old farts save the day: The first a nosy neighbor who uses his Rolodex and big-buttoned phone to alert the second old fart, who then breaks out of his nursing home and steals a car so he can check on his cabin by the lake.

It also benefits greatly from the charms of actors like Timothy Olyphant, who almost single-handedly notches this remake above the foreign film it is based on, a feat I didn’t think was possible after decades of watching failed attempts: “Point of No Return,” a far less interesting version of “La Femme Nikita”; “Downhill,” a far less mature and nuanced version of “Force Majuere”; and, most egregious of all, “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything,”which I think was nothing but a ghastly insult to the marvelousness of “Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert.”

Heck, even my grandmother agreed about To Wong Foo, describing it as “Not good show. No movement, stupid at times.”

The Trip/I Onde Dager (Netflix, 4/25/2026). Grade: C-.

This is the Norwegian film that inspired “Over Your Dead Body” — so much so that the movies often felt like scene-by-scene reshoots done in different languages – that I found much less fun and inventive than the American remake, as its tone was a bit too dark without the comedic talents of both Olyphant and Jason Segel. 

But who I missed the most from this film was Juliette Lewis, whose eccentric charm is so watchable, I think she could making eating oatmeal even more entertaining than Odenkirk would.

And while I did enjoy seeing Noomi Rapace again, I think her talents were a bit wasted in this role, and recommend you catch her work as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” instead.

Movies I saw in March: Ready or Not 2, Marty Supreme, Blue Moon. 

Here are the movies my grandmother saw in April of 1998:

Saturday, April 4, 1998

4/4/1998 To show, “Mercury Rising.” Bruce Willis, autistic boy.
4/6/1998: To show, “Men with Guns.” Good.

4/9/1998: To show, “Primary Colors.” Enjoyed. Only 5 there.

4/16/1998: To show, “City of Angels.” N. Cage, Meg Ryan.

4/25/1998: To show, “The Locket.” Old, 1946. Robert Mitchum.

4/26/1998: To show, “Spanish Prisoner.” Good.

Movies I saw in May: Mission Impossible 8, Columbus, Extraction & Extraction 2

Movie poster for MI:8.

The movies I saw in May included only one seen in the theater, one seen on DVD, and two seen on a streaming service:

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (In the theater). Grade: Solid B. I stopped watching the Mission Impossible movies after that ridiculous scene (maybe in the second installment?) where Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, and a foe are driving straight at each other on motorcycles, then both jump up and start grappling in midair – a sight that made my eyes stick in mid-roll for at least a week.

But I came back to the series for Mission Impossible: Fallout, which was enjoyable and certainly visually stunning, then found myself venturing back to the theater for Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, though somehow I completely missed MI: Dead Reckoning, Part One. But no matter, they filled me in on all I missed from MI:7 with quite an exposition dump at the start of MI:8.

Final Reckoning is quite long, just a bit shorter than Oppenheimer. But while I never felt the length of Oppenheimer, I felt the length of this movie. A lot. The first hour is schlocky, the second hour slowly gets better before featuring the best sequence, which has Hunt diving into a sunken submarine and being forced to strip to his underwear again (I forget how many times total they showed us what great shape Cruise is still in), and the third hour has the best action, though it features a dueling-planes battle almost as ridiculous as the dueling-motorcycles one.

Columbus (DVD, rented from the library) Grade: A. I don’t remember ever hearing about this movie, though it came out nearly 10 years ago in 2017. Maybe a lot of other people never heard about it, either, because it has possibly the least-intriguing cover art ever, something my husband described as “looking like a boring training video.”

And for some, the movie itself might be quite boring, as not much happens. Just a lot of soothing and artistic visuals interspersed with lots of talking, mostly between a young woman living in Columbus, Ohio, and a Korean man visiting the city because his father had a stroke during his visit and is still in the hospital there. The two main characters meet over a cigarette and strike up a friendship that changes each other's lives in that way only a chance encounter can do, as often you need a stranger to finally convince you to do the thing that everyone else, including your inner voice, have been telling you to do.

My only gripe about the movie is that if you decide to have a character's smoking be important to the plot, you should really make sure the person portraying that character can believably smoke. Otherwise, people like me get pulled out of the movie with every puff pulled off by someone who very obviously has never smoked cigarettes.

Extraction & Extraction 2 (Netflix originals) Both get an A-. I watched these out of order, because my husband said the second one was far superior. So of course I preferred the first one! Both are definitely worth a watch.

I enjoyed the characters and their relationships much more in the first movie, though the second one includes one of the best fighting scenes I have seen in a long time, with Chris Hemsworth's Tyler Rake fighting off an entire prison full of inmates attacking him with whatever they can find, and being saved multiple times by the woman he is “extracting,” who bravely whacks anyone she can reach with a shovel, her fists and her feet.

Having women join the fighting is my favorite thing about the second Extraction, as some of the most brutal and inventive hand-to-hand combat scenes feature Rake’s handler, played by the beautiful and badass Golshifteh Farahani, fighting off multiple attackers more than once after being cornered in seemingly-impossible situations.

So, wait: Maybe my husband was right after all, and the second was better? Impossible! Either way, this review will self destruct after reading.

Bonus: My grandmother’s reviews for the movies she saw in May of 2000:

Mumford, rented from Hollywood Video, recommended by (Roger) Ebert: “Enjoyable.”

Dreamed of Africa: No review

East/West: “Thought good.”

Center Stage: “Excellent.” (Justine here: I loved that movie, too!)

Small Time Crooks: No review, though she notes that Ebert liked it.

Movies I saw in April: Sinners, The Accountant 2

Movies I saw in April: Sinners, The Accountant 2 and Havoc

Movie poster for Sinners.

The movies I saw in April were a very mixed bag, with the first being pretty dang perfect, the second pretty disappointing, and the third pretty much a complete waste of time.

The pretty dang perfect one was Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who buy an old saw mill in 1930s Mississippi and spend one very eventful day turning it into a juke joint. Like a more musically inclined From Dusk Till Dawn with a pinch of Footloose and a handful of Mississippi Burning mixed in, this movie both looks and sounds great, especially one sequence that effortlessly blends many decades worth of music and dancing styles together into one masterful and gorgeous minute of cinema.

Also impressive was the job Jordan did portraying subtle differences in the twins' personalities, but even more impressive was how the filmmakers made it appear as if there were actually two of him on screen without relying on any of the cringe-worthy effects usually deployed when one actor plays dual roles.

The pretty disappointing movie was The Accountant 2, though likely mostly because of my own expectations. I loved the first movie so much that seeing the trailer for its sequel made me squeal out loud in the theater, and I can't remember being more excited for a second installment since maybe The Empire Strikes Back.

But while Empire is easily argued to be even better than the original Star Wars movie, I found nothing about The Accountant 2 that was even as good as the first, let alone better, as one trailer promised. But if you liked the relationship between the brothers that Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal play in both movies, their few good scenes together could be enough to recommend this movie. Otherwise, the best thing it has to offer is Bernthal strutting around in his underwear.

As disappointing as The Accountant 2 was to me, however, it was a cinematic masterpiece compared to Havoc, a Netflix original starring Tom Hardy and Timothy Olyphant. The movie sounded so promising that it achieved the near-impossible feat of getting both my husband and me to agree on watching it, but the promise faded so quickly that we almost turned it off. And by the end I felt like I sat through a violent video game that I wouldn't want to play, let alone just watch being played.

And while Hardy and Olyphant can usually make even the most despicable cads charming, the only character I found worth rooting for in the movie was a young female cop with only a few scenes, though she did manage to star in just about the only scene I liked.

Movies I saw in March: Last Breath, Black Bag, Novocaine and The Substance.

Finally, here are four much shorter reviews my grandmother gave the movies she saw nearly 25 years ago in April of 1996:

• Flirting with Disaster: "Gross, explicit."
• James and the Giant Peach: "School is out, audience was riveted."
• Last Summer in the Hamptons: "Good, felt real - not actors!"
• Mulholland Falls: "Violent. Nolte and Melanie Griffith."