While viewing it, I was afraid the 2025 Paul Feig film The Housemaid would present a cruel, and thus grim, ending; but not so. In fact it was sort of inspiring. A thriller, the pic is adapted from a best-selling novel, and it itself is a smash hit. It deserves to be. It’s a dramatic dreadnought starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (both excellent) and Brandon Sklenar (good). It’s unerringly photographed by John Schwartzman. Not without nudity, not without Nina’s breast pump, Housemaid is plainly sensual. BTW, one reason I believe the film is so popular is that the eroticism in it is strictly heterosexual, not gay. Bon appetit!

The animated film Robot Dreams‘ world of humanoid animals contains Dog—a dog—who is lonely in New York City and so purchases a humanoid robot to become his friend. It is not unlike having an AI girlfriend. The two have a great time together, but loss begins to beckon. . . Directed by Pablo Berger, the longish movie is a 2023 Spanish-French production, very agreeable. It’s patently charming to see a baby bird looking at the robot for advice or encouragement as mother bird teaches it to fly. Or when a lollypop-sucking raccoon works assiduously to repair busted-up Robot by adding parts to it. Except for a comic scene where there are obscene gestures, RD is a family film (not a mere children’s film), with a likable story and some pathos.

F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s long 1920 story (or novelette?), “May Day,” opens with a city celebration of American victory in World War One as the soldiers return. One senses, however, that the American people do not really understand why the war was fought, and in any case they can be “thoroughly fed up” with roaming soldiers. The victory is assuredly not affecting the life of a young civilian called Gordon Sterrett, who is newly unemployed and miserable (“I’ve made a hell of a mess of everything”) and goes to a hedonistic friend who lets him down. The three events described in the story are based on three actual events, with the participating characters traveling, Fitzgerald tells us, “down the great highway of a great nation.” But why are they dissatisfied with American life? Should anyone in America be drinking to excess? (No.) Whence comes hedonism? “May Day” may suggest that U.S. people are no longer meant for, or worthy of, meaningful victories. A sad tale, this.

At first, I was afraid the 1946 Deception, directed by Irving Rapper, would be awash in background music, but it isn’t. It simply offers some good music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in a setting with serious musicians, one of them played by Bette Davis.

Imdb.com: “After marrying her long-lost love [Paul Heinreid], a musician [Davis] finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer [Claude Rains] who is besotted with her.” This constitutes Deception‘s drama. Notwithstanding, adapted from a play, the film is pretty talky, I enjoyed it. I have actually seen very little of Davis in movies; here, she’s an accomplished actress. Rains plays a contemptible man elegantly (of course).

In the 2025 After the Hunt, a black college student from a rich family (Ayo Edebiri) informs a female professor (Julia Roberts) that she was sexually assaulted by a male friend and colleague of the professor (Andrew Garfield). The directing—by Luca Guadagnino—and the acting succeed, but the film is not only sober but sodden, with a less than sensible screenplay.

Not that it’s uninteresting, though. The film asks what is and what isn’t reality in a society with ignorant “radicalism,” naughty intellectuals, identity politics, and malcontent. It seems appropriate for there to be the artifice of someone yelling “Cut” at the end of ATH‘s last mise en scene. But, for sure, this isn’t a movie about moviemaking.