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.

I never saw the first-part Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (2023), but only the second-part Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025), so I’m at a disadvantage. Doesn’t matter. I was aware of the film’s very, very high stakes and enjoyed Ethan Hunt’s nerve-racking efforts—fleshed out by age-defying Tom Cruise—to defeat the “anti-God” A.I. . . As usual, the movie is enthralling-looking. It has little humor and nothing cheesy, and would have been rated G in the Seventies. The cast is agreeable, and I think Hunt and Hayley Atwell‘s Grace love each other. Neither is terribly glamorous here. Doesn’t matter. (Cruise is 62. This is, incidentally, the last MI film.)

Starring Charles Laughton, 1938’s The Beachcomber is not as smoothly directed and edited as Laughton’s Mutiny on the Bounty, but it’s an engaging effort all the same, based on a Somerset Maugham story. Laughton’s role is that of a ne’er-do-well island dweller whom a schoolteaching missionary wants to reform. He seems unreformable, though; is he? There are curiosities and contingencies. For her part, the schoolteacher, Martha, is a stern Christian who is herself converting to a degree she would not have expected. The film ends the way it does because it is a comedy—serious but exaggerated.

At first I thought Laughton’s acting was rather mannered, but soon found it subtle and droll; persuasive. Elsa Lanchester is wonderfully true as Martha. The film is the sole directorial work of producer Erich Pommer. Recommendable.