Mayday: Easygoing Cold War thrills

Mayday (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for violence, action and fleeting profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.26

This film’s lighthearted, mismatched-buddies-in-peril tone notwithstanding, co-directors and writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein deserve credit for inserting a strong message relevant to our times:

 

Don’t let government propaganda and assumptions about “the other” interfere with our individual ability to judge people based on their character and behavior.

 

Evading KGB pursuers was hard enough when Nikolai (Kenneth Branagh, center) had
only his new friend Troy (Ryan Reynolds) to worry about .... but matters get even more
intense when Nikolai's daughter (Maria Bakalova) enters the picture.

The year is 1987, toward the end of the U.S./Soviet Cold War. Despite U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s initial belief that the Soviets were dangerous and immoral, his tone has softened following Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985. Even so, U.S. military forces remain on constant alert for signs of nuclear build-up.

Following a training drill during which U.S. Navy fighter pilot Lt. Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) demonstrates “the right stuff” during the unconventional rescue of a wingman, he’s selected for a special reconnaissance op. The CIA-sponsored mission: to surveille suspected missile silos 1,200 miles inside the Soviet border.

 

To Kelly’s unhappy surprise, he’s relegated to co-pilot status, responsible solely for running the camera. Their long-range, high-altitude SR-71 Blackbird instead will be flown by Air Force pilot Maj. Pete Sanders (Louis Cancelmi, appropriately condescending), an insufferable jerk with the typical Air Force bias against Navy pilots.

 

Sanders pays for that hubris in the worst possible way, when they’re intercepted by a Soviet MiG. The quick-thinking Kelly manages to destroy the MiG — quite improbably, which signals the tone this film will take — and eject. But debris destroys his parachute as snow-covered terra firma appears below, and his final fall results in a bad leg injury. His last conscious image is of an approaching cloaked figure, carrying a nasty-looking rifle...

 

...who, when Kelly regains consciousness, turns out to be benevolent Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB officer turned passionate admirer of American culture in general, and his bootlegged VHS copy of the movie “Top Gun” in particular.

Sorry, Baby: An acting, scripting tour-de-force

Sorry, Baby (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content and constant profanity

Available via: HBO MAX

By Derrick Bang

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard” — a quote most often attributed to character actor Edmund Gwenn, as he lay dying in bed — has been oft-repeated film and theatrical wisdom ever since.

 

At her lowest ebb, Agnes (Eva Victor) is treated with unexpected gentleness by Pete
(John Carroll Lynch), a deceptively gentle guy who believes that a good sandwich can
go a long way toward healing one's soul.

I’ll go it one better: Persuasively depicting the aftershock of deep trauma is even more difficult ... but Eva Victor truly nails it, starring in this intimate drama that she also wrote and directed. Her performance is quietly, deeply powerful.

Her film is divided into subtitled chapters. The first — “The Year with the Baby” — takes place in an unspecified time: could be present day, perhaps a bit earlier. Agnes (Victor) is a literature professor at Fairpoint, a liberal arts college in rural New England. She’s smart, sensitive and witty, and lives alone in a big house in a quiet, forested area; her only companion is a gray cat named Olga (likely after one of Chekhov’s Three Sisters).

 

The film actually opens with cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry’s lengthy framing shot of this house, during early evening: a disorienting touch that’ll be repeated in a subsequent chapter, with a different house, and a far different implication. 

 

Henry also favors distant framing shots of Agnes, which emphasize her isolation.

 

But she’s delighted, on this particular day, by the arrival of long-time bestie Lydie (Naomi Ackie). Their bond is palpable, their rapport delightfully uninhibited and bluntly profane; they’re both truly themselves with each other. Victor and Ackie are marvelous together; the latter is a joyful, irrepressible free spirit.

 

(We all should be blessed a friendship this intense.)

 

But something is off. Even at her happiest moments — as when both lie down, warmly jacketed, in an open field — Agnes’ giddy smiles aren’t entirely matched by the flicker of wariness in her gaze. A bit later, she comes closest to true joy when Lydie announces her pregnancy; Agnes playfully chats with the baby, lips pressed close to her friend’s stomach.

 

The two also spend an evening visiting Natasha (Kelly McCormack), Logan (Jordan Mendoza) and Devin (Cody Reiss), all of them former Fairpoint graduate students. Agnes’ presence is reluctant, and no surprise; the grouchy Natasha clearly has a long-simmering antipathy toward her.

 

McCormack overplays this card, sullenly looking more like a character in a horror movie, than somebody who simply has a stick up her fundament.

 

Alas, all visits must conclude, when Lydie returns to her life and responsibilities. Agnes’ disappointment is palpable; it feels more like grief.