Mark Helprin‘s fine and important novel, Paris in the Present Tense (2017), presents, among other things, an elderly man in Paris who unexpectedly kills two Arab anti-Semites engaged in badly beating a Jewish man. In the vision wrought here, “the facts of life,” as Margaret Thatcher said, “are conservative.” Which is why the elderly man admits that “When civilization turned a corner or two, I didn’t.” Too, he believes in God.

On Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth:

Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) stands in the midst of war slaughter. How is it possible for the man to gaze at the Weird Sisters without being cut down by an enemy soldier? Well, because the Weird Sisters are witches with their deceptive magic. No doubt they are keeping Macbeth alive by their dark arts.

It becomes evident that this 2015 effort is Macbeth as cosmic nightmare: figuratively, of course. Two blinded sinners, Macbeth and his wife, are observers of, and culpable for, much violent death. Fassbender is memorable: his Macbeth is a less than stable mediocrity, a gullible brute. Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth is persuasive. A lot of the bold and eerie images here we have seen before, though the film is properly insidious. And I agree with Armond White that Fassbender and Cotillard “got to a spiritual essence in Justin Kurzel’s hallucinatory” motion picture.

Cover of Out of the Past

There is something delicious about a black-and-white film noir that begins (and even ends) in a small town, as the 1941 Out of the Past does.  It is further enriched by footage in the great outdoors.

But film noir it is, and all the elements of crime are here.  Robert Mitchum plays a once dirty detective, and—well—women are sinners too.  Understandably, I’m sure, Jane Greer‘s Kathie Moffat hates her gangster boyfriend (Kirk Douglas); not so understandably, she is a real reprobate.

Mitchum is not all that good here.  He doesn’t represent his character as well as the other actors represent theirs.  A not-bad Rhonda Fleming needs more screen time.  But Geoffrey Holmes shows expertise in his based-on-a-novel screenplay, and Jacques Tourneur directed with rich, savvy elan.

Near the end of a moderately good episode of the TV series, Chicago P.D. (Wed., 4/6/2022), a female opioid junkie gets over some injuries in a hospital bed and says to Officer Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger), “They’re stingy with their painkillers here.” (She actually says it lightheartedly!) This is another reason never to become a drug abuser. If you get hurt and end up in a hospital, the medical folks will be stingy with the painkillers.

The 4/6/2022 episode (“Keep You Safe”) of Chicago Fire, though rather sentimental, was eminently watchable. The two women of color, Stella Kidd and Violet, are . . . eminently pretty. As a white man I appreciate their saying yes to close relationships with white Severide and white Hawkins. Stella, by the way, is the new firefighters’ lieutenant. Handsome Dude is no longer there, for some reason I didn’t catch.

There is some fun available in the cast and the spy action in The Wrecking Crew (1969), a “Matt Helm” adventure, but not without the movie being sabotaged by the atrocious acting of Dean Martin (Helm) and the oddball role created for Sharon Tate, who is meant to have sidekick chemistry with Martin.  Almost everyone in Crew deserves better, even—no, especially—Elke Sommer.

The Wrecking Crew (1969 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)