With spring gently settling on the East Coast, I feel once again I’ve emerged from a confining cocoon of my own making. I don’t like cold, I don’t like snow, I don’t like winter sports. For me, everything goes decidedly downhill (no pun intended) after New Year’s. But now, I’m renewed. I raise my face to the sun, and movie … More Details

Jack Nicholson’s own story rivals any of his films. Born in New York City, he grew up in New Jersey. He grew up thinking his grandparents were his parents, and his mother, his older sister. When years later, he learned the truth, he realized he had no clue who his real father was, and he decided he was not all … More Details

Robert Duvall, one of our finest living screen actors, turns 81 tomorrow. Born to a career military officer from Virginia and his wife, an amateur actress and descendant of General Robert E. Lee, Duvall’s childhood was peripatetic, as his father was transferred frequently to various bases around the country. (The military bearing Duvall absorbed from his father would later come … More Details

Whether portraying the folly or glory of armed conflict, outstanding war films place the best and worst of our shared humanity in stark relief: on the good side lies our capacity for courage and sacrifice in the interest of a cause bigger than ourselves; on the other, we confront our innate barbarity and impulse toward aggression, which thousands of years … More Details