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Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated for a second term after a landslide election; his fall from grace would accelerate over the course of 1973.  Amidst the growing turbulence of Watergate, the Roe v. Wade decision came down, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed, signaling the end of the Vietnam War. A racehorse named Secretariat won the Triple Crown for the first time in a quarter century.

Today his name may be familiar only to film buffs, scholars and students, but some of Fritz Lang's movies have never really left us. For the most part his work explored nefarious doings in society’s criminal underbelly. But he also gave us our first real science fiction epic (1927’s “Metropolis”).

Twenty-five years later, 1997 feels like yesterday, yet at the same time an eternity. So much has changed. Will the movie industry ever experience another banner year like 1997, not just in box office terms but also the range and quality of its output? It’s an open question.

Reviewing a list of October birthdays last week, several names popped out at me, but I also noted a pattern: a surprising number of players, most from Hollywood’s Golden Age, excelled in film comedy, the genre that I’d argue is the hardest to do really well.

With the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, we have the first instance in our history of an established right actually being taken away from Americans. For the majority of us, the decision feels like a step backward, not just in progress but in time. As we absorb the consequences, we recall our own dark past on this issue before Roe became law, and also the rigid policies of more repressive societies around the world.

A couple of months back, we decided to subscribe to yet another streaming service, Disney+, just to experience Peter Jackson’s astonishing documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” It was well worth it. Jackson’s revelatory work is a stunning achievement, revisiting a seismic moment when the cultural phenomenon known as the Beatles started to show some cracks — not in their music, but in their ability to stay together.

Let me start by getting personal: watching Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” on the big screen was a profoundly moving experience for me. Just hearing that wondrous Bernstein/Sondheim score again brought a wave of emotion I wasn’t fully expecting.