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Great movies about oppressive societies can help put it all in perspective, inspiring us to protect the freedoms we too often take for granted, through activism — or, simply and crucially, the vote.

Just last month, Robert De Niro turned eighty, a milestone that came and went without much fuss. It may well be that famously private actor didn’t want any. However, this moment reflects another milestone, marking a half century since De Niro broke out as a screen actor with two indelible performances, first in “Bang the Drum Slowly” playing a terminally ill baseball catcher, second as the unhinged Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets.”

Today the concept of someone writing and directing their own films is, if not commonplace, hardly unusual. A quick Google search yields many prominent names. So it’s hard to imagine that way back in the thirties, during Hollywood’s Golden Age, there was no such animal. Writers and directors were kept in different silos, and never the ‘twain met.

Netflix, the world’s largest streaming service with over 220 million subscribers worldwide, enjoyed a stellar Oscar night this year, picking up six Oscars out of a total of 16 nominations. 

I wonder how many people under forty learned of Alan Arkin’s passing last month and thought,  “Oh, that’s sad, it’s that funny old guy from the ‘Kominsky Method’!” Of course, they might also remember him from two hits made in this century: “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006), which brought him a late-career Supporting Actor Oscar, and Ben Affleck’s “Argo” (2012), which also earned him a nomination.

The first time I saw a gambling table in movies was when I (and everyone else) first encountered secret agent James Bond on the big screen. The scene is iconic. Cool and confident in black tie, Bond (Sean Connery) lights a cigarette as he plays Baccarat. We see he is winning, and we sense he wins at a lot of things. The film was, of course, “Dr. No” (1962). 

“Orson Welles lists ‘Citizen Kane’ as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for ‘Shadow of a Doubt’, and Sir Carol Reed chose ‘The Third Man’ - and I'm in all of them.” Those are the words of Joseph Cotten, perhaps the finest screen actor never to be nominated for an Oscar. The more time passes, the more it feels like a serious oversight.

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable.