"65"

Film scholars may differ on the top Bogart-Bacall outing, but for me it’s their second film, “The Big Sleep” (1946), directed by the inimitable Howard Hawks. It is, first and foremost, the quintessential private eye picture, along with the earlier Bogart classic, “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). The film succeeds in spite of the fact that its dense, twisty plot leaves most viewers slightly bewildered at the closing credits.

The counterintuitive romance is one in which two people who truly shouldn’t fall in love do, often under extraordinary and unromantic circumstances. Most often, these relationships run slim odds of ending with wedding bells. Too young, too old, too uninterested in social acceptance, the protagonists of these love stories breathe the same thin air as anti-heroes and outsiders; they are, in short, unidealized and identifiably human.

Congratulations! Dates one and two went so well that a third date is now on the books. This is a critical juncture. The charming awkwardness of the first couple of dates is wearing off and relationship potential is beginning to seem like solid currency.

I’ll admit it: I’m old enough to remember when the late Walter Cronkite delivered America its news every night at 7PM (if you were on the East Coast). I always loved him, and more important, I always believed him.

There's a lot of talk these days about disruption and disruptors. But there used to be another name for those who challenged norms: trailblazers. You might also have heard them called “rebels,” “visionaries,” or “iconoclasts.”

Walter Matthau was never endowed with the superficial attributes of your typical Hollywood star: he had a pronounced New York accent, a stooping gait, and the weathered face of a bloodhound. And yet the force of his talent and persona eventually got his name above the title.

As luck would have it, my musical consciousness dawned in the sixties, the most fascinating and turbulent decade of the past century, filled with music that reflected the foment, experimentation and intensity of the times.

Way back in 1964, director Richard Lester singlehandedly pioneered the music video, seamlessly merging pop music and film in the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” And a whole new kind of cinematic expression was born.

The movies' portrayal of women over time reflects the evolving social dynamic of the past century, revealing much about what has and hasn't changed. As certain special movies demonstrate, feminists were staking their territory long before there was a name for them.