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Space certainly gives us humans plenty to think about, and the question of what lies beyond our solar system is still awaiting a full answer. This year, the revived series “Cosmos” had us scratching our heads as we contemplated the abyss, and even with the laws of physics greatly simplified, the universe is still too big for our primitive brains to grasp. Now comes director Christopher Nolan’s thinking person’s space movie “Interstellar,” and with it, a renewed interest in the possibilities of “out there.”

Robert Duvall fully earns the hallowed term “actor’s actor.” He is superb in most anything he’s in. And at age 83, he’s still doing his thing. On a plane recently, I finally caught Tom Cruise’s diverting thriller “Jack Reacher” (2012), and there was octogenarian Duvall playing a gun dealer, stealing every scene he was in. Watching him ace this small but key supporting role made me feel it was time to pay tribute to a man who’s appeared in some of the greatest films of the past half-century.   Born to William Howard Duvall, a career military officer from Virginia, and his wife Mildred, an amateur actress and descendant of General Robert E. Lee, Duvall's childhood was peripatetic; his father was transferred frequently to various bases around the country.

Keep all those “Zoolander” jokes to yourself, because being a model in a movie doesn’t necessarily mean a pretty face (or body) catwalking across the screen for mere amusement or titillation, or because the director needed a hot date for the Screen Actors Guild awards. Underneath the high cheekbones and sculpted abs often lie the makings of a great actor. Here are some of the folks who made astonishingly smooth moves from still photography to motion pictures.

An actor doesn’t need to be arrested on marijuana charges to become a star, but it sure didn't hurt Robert Mitchum. Of course, by the time of his 1948 pot bust, Mitchum had already received an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "The Story of GI Joe" (1945), and in 1947 he'd appeared in two noir classics, "Out of the Past" and "Crossfire." But after a week in the county jail and 43 days at a Castaic, California prison farm turned Mitchum into a certified Hollywood bad boy. He fit the part well. It was Mitchum's casual reaction to the arrest that endeared him to the public. He treated the incident as a lark, amusing the press with jokes about prison life. “It's like Palm Springs,” he said. “But without the riffraff.” It's no surprise that Mitchum breezed through a short jail sentence, since tough times were nothing new to him. After spending part of his childhood in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, he dropped out of school to ride the rails with his brother. As he crossed the country at the height of the Depression, Mitchum earned money with odd jobs like digging ditches — even boxing. This rough and tumble kid even did some time on a chain gang in Savannah, Georgia after being popped for vagrancy at age 14.

Younger film fans may find it hard to believe, but Clint Eastwood wasn’t always a badass. Prior to his iconic performance in “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), Eastwood was best known to American audiences as Rowdy Yates, a kind-hearted supporting character on the popular “Rawhide” TV show. In fact, it was the opportunity to leave Rowdy’s friendly persona behind that most intrigued Eastwood about going to Spain to work for director Sergio Leone. “I decided,” Eastwood said, “it was time to be an anti-hero.”

On the 115th anniversary of his birth, I can safely claim that Alfred Hitchcock's name and work endure like no other director of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Today, many moviegoers in their teens and twenties may look blankly at you if you mention legendary helmers like John Ford, George Cukor, or Billy Wilder. Yet more than likely, they’ll know the name Hitchcock, and will have seen at least one of his pictures."Vertigo" (1958) the greatest movie of all time, toppling "Citizen Kane" (1941) from the number one spot. Not only do Hitchcock's movies stay evergreen, they seem to get better with age. (Much as I admire "Vertigo," my favorite Hitchcock outing is 1946's "Notorious" starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, the director's favorite leading man. See it if you haven’t.)

Even though much of the appeal of horror movies lies in their power to tap into primal fears, I’d like to think our cerebral cortexes have evolved to the point where we want our thrills to test our minds as well as our nerves. After all, horror movies often leave the greatest, and most lasting, chill when they hinge on psychological, rather than fantastical, terrors.  The higher the intelligence of the piece, the harder it is to dispel that chill, and the more elegant the premise, the more likely it is to stay lodged in our psyches. Smarter scary movies just seem more believable, even when they are set in space, or when ghosts crawl out of the television. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of such titles are adapted from works of fiction. The “interior” aspect of fiction reminds us that the worst nightmares are often conjured not by reality but by our own imaginations.

As director Richard Linklater’s "Boyhood" accumulates critics’ raves and commandeers (deservedly) tons of media attention, it seems like some equal-opportunity cinematic praise is in order.  So, let’s review some of the best “girlhood” movies of recent times.    One of the great joys of watching a quintessential girlhood movie is getting to see a young unknown actress—like Michelle Rodriguez in "Girlfight," Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter’s Bone," or Quvenzhané Wallis in "Beasts of the Southern Wild"—strut her stuff in a way that announces, “I’m going to be a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood.”   

Forbidden love, more common in human experience than one might think, is torturous, unusually passionate, and freighted with risk. The heightened drama — or melodrama — it generates makes it a natural and desirable ingredient for film.