Bob Mondello

It's 8:45 a.m. on a weekday in Washington, D.C., and if anyone needs a reminder why the coronavirus vaccine is important, there's one arriving at the Takoma Metro stop: an almost empty train pulling up to an almost empty subway platform at the height of rush hour.

Jeff Bridges announced Monday night that he has a possibly life-threatening illness. He broke the news on Twitter with a reference to the iconically laid-back character with whom he's long been identified.

"As the Dude would say..New S**T has come to light," the 70-year-old actor tweeted. "I have been diagnosed with Lymphoma. Although it is a serious disease, I feel fortunate that I have a great team of doctors and the prognosis is good."

For the first time in more than a month, a handful of U.S. movie theaters is screening films for the public. It's a toe-dip, not a dive. Santikos Entertainment in San Antonio opened three of its nine Texas cineplexes with masks and social distancing protocols in place this past Saturday. Two days later, EVO Entertainment did the same with two of its Texas theaters.

It's a long way to liftoff — there's not even a studio attached yet — but the latest news about Tom Cruise is not just a Hollywood rumor. The film industry website Deadline reports that the Top Gun and Mission Impossible star is in preliminary talks with both NASA and with Elon Musk's Space X to film a feature-length action-adventure in orbit.

Critics are often asked "What's your favorite movie?" — and most of us have learned to deflect the question.

If you see a few hundred films a year, "favorite" is a moving target. Stiil, when pressed, I do have a ready answer: Buster Keaton's silent, Civil-War comedy The General.

Actor Max von Sydow, whose career stretched across seven decades, died Sunday at the age of 90. The imposing Swedish star played the title character in The Exorcist and more than 100 other roles.

Kirk Douglas, the self-described "ragman's son" who became a global Hollywood superstar in the 1950s and '60s, died on Wednesday. He was 103. Douglas was often cast as a troubled tough guy in films, most famously as a rebellious Roman slave named Spartacus. Off-screen, he was devoted to family and to humanitarian causes.