#Sisters Ester and Anna arrive with Anna's son Johan in the small Central European town of Timoka. The country verges on the brink of war. Unwell Ester is confined to her hotel room, Anna roams Timoka's establishments, Johan wanders the hotel corridors.

“You need to watch your step among all the ghosts and memories.”

– Ester

It's hard to watch #Bergman's Tystnaden without #StanleyKubrick's ghosts sidling in. Tystnaden however doesn't need consternation to cause dread. The interaction and lack thereof between the three leads and the few extras translate into something merely tangible and evermore frightful.

James Stewart is Elwood P. Dowd. An ordinary man with an extraordinary claim: his best friend is an invisible, six feet three and a half inches-tall #pooka – a mythological Celtic, shapeshifting creature – who in Mr Dowd's case resembles a rabbit called Harvey. Elwood's sister and niece, who also occasionally see the furry goblin, have their relative send to a sanatorium where the doctors and us viewers learn more about this curious case.

“Harvey and I sit in the bars… have a drink or two… play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, 'We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella'.”

– Elwood P. Dowd

Harvey, based on Mary Chase's #PulitzerPrize​Play with the same name, is guaranteed to bring a smile on your face, this humbug's scout's honour! Have a nice #Easter, CineMastodons!

Warren Beatty plays Mickey, a #StandUpComedian who has it all, then gambles it all away. Well, that's the first 5 minutes of Arthur Penn's Mickey One. Beatty is out of his element, and the movie's still too indebted to the cheery 60s to carry that New American Cinema grit.

“I'm the king of the silent pictures. I'm hiding out till talkies blow over.”

– Mickey One

Having said that, there are several great small surreal moments that are carried by uncredited character actors alone. And then there's a sole spotlight, stealing it all away.

A scandal, that's what it was! In the late 1960s, Peter Fleischmann picked the picturesque Catholic village of #Landshut as the backdrop for Jagdszenen aus #Niederbayern, the film adaptation of Martin Sperr's #TheatrePlay with the same name.

 

A young man named Abram – played by Sperr – returns to his family village. Soon the townspeople's thorns move from the in their eyes other disgraceful villagers to the much-needed mechanic.

“Ich habe ihn halb tot geschlagen, ich schwör's. Ich kann nichts dafür, dass eine Drecksau draus geworden ist.”

Where did he return from? He was in prison. What for? For being a homosexual. He's a Drecksau (a filthy pig), his mother says. The village whore can't turn him around. A sow is slaughtered in real time in celebration of a successful #harvest and plans for the town's future are forged.

 

While created when West Germany's #Paragrafen175 was in place [1872–1994], illegality of same-sex relations], the homosexual aspect wasn't the main cause of the outrage. Some of the Landshutter villagers who played alongside the professional actors felt they were depicted as being backwards. This isn't a movie about hunting, sigted some. Lifting the veil of the prevalence of, a #Fernweh in a sense, that Germany (hush) was another.

 

Catholic Mass is a theatrical re-enactment of the life and suffering of the son of God. When rites outstay their meaning, when invocations turn routine, the worshippers lose sight.

The one that got bombed by Strangelove.

“You're talking about a different kind of war.”

– General Stark

Both Lumet's Fail Safe and #Kubrick's #ColdWar comedy came out in 1964, right after the #CubaCrisis. The world was awash with the realisation that the bomb, The Bomb, wasn't merely proverbial flexing. And when crisis happens, there are two options. One is to laugh, the other is to grasp. Sadly for Lumet, and the world, his Fail Safe was released while everyone was still too busy chuckling.

Two American families, adults and their children, go on a #HikingTrip somewhere in the south of France. They find themselves increasingly lost, not only in #nature but also in and among themselves.

 

Supposedly based on a real troublesome event and riddled with much filmmaking adversity, O Território nearly stranded as much as the hikers did. In support, #WimWenders used the same cast for his Der Stand der Dinge (1982), about a film crew's attempt to remake #RogerCorman's Day the World Ended (1955).

 

In a wonderful, unscripted circular way, Corman was one of the executive producers of Ruiz's film.

Science fiction may be one of those genres that's forever linked to the future and, depending on which side of 2000 you are at, either in a dystopian of utopian fashion.

 

An #Eiffel Tower watchman wakes up to find the world around him asleep. The few ones still awake – the bright, pretty, carefree things – explore, live and loot.

During a #summer #vacation on #FireIsland, two young men come across Sandy, an attractive young woman with an injured #seagull. While nursing the bird back to life, the relationship between the three deepens. A second girl, the much younger Rhoda (the breathtaking Catherine Burns) is taken in by the trio.

“What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Sit on the shore and watch?”

– Sandy

Set almost entirely on a sunny #beach, Frank Perry's Last Summer may be one of the most claustrophobic films you'll ever watch.

May Lin is a real estate agent who meets up with a man in the bare, too sterile flat she brokers. Another man who took the key of the same dwellings for his own cause, decides to settle in.

 

Over time, the apartment serves not only as the space where events take place, but locks and guides the flatmates through their compulsions.

Someone breaks into song on National Sing Out Day (USA)

 

In a #plague-ridden Taiwan, it rains relentlessly. The #rain and a #virus forces people to retreat. In Hsiao Kang's crumbling building, a plumber inadvertently punches a hole from his floor to the unnamed woman's below. While she, another victim of the #disease, holes up in her apartment they struck up a strange detached relationship.

 

Between the endless downpour and frantic #food hoarding, in her heart a #musical sings.