The international news being what it is right now, I might recommend a wee bit of escapism in the form of Stanley Kramer's screwball road trip It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. After all, this is the 1963 film he followed Judgment at Nuremberg with, which just goes to prove even great directors need to lighten the mood sometimes. The amount of talent (comedic or otherwise) in the cast is truly insane: Sid Caesar, Spencey Tracy, Jonathan Winters, Dick Shawn, Terry-Thomas, Ethel Merman (who spends the majority of her onscreen time gleefully whacking men with her handbag), Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Milton Berle. And now I'm old enough to appreciate the cameos that went way over my head when I watched the movie as a kid: Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Peter Falk, Don Knotts, the Three Stooges, Buster fucking Keaton. I have only ever seen the "shorter" version that clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, and I can only imagine the added glories of Kramer's original cut. The effects remain jaw-dropping even to a modern eye (the film also rightfully earned an Oscar for sound), but it's the sheer non-stop excess of the slapstick that gets me every time. What's not to love about a film that begins with a dying man kicking a bucket down a hill and ends with a slip on a banana peel?