Spring cometh -- from FLICKIPEDIA, some rentable suggestions to augment and/or echo the breathe-easy, birds-singing seasonal moment:

Various early-talkie Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts, particularly School’s Out (1930), Bear Shooters (1930) and Teacher’s Pet (1930) Sometimes the less polished the movie, the more it captures its time and place. Hal Roach’s first sound Our Gang shorts (the ones with Jackie, Wheezer, Farina, Stymie, Mrs. Crabtree, Mary Ann, etc.) were shot fast and sloppily on the low-rent side streets and farm lots of Los Angeles County, and their portrait of sun-dappled haze, bug-thick humidity, mud-puddle whimsicality and near-rural indolence is unsurpassed. And they’re funny, too, in a way kids still respond to, given half a chance.

A Nous la Liberté (1931) There’s no repressing the happy grins emerging from Rene Clair’s classic early talkie, an anti-industrialization parable (largely ripped off by Charles Chaplin years later in Modern Times) that follows two escaped convicts who confront modern factory life. Spring is the season for wishing for irresponsible alternatives to maturity and duty, and this sunny, flowery, goofy film is a wish come true.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Errol Flynn, in color, in all of his boy-god splendor, as the famous fairy-tale bandit, bounding through green and shadowy California forests and being electrically fabulous. It’s a fun romp in general, but Flynn makes it a vitamin shot.

Elvira Madigan (1967) The first international Swedish hit film that wasn’t about sex or directed by Ingmar Bergman, Bo Widerberg’s rendition of the famous (in northern Europe) Tristan-and-Isolde-ish true story – a tragic romance between an AWOL soldier and a young tightrope walker – looks like it was shot entirely on warm May mornings. It may be the greenest film ever made, awash with sun-dappled glades and verdant glens. (There’s also this unsung ‘60s innovation: the realistic portrayal of young love, with all of its silly goofing, frolicking in wild fields, and swatches of time doing very little at all besides kanoodling. Movies just didn’t do this before the era’s New Wave revolution.) Routinely labeled at the time the most beautifully photographed film of all time, leavened with Mozart, and a seasonal blessing.

The Razor’s Edge (1984) One of the strangest films of the '80s, and yet one lit up with a nutty, irrational warmth. Bill Murray, able to write his ticket after Ghostbusters, co-wrote this Maugham adaptation, and by most accounts it’s a ridiculous freak, an off-balance, confusing, half-serious mess. But not so fast: filmed like a nostalgic feverdream, the path of Larry Darrell from common American jerk to WWI vet to expatriate wandering shaman is a promise of tedium (Tyrone Power kept him dull in the 1946 version), except that Murray’s shrugging innocence and guileless irony make the arc feel powerfully human. This might be the best Larry Darrell we'll ever have, a lonely, unsettled man defending himself from the world through reclusiveness and childish humor, and yet nearing the springtime of his own existence by way of spiritual satisfaction. (Little did we know how Murray would fulfill that promise years later, in Rushmore, Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers.) Director John Byrum, abetted by Jack Nitzsche’s lush score, manages a powerful sense of elegy, from the pre-fireworks evening montage to Murray’s Darrell pressing his cheek against the dead Sophie's lips, that could only exist in a film this unsure of itself.

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And tomorrow's opening day!  Whether or not you live in Cincinnati and are counting on taking the day off, here's some FLICKIPEDIA movie recommendations for the diamond-season ardent:

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) The saddest baseball movie? Coming from a 1955 novel, this subdued, grown-up drama simply waits out the last season of a low-IQ MLB catcher (Robert De Niro), who learns at the outset that he has a fatal disease. Emphasis is placed less on mortality or the game, and more on the day-to-day traveling life of pro players in the days before bazillion-dollar contracts and steroids. Viewers who were moved when this movie came out – and it’s tough not to be, when De Niro in his last game looks for a fly ball that’s no longer there – keep it close to their hearts.

The Bad News Bears (1976) Besides being possibly the least condescending Hollywood film ever made about kids, and a scabrous mockery of American suburbia and so many of the life principles our middle class hold dear, this Little League satire, deplorably remade in 2006, remains paradigmatic ‘70s realism – the dusty fields, arid sprawl, parking lots, beer in the dugout, and glaring noon light will reignite anyone’s memories of small-town ball, organized by annoying adults but played in the heat by kids.

Eight Men Out (1988) The story of the Black Sox scandal, when the 1919 Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the game, brought to you in historical broad strokes by staunch unionist writer/director John Sayles. So, here the players (John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Straithairn, D.B. Sweeney as the famous "Shoeless" Joe Jackson) are driven to cheat by the stinginess of owner Charlie "Commie" Comiskey (Clifton James), who routinely reneged on promises and bonuses alike. Sayles’s take is hoary baseball-fan optimism: we all want to believe the best of our heroes, that Pete Rose didn’t gamble, that Barry Bonds never took ‘roids, that the illiterate Jackson didn’t understand what he was doing or even the import of the confession that he signed. No one can say for sure – but as long as the stats are accurate, we’re willing to think it might’ve gone down this way.

Bull Durham (1988) There’s no other sport that inspires more emotion, rumination and heartfelt worship than baseball, and Ron Shelton’s signature movie embodies all of these in one perfect, life-loving swoop. A slice of minor league life remains lovable because there are no big-headed major league egos around, just the fervent hoping to get there. No underdog triumphs, no sentimental formulas, no baloney, from Tim Robbins’ talented jerk to Susan Sarandon’s small-town groupie dizzy with big-city ideas, to Kevin Costner’s career-anchoring perf as the aging catcher who shoulders the responsibility of molding the uncontrollable pitcher into a star even as his own dreams of the majors sail further out of reach. The script crackles with educated wit, the minor characters are just as funny and original as the main players, and the homage to baseball is everything it should be: heartbreaking in some ways but crazy for the game, for summer evenings, and for retaining a fiery sliver of youth deep into the middle years.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999) A simple and affectionate tribute to the first Jew ever to play major league baseball, Aviva Kempner’s utterly conventional documentary plays like a chapter from the Baseball mini-series that Ken Burns had to cut. A strapping, good-natured, Bronx-born lad of 6' 4", Greenberg was one of the league’s best hitters, becoming a local Detroit monument and a national symbol for Jews all over the country. (For interviewee Walter Matthau, it meant the possibility of "not having to be a cutter or salesman in the garment business," while Alan Dershowitz entertained fantasies of Greenberg being the first Jewish President.) The details are winning, including how the Tigers would lose crucial games on Yom Kippur because Greenberg wasn’t playing.