Memorable, crazy movie

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Not funny. Not relevant. Just pure junk. I could not finish watching this garbage.

The (true but slightly embellished) story of the internal power struggle among the top brass in the days following the death of Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin. When I first saw this film shortly after its release, I proposed that it was likely to be the funniest film of 2017. Now we're firmly into 2018 and I've given it a second and third viewing, I can confirm that I was almost certainly right - The Death of Stalin might not have given the most outrights laughs in a single 90-minute period as other films but it certainly left me (and, as I have read, others also) with the greatest number of memorable moments that I can still remember now. You know the ones I mean - where you burst out laughing at silence and have to explain that it's because of a scene of a man spitting onto his own forehead you saw once many months ago.The film starts immediately fast in a concert hall, escalates through Stalin's death (spoiler alert?), past the rigged committee meetings and into the culmination of plots, coups and counter-plots. It's funny enough to keep you ticking over with the occasional titter but every now and then it hits you with a proper belly laugh. Some of it is of course made up (like the opening concert hall scene) but Iannucci is keen to point out that some of its more ridiculous aspects are real - for example, Stalin's son Vasily really did try to cover up a plane crash that killed an entire Soviet Air Forces ice hockey team in 1950. Unlike with past Armando Iannucci political satires The Thick of It and In the Loop, the array of bumbling officials shown to be smart in theory but useless in practice are given real names based on real historical figures - even though the film is actually based on a French comic book of the same name. A major difference to his previous work is that the stakes are much higher when a political figure makes a political mistake - instead of the oh-so-British punishment of embarrassment, it's a bullet to the head! This makes for a handful of incredibly dark moments (mostly at the hands of Simon Russel Beale as Lavrentiy Beria, the Head of the Soviet Secret Police) but there's nothing that overshadows the trademark cutting dialogue.The unique selling point of this film is that all the actors retain their native accents for their Soviet characters - there's something strangely satisfying to hear Khrushchev's words in Buscemi's Brooklyn tongue or the feared head of the Soviet Army possessing a deep Yorkshire (Sheffield?) accent. Some have flagged this as an issue for the film but it could very well be Iannucci's way of saying that this might've happened (sort of) in 1950s Soviet Russia, but you should also expect similar schemes, plots and plans to happen in the corridors of Westminster, Washington ... or Moscow.

I liked some of the previous Iannuci's work. After watching the trailer, and the reading the original French graphic novel, I went to see the movie with relatively high expectations. On the bright side, I really like the photography, makeup and costumes. Good work there. On the not-so-bright side, I was not convinced with the choices of the director with regards to the acting and script. The English/American regional accents did not make sense for this movie. The dialogue was not believable in a Russian seeing. I could not believe the Russian oligarchs would act like a bunch of teen-agers at the dinner in the opening scenes. Zero suspension of disbelief! Worst of all, it was not funny to watch.

This movie was just awful!!! You would think with such a great cast this would be a great movie but it's just terrible. I don't know what they were going for but it totally missed the boat with me. I believe they were going for a comedy but it's not. It's definitely not a drama either, it just sucks!