The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci

[Dex Sawash]

I fucked around and have missed this, not showing near me in us.

Obvious things you just realized,

North American release was at Toronto Film Fest last month, wide US release hasn't happened yet.
Due March of next year FFS

[buzby]

It also struck me today that there was one thing that could have made the film even better - if they'd got Alan Ford to play Stalin. Imagine him delivering the "What did you do, fucking walk here?" line.

That would have been fantastic. I wouldn't want to be the one to ask him to grow the moustache though.

[pancreas]

I liked this a lot too.

I quite liked the pastiched Shostakovitch that was knocked up for the soundtrack.

[MoonDust]

Saw this last night and loved it. It was a lot darker than I imagined (though perhaps unsurprising given the subject matter), particularly with Beria's character.


Some great little lines too. One that tickled me was when Michael Palin's character gets reunited with his wife who's just come out of Beria's prison and one of the first things he says is "I bought a dog!" Don't know why that tickled me.

Also Beria's execution scene was particularly dark and wouldn't have been out of place if the film was a serious drama and not at all a comedy. The gunshot that kills him made me jump. All happened so fast.


10/10

[Hundhoon]

I know the vast majority of the cast look nothing like the real life people they are playing and they all speak with British and American accents..i did not care for the most part and found it funny....but really did not get the casting of Steve Buscemi as Nikkita Kruschev, did not seem right, just could not picture it even in a comedic way...Kruschev was a burly aggressive Stalingrad survivorl. Just seemed weird here. think they pushed it a bit too far.

[touchingcloth]

I know the vast majority of the cast look nothing like the real life people they are playing and they all speak with British and American accents..i did not care for the most part and found it funny....but really did not get the casting of Steve Buscemi as Nikkita Kruschev, did not seem right, just could not picture it even in a comedic way...Kruschev was a burly aggressive Stalingrad survivorl. Just seemed weird here. think they pushed it a bit too far.

Well I thought the cast was fantastic.

[EOLAN]

I know the vast majority of the cast look nothing like the real life people they are playing and they all speak with British and American accents..i did not care for the most part and found it funny....but really did not get the casting of Steve Buscemi as Nikkita Kruschev, did not seem right, just could not picture it even in a comedic way...Kruschev was a burly aggressive Stalingrad survivorl. Just seemed weird here. think they pushed it a bit too far.

Well they made Stalin look similar to what he was but apart from that Khrushchev is probably the next most recognisable character. Admittedly I looked up Beria but Russell Simon Beale's lack of physical similarity to him oales into significance to Buscemi/Khruschev

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Khrushchev isn't convincing, I agree, and although Buscemi may have performed well comedically, I felt his character lacked the guile that would have played off against Beria and made him more convincing.

Having him as a vascillating slightly reluctant leader at the start to being a determined schemer didn't work because Buscemi was still stuck in stage one even at the end. So when the caption came up and said "...he finally seized power" if felt like..uh?...as it was so different to the farce we had been watching.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

saw this today, thought it was fan-fucking-tastic

[Twit 2]

Fan-fucking-tastic cast.

[Benevolent Despot]

Watched it despite the trailer which I thought was completely unIannuccian and a comedy-style I don't like, so I went in with low expectations, and had them mildly challenged, but I still ultimately didn't like it that much.

Pros: A couple of solid, funny and devious characters - Beria and the general.
A few laughs (dumping Stalin in the bed, the general and his mocking)
Interesting subject-matter.
Pretty well plotted opening with the musical performance.

Cons: Exasperated cringey over-acting (Stalin's children the worst offenders). Your mileage may vary but I think this style is puke.
Too rushed.
Too many characters.
Not that satirical or illuminating due to crassness.

Quite dissappointing to see this as an "Iannucci movie" really. The idea had a lot of potential but the end product just seems confused. I'm not sure of its gestation and how it came about. Is the film limited by the tone of the original comic?

[Monsieur Verdoux]

i must say that the cast was particularly fantastic

[zomgmouse]

I saw this last night and I thought it was amazing.

This never billed itself as a straight comedy, either, which more than excuses the moments of gravity and bleakness, which, also, were definitely much needed to counterbalance and elevate the farcical tone. In fact the whole chaotic and huge horror of the setting amplified the humour tenfold. And yet in the moments that weren't full-scale gag-ridden, I was never bored, still engrossed, because of the nature of the story and events being portrayed. The session I saw it with was also mostly older people but there was still constant laughter. So many background gags and tiny moments that kept it sharp.

I'd read the graphic novel prior to watching this but I don't feel that that detracted at all. The graphic novel wasn't really a comedy and mainly just provided a blueprint for the film, like if you'd read a slight dramatisation of a history textbook - though granted the history wasn't exactly accurate. Still entertaining.

I loved the end credits titles as well, very well-designed. The costumes and sets and make-up were great, too. And in keeping with the exaggerated tone of the thing, like Zhukov's medals, which were based on portraits rather than photographs.

And, yes, the cast. Magnificent. Down to the very small roles, like Roger Ashton-Griffiths as the French horn player. I recognised a good few The Thick of It alumni in there as well.

The one thing I could have used less of was the handheld camerawork, but that's only when it got particularly noticeable/distracting.

Otherwise, fucking hell. A real feat of satire. Terrific stuff.

I'm sure my eyes were deceiving me, but I became convinced that one of the non-speaking doctors was Chris Langham. I think it was just somebody who looked like him, and I can't find anything to contradict this online.

I thought that was Langham as well! Unsure.

[Sin Agog]

Thought it was totally disrespectful how they took all those photos of real-life people who'd been assassinated by the Kremlin and put cum stains all over their faces for the closing credits.  I get that this is supposed to be an 'irreverent comedy' and all, but have some decency!

[Twit 2]

Magnificent cast.

[HMS Beanspiller]

Was I alone in spending the whole film thinking Stalin's son was being played by Will Forte?

I enjoyed the film though found it tonally jarring at points. I think TTOI and Veep work better with AI's comedy stylings as the worst that can happen in those worlds is that someone gets humiliated in the press or fired. In TDOS the stakes were so much higher, making it harder - for me in any case - to laugh at some of the situations of individuals.

[Glebe]

Saw this the other night, been trying to write a half-decent little mini-review... thought it was pretty good, drily-witty rather than zinger-laden, but generally amusing and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny throughout, although as many have noted, the scenes of cruelty are quiet harrowing and do jar a little with the comic tone at times. The cast are great, and, someone already suggested, Iannucci has certainly grown in confidence as a director.

I thought Paul Whitehouse's delivery of one of the penultimate lines was brilliant.

Yeah, to be honest, I can't actually remember it now (something like "It's been a long day..." or something?), but it's one of the film's biggest laughs, certainly welcome coming after a particularly unpleasant moment.

[McFlymo]

I think the farcical tone of it would have been much harder to swallow if we were dealing with a subject closer to home. The historical setting was tantalising for me, as someone who (still) knows fuck all about Stalin and Russia. I very much enjoyed that they were taking liberties with how those people may have behaved and so on. All of that felt quite clever and solid to me. Yes, it was quite brutal and dark (the torturing and killing, depicted in such a callous way) and Beria's murder at the end was unsettling, but I enjoyed that they didn't try to sanitise this or hide it away. We need to see that stuff! More blood and guts and harrowing murder scenes in comedy, in future, please, yeah?

So yeah. I fucking loved it.

I now realise I need to properly sit down and watch In The Thick Of It and/or In The Loop and just probably all of Iannucci's output!

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Without wanting to sound too much like a Twitter trust-fund communist, I have to wonder if all the people bothered about tonal issues had the same disquiet over In The Loop, which builds up to and ends with the start of an invasion of a country based on phoney intelligence and with reasons to believe it will be a disaster, as James Gandolfini keeps trying to warn.

[Repeater]

Really good stuff, nice and short, well cast, brilliantly performed. Good patter.

[Repeater]

Saw this the other night, been trying to write a half-decent little mini-review... thought it was pretty good, drily-witty rather than zinger-laden, but generally amusing and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny throughout, although as many have noted, the scenes of cruelty are quiet harrowing and do jar a little with the comic tone at times. The cast are great, and, someone already suggested, Iannucci has certainly grown in confidence as a director.

Yeah, to be honest, I can't actually remember it now (something like "It's been a long day..." or something?), but it's one of the film's biggest laughs, certainly welcome coming after a particularly unpleasant moment.

Wasn't his line something like, "Busy old week eh?" I'm sure it was referring to a week rather than a day (which would make more sense obviously).

[Twit 2]

Looks very well cast, this film.

[Dex Sawash]

Chock full of sex pests and won't make it to US wide release date, no doubt.

[Glebe]

Wasn't his line something like, "Busy old week eh?" I'm sure it was referring to a week rather than a day (which would make more sense obviously).

Ah right... yeah, that sound's righter!

[Porter Dimi]

Chock full of sex pests and won't make it to US wide release date, no doubt.

I know about Tambor's investigation, but are there others? It'd be a terrible shame but the right thing to do if the allegations are true.

[Repeater]

Tambor's being investigated? Aw fuck.

[Repeater]

Just seeing this now - http://deadline.com/2017/11/jeffrey-tambor-sexual-harassment-claims-amazon-1202204220/

[MoonDust]

This is going to affect everyone isn't it? Every male actor you like will turn out to be a sex pest, every female actor you like will turn out to be a victim, which is awful to think of.

Entertainment industry needs a reset button, or massive spring clean.

[olliebean]

In the interests of equality, isn't it time a female actor turned out to be a sex pest? #feminism

[Repeater]

In the interests of equality, isn't it time a female actor turned out to be a sex pest? #feminism

Mariah Carey's been recently accused, by one of her security team.