The Death of Stalin (2017)

The Death of Stalin is an appropriately dark comedy about the passing, and subsequent power struggle to succeed the Soviet leader. Directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci, the man behind such contemporary comedies of political dysfunction as Veep and The Thick of It, The Death of Stalin has been called by some critics the perfect political comedy for the Trump era, not because the man is a ruthless dictator, but because everyone below him seems scared of him and there is a lot of general bumbling and jockeying for position in his orbit. The movie very successfully navigates a place between dryly comic absurdum and the horror of what these Soviet leaders did, so the overall tone of the piece is not quite like anything I've ever seen before. The cast is good, particularly Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev, and Jeffrey Tambor as Georgy Malenkov, in this later case both actor and character ended in career exile. Strangely this movie is based on a French graphic novel. A smart and a unique piece of filmmaking. ***1/2