Jack, Amy, Aaron, and I really liked this political farce, set in 1953, when the Russian despot croaks and his underlings ineptly jockey for power. The prodigious acting ensemble includes Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, Michael Palin as Molotov, and Simon Russell Beale as Beria (the first three were most recently blogged for The Boss Baby; The Accountant; and Monty Python Live (Mostly) One Down, Five to Go; and Beale, a British stage actor, is new to these pages, though he was in My Week with Marilyn and Into the Woods, among others). Also notable are Olga Kurylenko (mentioned in Quantum of Solace, not mentioned in Seven Psychopaths) as a dissident pianist, Paddy Considine (last in Pride) as a bumbling recording engineer, Andrea Riseborough (most recently in Battle of the Sexes) as Stalin's daughter Svetlana, and Rupert Friend (after I wrote about him in The Young Victoria he was in 57 episodes of Homeland) as drunken son Vasily Stalin.
Director/co-writer Armando Iannucci has made a career of political farces--after his Oscar nomination for writing In the Loop, which he also directed, he created the HBO series Veep which earned him several Emmy nominations and one win, and all three projects are hilarious, dark, profane, and cringy. The screenplay is also credited to David Schneider, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows (they have all worked with Iannucci on various things), and Fabien Nury--Nury wrote the graphic novel on which this is based and Thierry Robin illustrated it. The comic book writers claim "artistic license" in their inspiration by real events.
The classical score is composed by Christopher Willis (he scored all 58 episodes of Veep) and can be streamed from this link.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics are averaging 95% and its audiences 80. Go see it.
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