Armando Iannucci's THE DEATH OF STALIN: Russian history as both tragedy AND farce

They say that history plays out the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. British filmmaker Armando Ianucci has come up with the brilliant idea of playing both simultaneously and then executed that idea in exactly the manner it needs to work best. THE DEATH OF STALIN is at once horrifying and hilarious, ridiculous and rueful and best of all somehow true to the history that we (we older folk, at least) remember hearing -- if not, thankfully, experiencing.

Americans may have to wait for the full-out Donald Trump dictatorship to get a taste of that -- the difference being that Trump and his flunkies don't possess one whit of the intelligence of those Russians, back then or, for that matter, now, particularly that of the putrid Putin. Trump and crew have got the entitlement, vanity and avarice down pat, but more will be needed.

Mr. Iannucci, pictured at right, has shown us what he's capable of many times before -- from Alan Partridge to In the Loop to Veep (the last of which I still have not seen). The Death of Stalin may be his masterwork, something unlike anything I've previously witnessed at the movies.

After giving us just a smidgen of historical facts about the time and place we're about to enter, he tosses us into it -- at a radio concert overseen by Paddy Considine (below) to which Comrade Stalin now wants the recording. Problem is, there has been no recording made.

The uproar, the all-out fear this causes, together with how the situation is handled, proves a master-stroke in bringing out the humor and horror, and the movie simply continue in this vein -- growing more so as events pile up.

One of the more unusual choices Iannucci has made is to have each of his actors use his or her own accent through the film. Consequently, rather than having all the actors ape faux Russian accents (as in the recent Red Sparrow), each simply uses his native one. Since most of the cast is British, most of the accents are, too -- from Stalin's (mouthed by Adrian McLoughlin) to his sexy son's (Rupert Friend) to Lavrentiy Beria, the miscreant who hopes to assume power once Stalin is gone (played by the great Simon Russell Beale, below, left).

But wait, Olga Kurylenko, who plays the concert pianist who helps sets this all in motion, is Ukranian by birth and so uses her own very eastern European accent. And then we have the likes of Steve Buscemi who plays Khrushchev (shown at far right, below)...

...and Jeffrey Tambor (below, as Malenkov), both of whom speak with their own very American accents. While this is initially shocking, given how movies so often handle "foreign-sounding speech," even more shocking is how damned well this works. Our ear gets used to it all in a flash, and the actors can then simply continue with their spot-on performances, which mix smiles and shocks that blend beautifully with the humor and horror on hand. In its entirety, the movie works its magic like little else you will have seen.

The Death of Stalin also brings us a look at the lives of those Russian apparatchiks in ways that other films have not. How they can spin on a dime from yes to no, right to wrong, good to bad -- all the while exhibiting the kind of craven fear, occasionally bolstered by cold fury, that working under the thumb of insane dictator like Stalin could produce. The result looks something like what Mel Brooks might have come up with, had he lived his entire life in abject terror.

While most of the cast is male, and first-rate, we also get a couple of nice turns from the distaff side: Ms Kurylenko and the so-versatile-that-she-is-often-unrecognizable Andrea Riseborough (below) as Stalin's daughter Svetlana. Still, as in Stalin's time, this was a man's game and the various ways he could play it seem as numerous as the characters on view. And while one might win for a time, there was always another schemer waiting in the wings with claws held back but at the ready -- as Iannucci's final pre-end-credits note/visual makes cleverly clear.

In the crack cast, literally everyone manages to stand out at one time or another -- Michael Palin giving the subtlest performance and Jason Isaacs (below), along with Rupert Friend, offering the most over-the-top (all three work perfectly, by the way). I have to acknowledge Misters Buscemi, Tambor and Beale as the standouts here. For sheer versatility and delight, consider Beale's performances in this film, together with those in The Deep Blue Sea and the cable television' series Penny Dreadful to recall how no-limits incredible this actor can be.

Final credit, however, must go to Iannucci and his co-writers. What a brilliant job this humorist/filmmaker and crew have done in not simply combining but also perfectly balancing history, humor, horror and character into something vastly entertaining, thought-provoking and just a little fear-inducing, too. It's happening in today's Russia all over again. Could that kind of terror happen here? If our country grows any dumber and less alert, yes, absolutely.

From IFC Films and running 107 minutes, The Death of Stalin, after opening in some major cities a week or so back, hits South Florida (and elsewhere) tomorrow, Friday. March 23 in Miami at the Landmark at Merrick Park, Regal South Beach 18 and AMC Sunset Place. Beginning the following Friday, March 30, the film will open in Miami at the O Cinema Miami Beach and the AMC Aventura; in Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway Theatre, in Coral Springs at the Regal Magnolia Place 16, in Hollywood at the Regal Oakwood 18, in Pembroke Pines at the Regal Westfork 13, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood, and in Palm Beach Gardens at Cobb's Downtown at the Mall Gardens Palm 16.

For Halloween, Richard Schenkman's MISCHIEF NIGHT hits theaters one-night-only, October 30

You'd think, what with Halloween being one of the most popular faux holidays of the year, that some movie studio, major or minor, would make sure it opened a scary movie that week. Not usually. (Sometimes they'll synchronize a particular fright film to open on a Friday, the 13.) This year, however, there is a little slasher number sneaking into town (some 41 of 'em, actually, and all across the country) entitled MISCHIEF NIGHT which takes place on Halloween eve (which is evidently known by that "Mischief Night" name in certain circles -- not mine, but maybe yours).

Directed and with a screenplay by Richard Schenkman (shown at right in what I suspect is a rather old photo, and who years ago gave us a fine little "guy-'n-gal" comedy called The Pompatus of Love), from a story by Jesse Baget and Eric D. Wilkinson, this is a movie that might best be described in the words of my spouse, as we finished watching it: "I've seen worse." So have I. Quite a bit worse, actually. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, I suppose it is. The movie, after all, deals in practically nothing but the clichés of the genre. Yet Mr. Schenkman seems to know his way around a cliché, so that he can wring more suspense and surprise out of it than you'd expect. From what's in the microwave oven to the broken glass on the floor (will the blind girl step in it?!), we're kept pretty constantly on our toes.

Consider the opening scene in which an unfaithful wife is about to do the dirty with her lover when they hear something like an intruder downstairs. This is pure been-there-done-that stuff served up again, but with enough skilled touches in the script and direction that we follow along queasily.

Once this scene is out of the way, the movie shifts ahead to the same house with a new family now installed: Dad (Daniel Hugh Kelly, above) and his psychosomatically blind daughter (Noell Coet, below), who suffers from guilt over the car-accident death of her mom a few years back. Perfect victims, right? Subjected to a kind of home-invasion-cum-Wait-Until-Dark. So we're prepared to watch the killer go to town. Which he does, with relish, of course, but occasional restraint, as well. (This is but one part of the how-to-work-around-a-cliché lesson that the film provides.)

Performances are as good as those in the genre usually get, but I do wish that the writers here could have burnished the story and script a bit. One of the more noticeable problems: Why doesn't the daughter tell her father that her boyfriend has gone missing in the house? This might have saved a life. Oh, well. Saving lives is probably not the reason certain audiences flock to this kind of film.

Mischief Night -- via Specticast, and running 87 minutes -- will make its one-night-only, one-performance-only theatrical debut on Wednesday, October 30, Halloween eve, in cities all around the nation. Click here and scroll down to find a venue near you.

Miguel Ángel Vivas' KIDNAPPED will get your juices flowing -- and maybe your ire

Crap from an angel? Well, what's in a name? (And it's his middle name, anyhow.) Am I being too hard on Miguel Ángel Vivas , the director and (with Javier García) co-writer of the new Spanish movie KIDNAPPED (Secuestrados)? Maybe. Clearly, Señor Vivas means his film to be above all a provocation to its audience -- which it sure as hell is. But is it much more than that? TrustMovies has doubts. He admits (and grudingly admires) this filmmaker's talent, which is often on noticeable display throughout this 85-minute film, but at the finale (there's ain't no denouement here) he felt annoyed and abused. (Which is, I suspect, exactly the effect on his audience for which the filmmaker fervently hopes.)

If not, then why begin his movie in the manner he has done? It's a terrific opening, by the way: an image of a man, his hands tied and his head covered and loosely wrapped, with the wind making small indentations in that wrapping. What follows is one good shock, followed by another, by another. Then we get a respite, as we decide that the filmmaker (that handsome devil shown at left) has begun in media res, then taken us a few minutes onward, only to flash us back into something like "Several Hours Earlier" or "One Day Previous."  Except that no title card tells us this, and instead -- having seen many, many movies in our day, right? -- we simply assume this to be so. Well, you know the old saying: Never assume: it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

There have been other "provocations" in the popular family-in-jeopardy genre: Haneke's Funny Games (either version) comes immediately to mind, as well as Inside from Bustillo & Maury. But Kidnapped is something different. It doesn't (and I don't think Señor Vivas gives a shit about this) play fair with its audience. Consequently, once the film concludes, anger may be that audience's biggest response. But then, awhile later (like right now -- six months to the day from when I first saw this movie during last December's Spanish Cinema Now series at the FSLC) -- I find myself grinning as I type and rethink the thing, all over again.

Not that my grin means that I am overly happy with this film. Let's start with its title. Kidnapped usually involves being taken away, transported, by force. That doesn't happen here. Seized might have been a better title, but I guess it doesn't have the cojones of "kidnapped." (It does, however have more originality: the K-word has been the title of some 35 movies already; Seized has been used only once). Talking only about the chosen title seems a bit paltry, so instead let's ask about the filmmaker's decision to use the split-screen. This may be the worst example of split-screen in a movie that I have ever seen. Vivas insists on doing it at exactly the moment when two hugely eventful, important things are taking place. Both views are exciting and well done, but one's eye can only take in one of the two. So we simply miss what's happening on the other side of the screen. This is stupid and unforgivable. You can probably piece together what has happened plot-wise, all right, but in terms of action -- there's a lot of it -- you didn't see it.  (Or if you did, you missed it on the other side of the screen.)

Considering how short the film is, it still drags a bit midway, and a little too much goes wrong with the kidnappers' plot for maximum believability. Vivas is very good, however, at upping the tension -- both the intergenerational tension we see as we are introduced to the family, and then the tension we feel as audience members because we know something awful is going to happen. The filmmaker withholds the blood and gore for quite awhile, and then lets it come on full force. (The most violent scene provoked loud screams from the Walter Reade audience the afternoon I saw the film. But Vivas lets us know this is OK: the victim has been shown to be a very naughty Albanian -- these days the eastern European bad-guy of choice.)

What Vivas is probably best at is upending our expectations, which is also the main point behind this provocation. To move immediately from his ending -- one of the nastiest in movie history -- to the song he has chosen to be sung as the credits roll, is to be slapped in the face repeatedly and hard by the grinning, son-of-a-bitch director. (Masochists: start your engines.)

I realize that I have now said enough to send fans of this nasty genre racing non-stop to check it out. IFC Films picked up Kidnapped for both theatrical and On-Demand release, as part of the IFC Midnight series, after which a DVD debut is probably in the cards. The film opens tomorrow, Friday, June 17, at Brooklyn's reRun Gastropub theater. (It began its VOD run this past Wednesday. Click here to learn where and how to get it.)