The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)

As The Thick of It, The Day Today and Veep have proved, just to name a few of his body of work, Armando Iannucci can be relied on to wring the tragicomedy out of any political situation. But the story of the poisonous power struggle following Stalin's death is almost too rich with satirical potential, like Trump, and it's true that given such a wide target, the end result actually has less of a bite than Iannucci's attacks on more evasive prey. Taking that caveat into account, the film still succeeds as frequently rip-roaring entertainment, undoubtedly aided by a fine cast: Steve Buscemi's calculating Khruschev, Simon Russell Beale's monstrous Beria and Jeffrey Tambor's vacillating Malenkov as the leads, with a plethora of able support from veteran faces of British comedy such as Michael Palin.
It plays out as a dark farce, which is the only logical way to go as the panicking Central Committee have to go through the motions of maintaining a united front while frantically backstabbing each other at the same time, the constant threat of a one-way trip to Siberia malingering in the background. It's both extremely funny in places and also oddly convincing as a historical document of the goings-on behind the scenes in the Soviet Union, aided rather than hindered by its frequent recourse to modern vernacular and generally playing out things too grim to contemplate as comedy instead. No wonder the Russians and many other former Soviet states banned it, proving its fundamental verisimilitude and judicious choices of target at once.

7/10