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The Death of Stalin
The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin,

directed by Amando Iannucci

(R, 1 hour, 47 minutes)

Writer-director Armando Iannucci is the wicked imagination behind HBO series Veep. In The Death of Stalin, he works from graphic novels by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin to construct a fiendishly bleak, sometimes unnerving, and starkly funny Marxian tale of power vortexes and the tiny men who try to fill them.

It is March 1953 and Soviet strongman Stalin (Adrian Mc-Loughlin) is drinking vodka, watching John Wayne movies and kicking it with pals from the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party: sycophantic Molotov (Michael Pal-in), ineffectual Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), dangerous Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and canny Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) at his dacha outside Moscow.

When they leave, the boss tunes into Radio Moscow, where he’s so touched by a Mozart recital he orders a recording to be delivered that evening. Since the broadcast wasn’t recorded, the orchestra is reassembled and the piano player (Olga Kurylenko, playing historical figure Maria Yudina is bribed to play. A single record is pressed of the performance. And Yudina slips a personal message to the dictator inside the record jacket.

When Stalin receives the recording, he reads it, roars with laughter, and is immediately struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage. The next morning he’s discovered by a housekeeper, and members of the committee descend to decide what to do. Back-stabbing, scheming and explosive violence breaks out, with chaos emerging as the ruling factor.

Despite the period costumes, The Death of Stalin feels slyly contemporary. Because while tyrants might appear more or less charming, their essential nature never changes.

Pacific Rim: Uprising (PG-13, 1 hour, 51 minutes) In this under-developed and chahotic sequel to 2013’s imaginative Pacific Rim (directed by Guillermo del Toro, who won 2017’s Best Director Oscar for The Shape of Water), Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), a once-promising Jaeger pilot who abandoned his training when he got involved in criminal activities, gets a chance to redeem himself when a deadly force threatens the world. It’s noisy, bombastic, destructive, and loaded with cartoony violence. Fans of the equally rambunctious Transformers franchise might find common ground here. With Rinko Kikuchi, Scott Eastwood, Tian Jing; directed by Steven S. DeKnight.

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Also, all five Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible films will be available individually, on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Ultra HD Digital on June 26. Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible and John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II will be packaged in individual two-disc UHD/ Blu-ray sets with HDR and all of the previously released special features while J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III, Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, and Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation will be packaged in individual 3-disc UHD/Bluray sets with HDR and all of the previously released special features. Additionally, Rogue Nation will also come with a special Dolby Atmos soundtrack that was specifically remixed for home video systems.

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