The Death of Stalin (2017)

When I first saw the coming attractions for The Death of Stalin, it appeared to be a comedy.  IMDb even has it listed as such.  I realize that satire doesn’t necessarily have to use humor.  I was just under the impression that this movie was going to use more than a little.

For those that haven’t seen the coming attractions, the movie takes place during the days surrounding the titular event.  A woman who despises Stalin finds out that a recording is to be made of her performance and delivered to the leader of the Soviet Union.  She includes a note that, when Stalin reads it, causes his him to collapse. 

Stalin is discovered the next morning, barely alive.  The Central Committee is assembled to decide what to do.  Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov assumes control, even if temporarily, and starts making decisions.  When Stalin does die, chaos ensues.  Witnesses are shot, orders are countermanded and the committee members basically do what they can to undermine each other.

I think part of the problem for me is that I’m not that familiar with the characters, all of whom are real people.  They only two names I recognized were Nikita Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin.  I had to look up other people on Wikipedia.  (For those wondering, Vyacheslav Molotov is where the name for the Molotov cocktail comes from.)

I’m not really certain how much the audience was expected to know.  Judging by the audience’s reaction, I think any historical irony may have gone over our heads.  I’m not really certain who the target audience is.  I wouldn’t expect many Americans my age to view the movie any differently.

Much of it was overdone.  There are several scenes where a lot of people are shot.  Right after Stain dies, everyone in the building that witnessed anything was shot.  It’s a very bloody.  Do I think it was overdone?  Yes, I do.  Much of it was.  Whenever a character is informed of Stalin’s death, they cry profusely and loudly, just in case someone’s listening.

Another problem is that there’s no clear protagonist.  It doesn’t look like there’s a clear good guy.  I suppose there were no good guys to be had, but that still leaves us without someone to really root for.  It seemed like everyone was an antagonist.  About midway through the movie, I wondered exactly where the movie was even going.  How was it supposed to end?  Knowing more about history might have helped.

The movie comes across as some sort of in joke.  I may have gotten a few parts of it.  There were even a few scenes that seemed almost funny.  The problem is that death isn’t that funny.  The power struggle didn’t come off as that funny.  In the end, I just didn’t get it.

IMDb page

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Could you imagine a world with no lying?  This would be a world  where no one would know how to say something that wasn’t true.  Words like ‘true’ and ‘lie’ wouldn’t even exist.  Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson imagined such a world.  They wrote The Invention of Lying, in which Gervais plays Mark Bellison.

In Mark’s world, things are basically the same.  They still have movies, corrupt police officers and attractive women.  It’s just that since there is no lying, there’s no fiction.  Since there’s no fiction, all movies are documentaries.  When I say documentary, I mean some guy sitting in front of a camera telling the audience what happened.  Police officers will still take an occasional bribe, but are totally honest about their motives.

Things aren’t going so well for Mark.  He’s attracted to a woman, Anna, who doesn’t reciprocate.  He has a job writing movies about a century no one cares about, leading to his termination.  His termination leads to his being evicted.  His being evicted leads to an epiphany.  When he goes to close out his bank account, the system is down.  He has to give the teller a dollar amount, which Mark realizes can be any dollar amount. It doesn’t have to be the actual dollar amount, so he chooses the amount he owes his landlord.  When the system comes back up and the teller sees the correct amount, the teller thinks it’s a computer mistake.

Mark then realizes that he can do this as much as he wants.  The best part is that no one will suspect anything.  Since he’s the only one that knows what a lie is, people should act like the teller.  Mark goes into a casino and lies about winning.  He can claim to win the jackpot on every machine and the casino will never think to ask Mark any questions.  He can also go up to random women and tell them that the fate of the world depends on them having sex right now.  (This does lead to some sense of guilt, especially where Anna is concerned.)

Things get complicated when his mother is dying.  She’s scared, which is natural.  Mark doesn’t want this, so he invents a story about going to a great place in the sky where she’ll be loved.  He doesn’t think much of it, but an employee of the nursing home overhears him.  She passes the story along and before long, Mark has a following.  Mark doesn’t really want the attention.  The story was only for his mother’s benefit.  The rest of the movie deals with the snowball effect that results.  People want to know more about this Great Man in the Sky, so Mark has to make stuff up on the fly.

There’s something interesting about a world without lying.  As I said, there’s not so much as fiction or even lying in advertising.  Mark’s mother isn’t at a nursing home.  She’s in A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.  Could you imagine what it would be like to be able to lie?  Even when Mark explains lying, people still can’t wrap their heads around it.  (That was the one thing I wondered about.  There should at least be terms for accurate and inaccurate, so a lie could be described as knowingly saying something inaccurate.)

The movie is safe for teenagers and up.  There are a few sexual jokes, some involving masturbation.  Mar’s Man in the Sky parallels religion.  The humor really isn’t meant to poke fun at religion.  Instead, it says more about how things get out of hand quickly.  Something that starts with the best of intentions becomes a major organization similar to what we would call a church.  Some of the things seem absurd, like Mark’s story where everything came from.  Then again, who is anyone to question Mark?  It would never enter their minds to think that he’s lying or might be crazy, as far out as it seems.

That was the one thing that I found odd.  I would think that in thousands of years of recorded history, someone would make a mistake or would be mentally unbalanced and say something that wasn’t true.  Is everyone totally accurate in this world?  One inaccuracy would present the opportunity to realize that you can deliberately make a mistake.  It wasn’t a big deal, overall.  It was a funny movie.  I’d recommend renting it. 

IMDb page

Paul (2011)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Alien movies are nothing new.  You have E.T., Starman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and all sorts of other titles.  I had wanted to see this one in theaters, but not having much money kept me waiting until it came out on DVD.  Part of the appeal was that it had Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings.  They're friends that have come from Great Britain to the United States to attend Comic-Con.  Afterwards, they decide to take an RV to various paranormal/alien sites such as The Black Mailbox.

Their journey is cut short by Paul, an alien on the run from a secret government facility.  (Paul is voiced by Seth Rogen, in case you can’t quite place it.)  Paul has been giving the United States Government all sorts of information, contributing to everything from technology to movies.  Since Paul has given up every bit of useful information, the only thing left to do is harvest stem cells for biological research.

Shortly into their journey, they meet Ruth, a very religious woman that can’t accept the existence of aliens, even after meeting Paul.  Paul, Graeme and Clive are forced to take Ruth with them as they continue to run.  Because of this, they not only have federal agents, but Ruth’s fundamentalist father, Moses, after them.  Eventually, Paul, Graeme, Clive and Ruth make it to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, a reference to the aforementioned Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  This is where Paul intends to meet his rescue ship.  I don’t want to give away the ending, as it’s probably best not to know.

If this isn’t your first alien movie, you should catch a few references like Devil’s Tower.  There are all sorts of in jokes and mentions.  I even missed one or two.  Because of this, the movie isn’t necessarily all that original.  I’m not say that this is wrong.  It’s probably one of the few cases where they can get away with it.  Even if you don’t get the references, you can still usually laugh at the jokes. Some of the humor is crude, high-school stuff.  Anal probes are mentioned a few times and Paul does like to use drugs.  There are maybe one or two scenes that wouldn’t be appropriate for small children, but nothing that would scar anyone for life.

This is the third movie I’ve seen staring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.  You may remember them from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  If you liked those movies, you’ll probably like this one, although I’d say that this one is the most different of the three.  I’m not saying that it’s better or worse.  It just has a slightly different feel, probably owing to the sci-fi theme.

I’d definitely recommend seeing it, even if you’re not a big sci-fi fan.  Like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the dead, much of the movie works because it’s not being shoved down your throat.  It just works.  There were maybe one or two jokes that were seemed a little random.  (I spent the whole movie wondering what kind of last name Zoil was.)  Either way, it’s definitely worth watching. 

IMDb page

Branded (2012)

One thing I like about Netflix is that I can stream a decent selection of movies.  They may not be the best movies, but I do occasionally find one I like.  While browsing streaming movies, I found Branded.  It looked similar to They Live, which it is.  I figured I’d give it a try and see what they did with the concept.

For those that haven’t heard of either movie, Branded is about Misha, played by Ed Stoppard.  He’s a Russian who knows how to market stuff.  He goes from the employee of a street vendor to working with Bob Gibbons, played by Jeffrey Tambor, advertising American brands in Russia.  Bob is constantly stringing Misha along with the possibility of a promotion which never happens.  When Bob’s niece, Abby, arrives in town, Misha takes a liking to her, despite Bob’s objections.

Meanwhile, various fast-food companies are having trouble staying in business.  They hire a marketing guru (listed on IMDb as Marketing Guru) to turn sales around.  Marketing Guru can do this, but they have to be wiling to go all the way.  One thing leads to another and Misha is working on a reality TV show that’s using modern science to make an overweight woman thinner and more beautiful.  Things go horribly wrong and Misha blames himself.

Unfortunately, so does everyone else. Misha is arrested and Abby is told to leave the country.  He’s released, but he doesn’t feel he can go back to advertising.  Thus, Misha takes to tending cows.  Abby finds her way back to Russia six years later to find Misha and his herd, hoping to convince him to rejoin society.  During this visit, he has a dream that leads him to make a ritual sacrifice of a cow.

Just like Nada finding the glasses in They Live, Misha can now see things as they really are.   This is where the strange blobs on the cover come in.  People have all sorts of blobs attached to them.  The blobs seem to be associated with the various fast-food brands.  Fast Food has taken over and it’s up to Misha to fix that.

Having read about the movie, I was thinking it would all be about Misha fighting the blobs.  Instead, the cow ceremony came about halfway through the movie.  Misha goes through a few ups and downs throughout the story.  I’ve also seen one of the coming attractions, which can be misleading.  The coming attractions would have reinforced my belief in the structure of the story.  I can understand a lot of people feeling misled.

I also caught a hint of a Devil/Jesus dynamic going on between Marketing Guru and Misha.  Marketing Guru wants to lead people astray and give them an unhealthy lifestyle, basically leading them astray.  Misha is essentially crucified by the media, condemned by the police and goes away, only to come back to redeem society.  The two of them have to battle it out for the sake of humanity, or at least Moscow.

I was able to enjoy the movie, but it seemed odd.  It’s hard to say that there was a clear message.  Yes, I get that it’s supposed to be anti-corporate and anti-advertising.  The message didn’t seem to really sink it.  Part of this is that it took so long for Misha to start fighting the corporations.  Also, Misha doesn’t fight Marketing Guru directly.  He’s not fighting a single bad guy.

Instead, he’s trying to pit the various corporations against each other.  It’s not really explained what the creatures are.  We just know that they’re feeding off of humanity somehow and must be stopped.  There didn’t seem to be any sort of emotional connection to Misha and his battle.

I can’t even think of who I’d recommend this movie to.  It would have been interesting, though, to have watched it with someone so that we could have discussed it.  I think more of the movie would have made sense that way.  Even though this isn’t your typical Hollywood movie, I think it would be funny to have this presented on broadcast television sponsored by a fast-food company.


Branded - Trailer