THE DEATH OF STALIN

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Maybe The Death of Stalin would be easier to appreciate with a detailed knowledge of early 20th-century Russian history, which I do not possess. This quasi-comedy, directed and co-directed by Veep creator and writer Armando Iannucci, seems to rely at least somewhat on such a shorthand, so much going on in the immediate wake of Joseph Stalin's death that I sometimes found it difficult to keep up. So much dialogue going on at such a pace, even with it spoken in English, subtitles would have been helpful.

The promotions for this movie overtly state that any similarities to current events is intentional, although comparing the circumstances of 1953 Soviet Russia to any current superpower's situation strikes me as comparing apples to oranges. Suffice it to say that the story presented here details the farcical struggles of Stalin's inner circle to realign each person's respective powers in the wake of his death.

The Death of Stalin is undeniably entertaining, but considering its nearly universal acclaim, I did not take to it quite to the degree that I expected. I must admit there were ways it made me uneasy. We are clearly meant to see all these men as power-hungry fools -- and here this is presented in a very similar vein, actually, as the events on HBO's Veep -- but it is also made explicitly clear that these are all truly horrible men, responsible for the countless deaths and imprisonment of innocent people.

I'm all for allowing anything to be subject to a comedic eye, but who can we possibly relate to here? Sympathetic characters are not a necessity in satire, true, but I'm not convinced the satirical element is strong enough here. Then again, any truly sympathetic character in this story would clearly bring down the mood Iannucci is going for.

Instead we get subtle glimpses, such as the uncultured people brought in off the street to fill empty seats at the symphony, when only half the audience is retained to recreate a performance just given but not recorded, but Stalin has called to request a recording. This is the sequence that begins the film, and we see connon people resigned to this random fate for the evening, biding their time knitting or eating from a pickle jar.

There's also something odd about the casting: much like Tom Cruise in Valkyrie (2009), none of the actors here are actually the nationality of the characters they play, and no attempt is made even to change the native accents of the performers. So these are all either British actors (Simon Russell Beale as Lavrenti Beria; Jason Isaacs as Field Marshal Zhukov; Monty Python's Michael Palin as Vyacheslov Molotov) or American actors (Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev; Jeffrey Tamboor as Georgy Malenkov), playing Russian historical figures with British or American accents. Admittedly this is little more than a matter of preference, but it would have felt more authentic to me if at the very least they had Russian accents. As it is, it feels a little like watching a movie about zany meetings between Western leaders with inexplicably Russian names.

All of that notwithstanding, such distractions are not that difficult to get past. The Death of Stalin is a densely layered cinematic work, one could argue in the tradition of Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove -- a surface veneer of jaunty lightheartedness that is spread thinly over something deeply depressing and truly dark.

I just wanted it to be longer on the funny stuff and shorter on the darkness, although it would not take much effort to look past the latter in order to better enjoy the former -- which is perhaps part of the point. I got pretty good chuckles at regular intervals. That fleeting mirth just gave way to an unsettling realization of the cycles of history repeating itself.

Everyone thinks: How can I work this to my advantage?

Everyone thinks: How can I work this to my advantage?

Overall: B

HOME AGAIN

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

Home Again had a unique effect on me. I can't think of any other movie that started out inadvertently creeping me out and ended by winning me over with its objectively contrived charms. I can't even think of anyone I would recommend this movie to, at least not fairly. If I wanted to jump right into sweeping generalizations, I'd say that superficial and/or easily entertained middle-aged women would love it. Okay maybe also superficial and/or easily entertained middle-aged gay men.

Everyone else? Not so much. Smug intellectuals and anyone who fancies themselves a movie connoisseur would revel in tearing this movie apart. This movie isn't for them anyway.

Home Again has much in common with Nancy Meyers movies like Something's Gotta Give (2003) and It's Complicated (2009) -- and for good reason: it's written and directed by Meyers's own daughter, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, practically as an homage. I'll give her this much credit: Meyers may be well-known for placing characters in lavishly decorated homes that seem far more expensive than they could possibly afford, but Meyers-Shyer actually lends the impeccable home some real plausibility. Reese Witherspoon's Alice Kinney lives in a gorgeous home left to her by her late dad who was a famous film director. And after all, Meyers-Shyer knows from having a famous film director parent.

The plausibility of the premise is another story. Alice, on her fortieth birthday, meets a blandly handsome twenty-something, Harry (Pico Alexander), at a bar, and takes both him and his two friends home. Harry sleeps in her bed after getting sick before they can consummate a would-be one-night stand, and his friends pass out on living room couches. Before she knows it, Alice's formerly famous actor mother (Candice Bergen, given not near enough to do) is suggesting she allow these "struggling artist" types who are trying to get a movie made to stay a few nights in her guest house.

Harry is a director, and his friends are writer George (Jon Rudnitsky) and actor Teddy (Nat Wolff). Together they form this one-dimensional trio of young Stepford Men whose main quality is that they all embody what every adoring old lady imagines their grandson to be, which is to say, flawlessly wholesome. These guys are always just barely off from how normal humans interact with each other, another writer could really take this into another direction and reveal them to be pod people. Honestly, I don't think Hallie Meyers-Shyer really knows what it's like to be young and trying to make it as a filmmaker in L.A. These kids get all the luck, encounter no grime or starvation, and somehow successfully move in on what in L.A. qualifies as a upper-middle-class family. Anywhere else, Alice would simply be rich.

Somehow, though, even in L.A., Alice has no entitlement complex, and neither do these three young men. That seems left up to the "socialite" played magnificently by Lake Bell, who briefly employs Alice as the fledgling interior designer she's attempting to reinvent herself as.

And that's the thing about Home Again, really: the performances. The material is far too trite for any of it to be exactly Oscar-worthy, and yet all of the seasoned players elevate the material. Meyers-Shyer's writing has serious room for improvement, but Reese Witherspoon hasn't met a single line of dialogue she can't make work. It doesn't take long to start rooting for Alice, even though her problems are so benign. Everyone in this movie is so relentlessly pleasant, not even Michael Sheen as the separated husband can manage to be unlikable. Alice has two young daughters who are, of course, both precocious and adorable.

There are no shitbags in this universe! In Los Angeles. That alone should disqualify the whole movie. But, as the story went on, I found myself won over by this objectively stupid movie, because -- well, that's what well-executed fantasies do. Home Again doesn't present itself as a fantasy, which is one of its many problems. It also has three Millennial men so "decent" they come off as anachronistic. It's like members of the Cleaver family from Leave It to Beaver time traveled to present day but somehow just didn't notice. Although, okay, Harry Cleaver does have sex with a forty-year-old woman. Leave it to someone in the Meyers family to make even that come across as wholesome.

Not that it can't be, mind you. It's just that in the Meyers world, there are no truly deep character flaws -- only minor mistakes the world's exclusively good people quickly learn from. Honestly, nothing about this movie is sensible, except for the idea that a woman can date a younger man and not be judged for it. It's disconcerting to see such a ridiculous story carried by winning performances.

Reese Witherspoon and Pico Alexander make an attractive inter-generational sandwich.

Reese Witherspoon and Pico Alexander make an attractive inter-generational sandwich.

Overall: B-