Movies at Home - The Death Of Stalin, To Catch A Thief and Evil Under The Sun

 

I first saw The Death of Stalin at the cinema in 2017 and this is what I said at the time:

This is the blackest comedy you could imagine. Armando Iannucci has mixed the absolute horror of the Stalin era with the comedy of a bickering and back stabbing committee that has to cope with aftermath of the leader's death. And by do they bicker. Absent from the poster above is the superbly creepy head of the secret police played energetically by Simon Russell Beale. His central role is ripe for the laser sharp pen of the writer, as he tries to keep power. The rest of the cast is terrific, especially a late entrance from the hilarious Jason Isaccs as the head of the army, Michael Palin as Molotov and Andrea Riseborough as Stalin's daughter Svetlana. But the film belongs to Iannucci as he produces an amazing satire on the incompetence of political spin, with everyone blaming everyone else, with no thought for the country, only their immediate survival. Brilliant.

It is still that good.

Two films for Alison starting with the Hitchcock mystery To Catch a Thief, complete with obligatory blonde, this time Grace Kelly at her regal best. Cary Grant does his Cary Grant impression, but it is the dialogue between the two that makes the movie. John Michael Hays makes a great job of the screenplay.

I found this adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Evil Under The Sun to be pretty hammy. It does have an excellent cast that includes a young Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg and James mason. but this time the script lets them down. So much so, the whole thing seemed very dated. But it does have a very colourful Mediterranean setting. Alison enjoyed it a lot more than I did.