Instead of talking about Daniel Scheinert‘s The Death of Dick Long, a movie you should definitely watch with as little information going in as possible, I will talk about The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci’s 2018 satirical depiction of the events that unfolded in the power vacuum left behind by Joseph Stalin’s death in 1952, a movie unfairly slept on but perfectly suited to our modern political shitshow, which has nothing to do with rednecks in Alabama (as The Death of Dick Long does).
The Death of Stalin, and remember, not The Death of Dick Long, is perhaps the kind of movie that could only be made in this era of global clownshoes politics; it’s true that the characters in The Death of Dick Long are themselves a bunch of clowns, sure, but The Death of Dick Long has nothing to do with politics, something Iannucci is deeply concerned about in his work, including The Death of Stalin. A film about craven, ambitious men tripping over each other to seize control of government in the wake of their leader’s sudden demise is the perfect political satire, a necessary movie for the day, unlike The Death of Dick Long, which, again, isn’t political at all, though it is still a terrific contemporary satire, even if I can’t in good conscience say much about what it’s satirizing, other than to say that it’ll make you laugh yourself hoarse.
You can read my full review (of The Death of Dick Long) over at Paste Magazine.
A Constant Visual Feast 