3105

Your shame is your own to bear, but take heart that you are correct! The movie in question is Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin.

You guys got most of the clues, I think, but for posterity:

  • A gathering of family and friends

As in, around Stalin’s deathbed.

  • Iron domes

It turns out that I slightly misheard the line. Zhukov has just cupped Khrushchev’s testicles after K. asked for Z’s help in a coup against Beria’s faction. He says K has grown balls as big as the Kremlin Domes. When I last saw the movie, I thought he said “iron balls as big as the Kremlin Domes.” I apologize if this threw anyone off.

  • A little off the top

Slicing open the top of Stalin’s head to extract the brain, for… embalming purposes? Stalin’s wastrel princeling son Vasily sees this and thinks they are going to give the brain to the Americans.

  • lists

Beria’s terrifying lists of names of comrade citizens to be seized, tortured, and almost certainly murdered.

  • A very fast record

At the start of the movie, an orchestra is playing a Mozart concerto. Stalin called and wanted a copy, but the director didn’t make a copy, so they hurriedly, and not without difficulty, perform the concerto again so they can make a record of the concerto.

  • true comradery and false friendships

I thought this article was interesting about the parallel tracks of the word comradery and camaraderie. In English, from Middle French, they basically mean “folks you wouldn’t mind spending time in a room with.”

  • John Wayne and John Ford

As dtolman notes, the most powerful men in the Soviet Union after Stalin toast John Wayne and John Ford. Stalin likes his posse to watch cowboy movies.

  • A resurrection with cocktails

The John Wayne toaster, Vyacheslav Molotov, namesake of Molotov cocktail (though apparently the Finns hung that on him as his forces used plenty of incendiary weapons against them), was so under the thumb of the Soviet regime that he was convinced that it was a good thing that his wife was arrested and executed for her crimes. And even after Beria releases her from a secret prison, not executed at all, Molotov is happy to assume that either she’s still an enemy of the State or not, depending on who is telling him what to think and feel.

  • These guys KNOW how to PARTY

The Communist Party, of course!

WW2 Communist Party

  • Mister Pink, George Bluth, a Winston Churchill, and a Python cluster around a casket.

Buscemi, Tambor, Beale, Palin

It’s a good movie, a farce girded by terror instead of the usual envy or lust.

3106

Though not in Russian. товарищ has a different etymology.

3107

From Old East Slavic товарищь (tovariščĭ), from Proto-Slavic *tovariščь, from *tovarъ +‎ *-iščь.

Ultimately an early borrowing of Turkic origin, from Old Turkic tavar ishchi‎ (tavar ishchi, “merchant, businessman”), from tavar (“property, goods, trade, wealth”) + ishchi (“one who works”), from ish (“business, work”), from Proto-Turkic *īĺč (“work”) (or, possibly instead -iš (“friend”)).[1][2] See modern Turkish işçi (“worker”).

Interesting! I didn’t know that!

3108

In Turkish, “davar” is also the “cattle” - it surely also comes from “tavar”.

I will come up with the next one soon, probably within some hours.

3109

The next one is very dear to me:

  1. A fake Olympic sexual athlete, but true pool expert
  2. A jovial sailor
  3. Some opening credits that could have been spoilery
  4. A suprematist puzzle
  5. Aiming for a safe
3110

#3 makes me think of a Mission: Impossible movie, because (just because the TV show did it that way) they put spoilery imagery in the opening credits.

So of the different M:I movies, I’ll guess the most recent one, Mission: Impossible: Fallout. I think they did some swimming and looked for a safe in that one too. But I can be way off on all of these.

3111

Nope! I don’t remember which one Fallout was (the Dubai one maybe?), but it is not a M:I flick anyway.

I usually don’t watch action movies - and I certainly won’t be changing my mind anytime soon after having watch the new Guy Ritchie joint some days ago - but I have enjoyed the recent M:I movies quite a bit.

3112

Solely going on the last clue, La Cercle Rouge?

3113

Nope, it isn’t Le Cercle Rouge, although it fits #5 perfectly indeed! I also thought about it while writing this clue.

3114
  1. A fake Olympic sexual athlete, but true pool expert
  2. A jovial sailor
  3. Some opening credits that could have been spoilery
  4. A suprematist puzzle
  5. Aiming for a safe

and now:

  1. An Edgar Allan Poe bust
3115

Watched Spoorloos/The Vanishing over the weekend.

I found it a little confusing at first, not helped by my actor face-blindness - I thought Gaby was Saskia for a long time and had to rewind when I realised she wasn’t. I’m not much of a fan of the serial killer* genre, and didn’t find Lemorne particularly interesting, but it’s telling how much more palatable these films are when they aren’t full of Hollywood cliches (see also Memories of a Murder). And the treatment of Hofman sets it apart, in a good way. Also notable that it’s another one where the police are nowhere to be seen (cf Sympathy for Mr Vengeance) - seems to be almost a pre-requisite for a good movie in the genre.

  • Is he technically one? There’s an implication that Saskia is his only success, but he’s clearly tried on multiple occasions. And at least until he fixates on Hofman there’s no indication that he’d be satisfied with just the one.
3116

Can I ask if you mean Suprematism as in Malevich or in some other sense?

3117

Spoorloos spoilers ahead:

Do you mean, you thought that she was a younger version of Saskia? But, she doesn’t even speak the same language!

I think he’s not at all a serial-killer: he only wants to see if he’s able to do something absolutely evil, as he explains it to Rex during the car scene: after he saved the kid from drowning, his daughter starts to see him as a hero. He tells her to “Never trust a hero - a hero is nothing more than someone capable of rash gestures”. Her admiration doesn’t have any value for him as long as he doesn’t prove to himself to at the same time be incapable of doing something truly evil. He also explains that for him, killing is not the worst action possible (i.e. it is to bury someone alive). It is nothing more than an experiment on himself.
He tries to find a victim on multiple occasions, but despite his meticulous preparation, is not very successful. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t continue after Saskia, as he already has the answer he was looking for. For me, he could have been a Dostoevsky or Gide character, and reminds me a bit of Lafcadio, in Les Caves du Vatican/The Vatican’s Cellars.

That’s a very interesting parallel with Korean cinema you’re making! Actually, I could very easily imagine the Korean version of Spoorloos. Possibly directed by Bong Joon Ho or Hong-jin Na.
I agree with you other two points as well.

I think the coffin scene in Spoorloos is particularly good, as it is not only horrifying due to what’s happening to Rex, but we also understand simultaneously what happened to Saskia, while being horrified for her as well.

Yes, absolutely. I indeed mean it in as in Malevich.

A new clue:

  1. A fake Olympic sexual athlete, but true pool expert
  2. A jovial sailor
  3. Some opening credits that could have been spoilery
  4. A suprematist puzzle
  5. Aiming for a safe
  6. An Edgar Allan Poe bust

and

  1. A maze
3118

I think at that point in the film we hadn’t heard Saskia speak French at all, and Rex’s was quite good, so I had no reason to think hers wouldn’t be. As to younger, I’m pretty crappy with ages as well as faces, I didn’t register her age as any different.

Yeah, that’s what he says, but I’m not sure I believe him (or, I suppose you might say Sluizer/Krabbé). For a start, he’s a sociopath, so not exactly a reliable narrator, but also he does go on to kill Hofman, so it’s not like he only needs to do it once to get it out of his system as it were. And it seems telling that he’s always choosing attractive young women, which is not at all necessary for the “experiment”. If I’m trying to imagine this person as a real human being, rather than a purely fictional creation, I don’t buy him as a one-and-done kind of guy.

And, to take it in the other direction, if we do take him at face value, it gets to what I don’t like about the genre (beyond the terrible Hollywood cliches). If you can just ascribe any behaviour in a killer, however psychologically implausible, to “sociopath”, then it robs the film of having the ability to say something more meaningful about humanity. The reason Spoorloos works, I think is entirely because of what it has to say about/through Hofman. But Lemorne himself feels like a narrative tool to that end, rather than a plausible agent in his own right.

You say meticulous preparation, but he’s not particularly careful. Indeed, he only succeeds with Saskia because he goes back to the exact same spot minutes later with a different get-up. Good thing they didn’t have CCTV, apparently.

3119

Either way, I would like to thank Buckaroo for making me google “suprematist”.

3120

Much obliged!

A new clue appears:

  1. A fake Olympic sexual athlete, but true pool expert
  2. A jovial sailor
  3. Some opening credits that could have been spoilery
  4. A suprematist puzzle
  5. Aiming for a safe
  6. An Edgar Allan Poe bust
  7. A maze

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJRP3LRcUFg

3121

I’m just thinking about heist-y movies with charming male leads… so uh… water makes me think of… A Fish Called Wanda?

3122

No, mi dispiace, pero Un pesce di nome Wanda non è affatto il film che stiamo cercando. Parmiggiano reggiano, Osso Bucco alla milanese, Benito Mussolini.

3123
  1. A fake Olympic sexual athlete, but true pool expert
  2. A jovial sailor
  3. Some opening credits that could have been spoilery
  4. A suprematist puzzle
  5. Aiming for a safe
  6. An Edgar Allan Poe bust
  7. A maze

The Smiths - This Charming Man (Official Music Video)1280×720

The Smiths - This Charming Man (Official Music Video)

and :

  1. One of the actors went on years later to star in a remake of this movie, although in a different part.
3124

Uh… The Italian Job?