OZARK: SEASON 4

This best-loved satirical soap opera takes aim at the Sackler family's Big Pharma crimes that have killed hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Smack!

Providing audiences a crash course in money laundering, with the help of local politicians, Mexican drug cartels and the FBI, is icing on the dramatic cake.

Laura Linney and Jason Bateman are in fine form, as are every single other actor cast in this insanely bingeable series.

The humor is pitch black; it is a black comedy after all.

Watching "Ozark" with the mindset of watching a soap opera opens the whole thing up. Genre and context.

Bon appétit moi petites. 

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THE DEATH OF STALIN

While not as bawdy as it could or should have been, Armando Iannucci’s (director on "In The Loop," scriptwriter on television's "Veep") determinedly British send up of the Russian political structure at the time of Joseph Stalin’s death is a satisfying political spoof.

With no German accents anywhere in earshot, the satire kicks in with Adrian Mcloughlin’s death (as Stalin) while listening to a freshly minted radio recording by Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko), a symphony pianist who sends Stalin a hate note along with the vinyl record for the Russian leader to mull over. A puddle of pee surrounds Stalin's [is-he-really-dead] corpse. Not pretty. 

This goofy cinematic vantage on petty jealousies, backstabbing, and political maneuvering of Russia’s Central Committee gives the audience a not so unrealistic sense of how politicians operate regardless of their country of origin.

Jeffrey Tambor is delightfully insufferable as Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov who wrangles to take command of Russia now that Stalin is out of the way. Malenkov has stiff competition in the likes of Lavrentiy Beria (exquisitely cast with Simon Russell Beale), the head of NKVD (Russia’s secret police called the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Steve Buscemi is predictably watchable as Nikita Khrushchev. Especially delicious is Michael Palin’s turn as Foreign Minister Vyachaslav Molotov. The former Monty Python actor and contributor hasn't lost his razor-sharp comic timing. 

“The Death of Stalin” plays lighter than its subject matter projects. While another trip through the editing process could have helped, this is a movie that audiences will happily discover as time goes by. It doesn’t hurt that the film was banned in Russia. I wish it had been more transgressive to warrant such an action, but it’s got plenty of laughs as it is. Motherland or Home Land, it's all the same. 

Rated R. 106 mins.

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GET OUT

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Jordan Peele’s directorial debut isn’t as much a horror movie as it is a scathing social satire. The film is more “Stepford Wives” than it is “Rosemary’s Baby.”

The shocks and scares that come at the audience are more related to taking out the garbage on Obama-bot liberals who discovered their asses hung out to dry by Hillary Clinton’s Bernie-directed skullduggery that allowed Donald Trump's team to win over swing-voters who have also been equally duped by a data-mining system that makes America’s bologna form of democracy obsolete.

“Get Out” achieves something that no other film has so eloquently done before; it gives its audience the sense of what it is to be a black adult in a country where the liberals who pretend to stand up for blacks are just as guilty of exploiting them as their racist counterparts.

There are stunning moments when Peele’s dialogue strikes unmistakable targets as when this film’s villainous white patriarch (played by Bradley Whitford made up to look strikingly like David Fincher) proudly announces that he would have “voted for Obama for a third term.” Peele is the first black person I’ve heard call out Obama as the Uncle Tom his presidency represented from the first second he took office.

While the pacing lags where it should escalate, and Peele all but abandons his film’s most fascinating aspect (the relationship between his black protagonist Chris and his white girlfriend Rose), “Get Out” is a delightful satire that knows enough to not take itself too seriously. Brain transplants give the movie an appropriately B-movie edge.

Actor Daniel Kaluuya’s pitch-perfect performance arrives alongside Jordan Peele’s breakout as a talented filmmaker. Social satires rarely strike as cold and deep as “Get Out.” Peele’s message is clear; America is not a hospitable place for the black people it exploits from both sides. With friends like Obama-liberals, none of us need any enemies, much less the likes of the Trump administration and its legion of racist thugs. We may all need to “get out.”

Rated R. 108 mins.

We're drinking SAMUEL SMITH OATMEAL OATMEAL for our discussion of Jordan Peele's GET OUT.