Thanks for the recommendations. Letterboxd has a convenient app for keeping a watchlist, to which I add all freeper recommendations. It’s easy, intuitive and free. I recommend it to all, and especially the folks who say they won’t watch any recent films.
From this thread: The Checkist; The Inner Circle; The Edge; A Gentleman in Moscow; Hail Caesar.
From my Letterboxd diary: The Way Back (2010); The Death of Stalin (2017); Mr. Jones (2019); Chernobyl (the miniseries, 2019); Balloon (2018); As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me (2001); Ashes in the Snow (2018); First They Killed My Father (2017); Sunstroke (2014); Dear Comrades! (2020); Within the Whirlwind (2009); Eternal Winter (2018).
These are in the order I watched them per my Letterboxd diary. Several are very good. A couple are pretty average, judged purely on cinematic excellence, but they are all thematically sound. First They Killed My Father is an outlier, as it deals with the Cambodian holocaust (scandalously neglected by the film industry). It was an Angelina Jolie passion project (go figure); she has adopted kids from Cambodia and has the right idea about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Good for her.
Thanks for the list - several I’ve not even heard of I’ll have to check out. But the absolute best (of what I’ve seen) in pointing out the inherent evils in commie totalitarianism is “The Lives of Others”.