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Image result for between two ferns matthew mcconaughey

Zach Galifianakis to Matthew McConaughey: “All right, all right, all right. Sorry, I was just reading the box office returns for your last three movies…Of all the things you can win an Oscar for, how surprised are you that you won one for acting?”

Aesthetically speaking, Between Two Ferns: The Movie isn’t much to look at. But on the page, Netflix’s newest film is a beaut.

Ferns, unlike many of the ill-fated Saturday Night Live movies, manages to maintain most of the charm of the Funny or Die internet talk show that spawned it (albeit with a little less star power). Brief, breezy and peppered with laugh-out-loud jokes, Ferns is a clever fake documentary about a fake television show hosted by the fake version of Galifianakis.

In the tradition of faux-interview characters like Martin Short’s Hollywood hack Jiminy Glick and Sasha Baron Cohen’s Ali G.,  Galifianakis is a clueless boob with an over-inflated ego, a non-existent social filter and a knack for asking the most inappropriate and offensive questions to his celebrity subjects.

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To Keanu Reeves: “On a scale of 1 to 100, how many words do you know?”

While no one is going to confuse Ferns for Oscar bait, the comedy is going to please fans of the comedy skit — largely because the movie doesn’t try to be much more than that. Galifianakis is playing a hapless version of himself, asking his trademark offensive questions in his trademark stilted, deadpan manner.


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To actress Brie Larson: “I’ve read online that you’re very private and decline to answer questions that make you feel uncomfortable. This is a two-parter: Is that true, and how old were you when you got your first period?”

The premise of Ferns has Funny or Die co-creator Will Ferrell demanding 10 new episodes from Galifianakis in just two weeks. If Zach can deliver on the mission, he will get his own late-night talk show on the Lifetime network. And with that, the 82-minute movie is off on a cross-country road trip.


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To a heavily-bearded David Letterman: My guest today is Santa Claus with an eating disorder…Did you just wake up from a 15-year nap?

From The Larry Sanders Show to Curb Your Enthusiasm to Episodes,  the improv-friendly showbiz parody has been a rich source of comedic material, and Ferns is filled with hilariously awkward moments with his guests (who were not prepped for their scenes). During a stop in Kansas, we meet a down-on-his-luck Jon Hamm doing a seven-hour autograph session.


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To Hamm: “Bradley Cooper co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in A Star is Born. Are you hoping that will open doors for other hot idiots?”

Even with a running time barely longer than a TV drama, Fern loses a bit of steam in the third act, when the interview segments take a back seat to the resolution of that plot about Zach and the gang racing the clock to deliver the completed episodes.

Still, the plot line serves its real purpose — as a launching point to showcase a new series of interviews featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities squaring off against the greatest public-access talk show host in southeast North Carolina (Galifianakis’ real home state).

If you’re a fan of Fern‘s internet show, you’ll probably like the movie, directed by Galifianakis collaborator Scott Aukerman, who also wrote the screenplay. Aukerman cannily avoids the pitfall of SNL comedies by not freighting the film with sluggish, clunky side plots and romances. Instead, he focuses on watching Galifianakis tweak and abuse celebrities to their faces in the guise of interviewing them.


Image result for between two ferns benedict cumberbatch

To Benedict Cumberbatch: “You once said you’re your own worst critic. So you haven’t read any of your reviews? If you didn’t have an accent do you think people would be able to tell that you’re not a very good actor?”

Decked in his cheap blazer, well-worn sneakers and clutching his cue cards, Galifianakis is a treat every time his show airs. He mauls names, mistakes movies and barely hides his contempt for stars more successful than he. Galifianakis asks the questions we’d all like red carpet reporters to ask, and the celebrity deadpan reactions are all the comedic punch the film needs. Galifianakis’ playfully skewers, but never punctures, the Hollywood PR machine.

That’s the whole movie — a tuft of concocted fluff that never asks to be taken too seriously, and that allows Galifianakis to artfully oscillate between idiocy and ire. Some interviews draw such laughter you’re not sure if the stars are acting or truly cracking up (and the gag-reel scene at the end of the movie suggest they often weren’t acting).


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To Peter Dinklage: “Dinklage. Is that an STD? Why did you keep your real name? Galifianakis is a stage name. My real name is Chad Farthouse.”

Ferns flourishes in the awkward.  At its best, the humor can still draw a small drop of sardonic blood. It essentially plays like a Comedy Central Roast, served up in three-to six-minute nuggets. And Galifianakis is the perfect anti-fawner for celebrity chats. His passive-aggressive disaffection keeps everyone, including the audience, off guard. Galifianakis remains the Gen-X poster boy for arrested development; he has an acerbic affection for pop culture that somehow feels both feels both sarcastic and sincere.


Image result for between two ferns hailee steinfeld

To Hailee Steinfeld: “You were in Pitch Perfect 2 and 3. Do you ever wish you had been in the good one?”

That’s the community that Ferns celebrates; a shallow, harmless community. Lauren Lapkus is a standout as Zach’s assistant, Carol Hunch. And the film is filled with stars clearly enjoying the teasing. It may be a sliver of a film, but it’s an unexpectedly entertaining shard.

 

John Wick’s Excellent Adventure

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Here’s looking at you, Wick. Part grisly Casablanca, part bloody Blade Runner and part macabre Matrix, the elements combine to make John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum an epic of choreographed mayhem and the best action film of the year. Endgame schmendgame.

Directed by Keanu Reeves’ Matrix stunt double-turned-action auteur Chad Stahelski, Parabellum mixes terrific CGI with even more impressive stunt work to become that rarity in an the action genre: a live-action cartoon that doesn’t look cartoonish. Yes, the violence is over-the-top and Parabellum is by far the most brutal film of the sleeper franchise. But as body counts go, this is bloodshed as high art.

The opening of Parabellum picks up just minutes after the end of its 2017 predecessor, with Keanu Reeves’ wronged, out-of-retirement super-assassin on the run through nighttime Manhattan. Wick, as you may recall from part 2, committed the cardinal sin of killing a made member of the shadowy assassins’ guild known as The High Table. Now, he’s been declared “excommunicado”, which in layman terms means that it’s open season on Wick, who has a $14 million bounty on his head.

Out of loyalty, colleague Ian McShane’s gave Wick a one-hour head start to get out of Dodge before word attracts the enumerable professional hit men (and women) who come after him for the reward. As played by Reeves (who, at 54, can still remarkably dish out and take a nasty beating), Wick is the ultimate tragic loner – haunted and hunted. The role fits the soulfully unknowable star like the custom, slim black suit he wears on the job.

The first brawl in John Wick 3 sets an ultraviolent tone that never relents as Wick does with a library book what he famously did with a pencil in the first film, and it just gets nastier from there. What makes that brawl — and the dozens subsequently – so effective  isn’t just the lightning-quick fighting or the cameo appearances of Asian cinema martial-arts heavies that are easter eggs for the action savants;  it’s the way the audience feels each blow in the fights. As in The Raid films, the punches are insanely inventive, but they also hurt. And they also sound especially crunchy. Whoever was John Wick 3’s Foley Artist deserves a raise.

It also doesn’t hurt that cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a world that would make Ridley Scott envious. From the sands of Casablanca to the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, the worlds of Wick never lack for flair or twists. There’s a horse raise in Wick 3 — on city streets instead of Moroccan sand — and it looks somehow natural in the Wickian universe. Image result for john wick 3 horse

One of the new characters introduced in John Wick 3 is Asia Kate Dillon’s “Adjudicator,” who spells out the fine print rules of the High Table. It’s a nice countermeasure to the chaotic violence that immerses us for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

As a man without a country in John Wick 3, Reeves’ bruised and battered hero is forced to call in the only two favors he has left to his credit. The first is with an underworld Russian mother figure who’s played by Anjelica Huston and who helps him flee to Casablanca. The second is with an equally badass assassin played by Halle Berry (whose pair of attack dogs steal the middle-third of the movie). Neither one steal Wick’s thunder, but they do add some emotional weight to the film.

If Wick 3 has any weaknesses, it’s that the fights can feel a little long and so quickly edited you can miss the nifty, fatal moves. And while Parebellum clearly sees itself as a franchise film, it sets up another sequel a little too blatantly.

Still, with his dog and muscle car already avenged in the first two movies, John Wick 3 really leaves viewers with one question, one never answered in the movie: Who or what is a ‘Parabellum?’ For the non-scholars of dead languages, an internet search  reveals that it comes from the Latin phrase: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Which translates as, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” And  no one prepares for war like John Wick does.