Netflix Review: Bernie (2011)

Without a doubt, Bernie is by far the best comedy I've seen in years. It was refreshingly different from most trash coming out of Hollywood with a "comedy" label. It is based on a true story of a small town assistant funeral director who befriends an old widow who is universally hated by everyone in town.

The most appealing aspect was the charming and funny interviews with the actual people from this small town, seamlessly integrated into the film alongside the actors. These people are genuinely hilarious, showing the wit and humor found among Southrons, in a classier package than one would find in the likes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

As Bernie, Jack Black may be funnier than any other role he's ever played. The way he walks, how he interacts with older women, his ability to sing, and his enthusiasm for his job as a funeral director make him quite the character. This may be the best performance of Black's career.

There's really not much more I feel like saying about this movie, except that I highly recommend you watch it. 

PS3 Review: Hitman: Blood Money (2006)

I'm filing this review of Blood Money under PS3 because I own the Hitman HD Trilogy, which also includes Silent Assassin and Contracts. Of the three, Blood Money's HD version is by far the purtiest. Definitely pick the collection up if you don't already own the games for PS2. Nevertheless, this review still applies to the PS2 version.

Blood Money fixes virtually all of the issues I had with Silent Assassin and Contracts. Don't get me wrong, I love Silent Assassin, but it had some problems, specifically: uneven difficulty, too much trial-and-error progression (especially on the higher difficulties), guards with an often preternatural ability to see through disguises, and concomitantly, somewhat wonky stealth that works about as often as it doesn't. Blood Money fixes just about everything, though.

Unlike Contracts, which presented missions in a more episodic manner, Blood Money returns the series to a more straightforward, linear narrative. Missions are presented as flashbacks, introduced by cut scenes from the present that follow a reporter's investigation into the alleged death of Agent 47. These flashbacks do an excellent job of introducing each mission without interfering with or inhibiting a player's freedom to complete the job as desired, not as dictated by the plot (this is my main gripe with Absolution; more on that in a later review). Blood Money rarely requires you to go about the mission in any specific manner. Now, this is not to suggest that there is total freedom; there's certainly an optimum way to skin these cats, but it's rarely clear from the start, and as a result finding that optimum path feels organic rather than forced. The game is also more forgiving than the others in the series as there's a considerable margin for error, even on the higher difficulty settings, just in case everything doesn't go exactly the way you planned. Your creativity and skill, rather than your patience and memorization, win you those coveted "Silent Assassin" rankings. This is an especially nice touch given the long, involved missions in the latter half of the game.

For instance, consider "A New Life," one of my favorite missions. In this one, 47 is tasked with taking out a former mafia boss currently hiding out in suburbia with his family. You can complete the mission in numerous ways: you can tranquilize the guard dog from a neighbor's tree house, sneak into the backyard, and set the barbecue on fire; you can steal the outfit of a clown and infiltrate the birthday party; you can poison the donuts of the FBI, turn off the outside security cameras, sneak inside the house through the basement, and push the mafia boss as he's walking down the stairs; you can use a surveillance van to prank call the mafia boss, and when the poor guy picks up the phone, you can snipe him from a neighbor's garden; you get the idea. Each method has positive and negative aspects, and while some will undoubtedly score better than the others, the real replay value is in finding new and increasingly weird ways to off you targets.

This replay value is only furthered by an inventory system in which the money you earn from each mission can be used to upgrade your weapons, adding silencers, laser sights, larger clips, and so on. It's not as effective or integral as it could be, as the missions rarely demand that you constantly upgrade your tools. Still, though, it's a welcome addition if not a totally necessary one. But my only real complaint about Blood Money is the poorly implemented "Notoriety" system. As you play through the game, your actions in each mission attract a certain amount of attention: going in silent and eliminating only your targets keeps you a shadow, while additional casualties and gunfire raise your profile considerably. At the end of each mission you can bribe witnesses/police to keep your notoriety low. The problem is that you always have more than enough dough to pay these people off and reset your notoriety rating, thereby rendering the whole idea relatively pointless. The consequences of your actions in one mission, then, rarely affect your behavior in the next, unless you accidentally skip through the menu too fast or you spend an obscene amount of money on upgrading your inventory. The whole idea is more innocuous than anything else, but it could have added an interesting dimension to the game.

Overall, however, Blood Money is one of the best; it's easily the best game in the series, and certainly one of the best games on PS2. For a game without a multiplayer option, Blood Money has amazing replay value. Too bad Absolution failed to match it. More on that soon.

PS2 Review: Hitman: Contracts (2004)

Some think of Hitman: Contracts as the weakest of the trilogy (Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Contracts, and Blood Money). In a way, they might be correct. However, this is more a testament to the strength of the series, as Contracts is not at all a bad game. I think what people have in mind when they consider it to be the weakest link of the series is the story; while Silent Assassin and Blood Money have interesting narratives that culminate in confronting the worthy adversary of Agent 47, Contracts is told in the form of flashback missions that don't come together to make a story. It is somewhat comparable to 007: Legends, where as Daniel Craig sinks after being shot off the train by Moneypenny in Skyfall, he takes time to reflect on favorite memories such as Goldfinger, OHMSS, and Moonraker. These do nothing to tell the story of Skyfall, just as the old assassinations have little to do with advancing the story in Contracts. They are little more than a bit of character development and tying in some continuity between the original Hitman: Codename 47 and the trilogy.

Fortunately, the weak points would appear to end here. The gameplay resembles Silent Assassin closely and offers the familiar, open-ended style of missions, only now with greater autonomy in deciding how to complete missions. This was probably the weakest point in SA, where several missions appear to only have one way to complete them properly (by which I mean attain the mission-rating of “Silent Assassin,” which pretty much requires perfection; no alerts, no blowing cover, no dead civilians, no missed shots, etc.). Contracts is also more forgiving (at least on the easier difficulties), whereas guards in Silent Assassin seemed ready to shoot at you if you looked at them funny. This created what I thought to be a slightly more playable game. Several times in SA I saw no easy way to complete a mission other than precisely by the book or shooting my way through; there were no other options. In this respect, Contracts received less credit than it deserved.

But it's funny. If you've followed CRN for awhile, you might know that I tend to discount the importance of story-telling in games. The Timesplitters series is easily one of the best FPS franchises ever, yet story-telling was not one of its strong suits. This suited me just fine; with its quirkiness and oddball style of characters, it didn't really seem to need that. However, other series have led me to consider the narratives told in games to be more important. This is quite clear in my treatment ofSplinter Cell: Blacklist, where I felt that the character and spirit of Sam Fisher had been sold out (as had the stealth gameplay). And I think the same goes for Hitman in the sense that the story-telling is important. Without it, Contracts feels more like an expansion pack that offers many playable levels rather than a story of its own.

Bottom line is that Contracts is a must-have if one enjoys the Hitman series. One cannot like the rest without liking this one. It doesn't quite reach the standard set by Blood Money, and it doesn't add much to the Hitman mythos, but it is a solid entry in the series.

Double the Van Dammage: Hard Target (1993) and Street Fighter (1994)

Unfortunately, these are the last two films in my Van Damme quadruple feature DVD set. But don't worry, I bought another one, this time with even weirder straight-to-video stuff. It should make for some enjoyable Van Dammage in the future. Stay tuned.

Hard Target (1993)

This one's probably most famous for being really weird. Van Damme, sporting a mullet worthy of the Hall of Fame, plays Chance, a Cajun with a shifty past and some mad kung fu skills. He's hired some lady looking for her missing father. They quickly find out, however, that he was killed by a rich butthole who hunts homeless Vietnam vets for sport. Naturally, there's revenge to be had. Hard Target is an exercise in absurdity: each scene is exponentially weirder than the last, with the chase sequence in the Bayou being by far the weirdest. Even for a Van Damme film, this one is a bit out there. In terms of the martial arts, there's not much here. There's a few decent fights, but they're almost all filmed in super slo-mo. In a way, they're perfect for a poser like Van Damme, but the choreography is substandard, particularly in comparison with Van Damme's contemporaries in the genre. But as an action film more generally, Hard Target is beautifully unselfconscious. There's not a single halfhearted idea or concept thrown out there; rather, each stupid idea is followed to its "logical" conclusion. As long as you don't go in expecting a martial arts tournament, Hard Target is one of the better Van Damme films.

Street Fighter (1994)

And this one's probably most famous for being really awful. Truly, who knows what in the world is going on in this film. Our friend Van Damme is Guile, a military man tasked with finding the nefarious M. Bison, who has kidnapped some innocent folks and is holding them up for ransom. Bison has also turned one of Guile's pals into a green mutant because he hates him so much. Consequently, Guile gathers up some allies to launch an attack on Bison's hideout. It all leads up to one of the most nonsensical set-piece finales in any film. Street Fighter is poorly acted, poorly scripted, poorly shot, poorly edited, and poorly lots of other things, but really, the fundamental problem with the film is that there's actually very little fighting in it. There's plenty of action movies with more idiotic plots than this one (certainly with worse acting), but for a movie based on a fighting game, I need more than two or three combat sequences because the sub-slapstick comedy in this one was not working for me. This film makes the Mortal Kombat adaptation look Citizen Kane, if only because the brain trust behind Mortal Kombat had the common sense to make a fairly straightforward martial arts film. Street Fighter is somewhere between a made-for-TV children's special and a rather meandering adventure film. And in that sense, it's unsatisfying on nearly every level. The few scenes of one-on-one combat are ruined by a style of editing that most closely resembles epilepsy. And even for fans of Van Damme, there's little to like about the big lug's role: a few spin-kicks are thrown in there, sure, but not much else, not even the splits. Street Fighter doesn't even reach the ridiculous "highs" that something like Double Team stumbles fortuitously upon. I can only recommend Street Fighter for serious Van Damme devotees.