jacksflicks

L&O was the best drama series ever. And "Bodies" is arguably the best episode. There are two part of this story beyond the L&O format: Ritchie Coster and the rest.

Coster needs no costume, no props, just himself with a grubby two-day beard. In his shuttered, sordid abode, Coster's Bruner is truly the Prince of Darkness. The rapes, tortures and murders, as sensational as they are, seem almost incidental to the pure evil radiating from Bruner. When we first see him, he sits in his chair enthroned, the devil in his domain. Hospitably he ask of Biscoe and Greene, "Anyone want some cheese?" He brings out a clump of cheese in one hand and a long pairing knife with the other, the cops draw their pieces: "Drop the knife!" and Bruner replies, "Gouda?"

He's no less frightful at the station. He scares off his first attorney by pure creepiness, then, on Rikers, he startles with his mocking laughter and outbursts. Finally, as McCoy and Serena turn to leave, Bruner says, like a cobra to a rabbit, "You can't take your eyes off me." His head turns to face them square-on: "I'm everything your aren't; I'm the un-you."

The camera lets Brunner's face fill the screen. This is not just the face of a murderer but of murder itself. He's could be talking to his victims! Ritchie Coster does this with his face (he even has the devil's hairline!), his voice, his indifference for his victims, their loved ones, the police, prosecutors and the system. He achieves all this with only about ten minutes screen time, yet we'll never forget. I agree with another reviewer: this certainly deserves an Emmy!

Then, there's the rest, one of those moral conundrums that make L&O worth watching. We all know attorney-client privilege. We all understand why its needed. But that's not satisfying in Bruner's case, where there are compelling reasons to dispense with this particular privilege. One reviewer here, appropriately calling himself Garbage, goes off on an inane tangent, wrongly making the lawyer's trial about making the trial about privilege, when the trial was actually about the lawyer's unlocking the space to see the bodies, then locking it back up, thus, "facilitating," making the lawyer an accessory after the fact. That's a fault with the story, because as we all know, that issue was hardly touched on at trial, but rather the "privilege" question. The crime he was actually being tried for could and should have bee thrown out. But, as they cynically say, all it took was "one crying mother" on the stand.

But back to Coster. He's in an unenviable situation. He's a fine actor in other roles, but for those who know this one, any heavy he plays will always be measured against this one, the benchmark, the best ever by anyone.

Thematically Germany Year Zero should be paired with Isao Takahata's animated Grave of the Fireflies. Stylistically, though, Rossellini is far less sparring of the audience than Takahata's quiet Studio Ghibli animation. With Rossellini we follow a desperate child, thinking surely somehow, someone is going to pluck him from the remorseless ruins of his world, like we later saw Montgomery Clift do in The Search. Instead, as the boy's prospects remain relentlessly grim, despair takes over. I always assumed despair was an adult experience. But in the last moments of his film Rossellini taught me otherwise. No! No! No! I stared at the screen, stunned. This is one of those movies I think is a masterpiece, which I'm not sure I want to see again. It's already seared inside.

Alpha female leaves her soy-boy husband and teen daughter-with-issues to join diversity-marketed crew for Mars, so they can work out their personal issues on the way. I mean, why settle for wife and mother when, after you've proven yourself as a female boxer, you can impersonate an astronaut? Ah, but a realistic story of flying to Mars can't hold a candle to multi-gender, multi-racial feelings. On top of that, any adventure movie realistic enough to be about a crew of white guys (Remember Master and Commander? Seems like a lifetime ago) would be raked over the coals by whining identity groups and the left-wing media. So, why bother with real movie-making, when you can force audiences to swallow this virtue-signaling dog food?