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Would you believe that a lawyer would be pulled over by cops, and then would answer the following 2 questions: Where are you coming from? How much did you have to drink? No lawyer in this country would answer those questions to a cop at a roadside stop. Yet super lawyer Honey Chandler does. Give me a break.

That's not an important issue in itself, but indicative of the lazy, silly writing that we are seeing pop up all over the place. I would really like to see them try to portray Maddie as a cop without having to drive her plot line with her "on the edge" psych issues. How about letting her be a regular person who has cop drama, and not a head-case with cop drama. Don't the writers have confidence they can do better by this character?

The list of disappointments is long. I wish the quality of Bosch (pre-final season) could return.

This is a nice little spy story, and it has the advantage of being just a little bit true too. James Mason is at top form as a suave operator with a, not sinister, but mischievous way about him. The mischief he gets up to is selling secrets to the Germans, so that's not good, but he remains good natured throughout.

The story doesn't have many complications and moves along briskly, while the secondary characters are straightforward and don't crowd or sidetrack the story with their own drama.

What I especially like is the ending. You'll know the twist is coming, but you won't guess what it'll turn out to be.

These latter-day Columbo movies can be pretty painful to watch. The actors are the cheesiest of 80's/90's TV 2rd stringers, the settings look like cheap sets of tasteless interiors rather than actual places, the soundtrack is synth pop elevator music, and the goofiness is just ... too goofy.

What I'm referring to is the unfunny poker game with Nancy Walker, Dick Sargent and Ron Cey. What a random collection of b-list cameos, and it makes the scene feel like a waste of time. Like, rather than listening to what happens, you can't help but sit through it and wonder did they grab the first three vaguely recognizable people who passed by the soundstage on the Universal Studios lot?

As for catching the criminal, I don't think so. This was the old bluff play that Columbo has used before, but this time, it's worse. Columbo bluffs that he can, through some unheard of trick of chemistry, prove that the murderer did it, and he's about to do it (it won't work)... and the bad guy says, "don't bother, I did it." Phew! Everybody's happy. Come on! That's pathetic. That's Perry Mason territory.

Well, I made it through one episode. That's plenty. This show is aggressively boring. The main character Charlie's entire backstory is recited to her by the cliché idiot ne'er-do-well son of the casino owner in an excruciating speech lasting interminable minutes. That's just an example of how bad the writing is for this show. Rian Johnson has come this far in his Hollywood career and never heard the dictum, "show, don't tell." Amazing. Another example is the constantly repeated blathering by characters about Charlie's alleged talent for spotting lies and liars. This would be much better revealed if she used her skills in the course of solving mysteries, and let the audience come to understand her lie-detection abilities as they become relevant to the story.

I don't know if it's because of an anemic budget or if Johnson has no clue how to stage a set, but these sets look like chintzy shlock, not the opulent shlock one should expect from a casino setting. Obviously they couldn't get a real casino to shoot this in, so it looks like they just built a tiny bit of a casino on a soundstage. Anyway, it looks more like casino night at an office Christmas party than an actual casino. The "Presidential suite" looks like an average room at a Roadway Inn.

'Poker Face' is very bad. I give it 2 stars because surely there are other shows that are even worse. Adrian Brody is an embarrassment to himself. Benjamin Bratt? I don't know. He used to have a promising career. Natasha Leone still good, but this material is weak. Better luck next time. Don't get mixed up with Rian Johnson in the future.

This was a trashy, nonsensical set of non sequiturs, with no rhyme or reason. Just random events. No continuity. No dramatic flow. No discernable plot. Fun-to-watch actors were wasted in the making. Why is Raquel Welch in this? Just to get sexually harassed in the precinct and then to arrest a rapist and promptly disappear from the movie? How about Dan Frazer -- He plays the character he would perfect in Kojak, but with just a wisp of presence. Burt Reynolds is barely in the movie, and so seems pointless. Really, the only good things in the movie were Jack Weston and the goofy painters. Yeah, that bizarre, misplaced comedy routine with the painters -- that was one of the best things about this movie.

This is how this movie was conceived: The Netflix Creative Accountancy Division outlined the necessary elements for maximal uptake by the broadest array of subscribers. This requires that nothing new or innovative be allowed to pollute the movie. It's just mix up Bourne and Wick in a blender, and splatter the results on the shrinking Netflix subscriber base. At least it's better than The Man From U. N. C. L. E.

This is amazing. Kojak is more low-key here than in the series. His voiceover, especially at the end, is excellent. It's got a semi-documentary tone, thanks to the narration, comparing favorably with The Naked City. The collection of actors is good too --Jose Ferrer, Ned Beatty, Marjoe Gortner, Bruce Kirby, Allen Garfield, etc. This is a little-remembered gem, like so many forgotten pilots for successful TV shows.

This was really something. There was so much that this movie could be, just visible under the surface, but instead you get a mean-spirited agglomeration of absurdly violent spasms. Not in a meaningful, impactful way of a Tarantino, but rather boring and drawn-out. I do give an ounce of credit for the movie demonstrating that innocent bystanders really would get mowed down in a car chase, but why does it have to be treated with (attempted) humor here.

Would have been nice if Loretta Swift and Jack Kruschen were in this move more. Instead an extended irrelevant scene of some hick gorilla wrecking a motel, we could have gotten more plot relevant, and entertaining, scenes with Kruschen or Swit.

Wow. This is like taking TOS's City on the Edge of Forever, and turning it up a notch. What a great story. And again, my compliments for the clever ST-parallel world building -- this time for the Temporal Laws, paralleling the Prime Directive, but making more sense. Charly is working out great too; nice addition to the cast.

This Italian production of an American gangster story is appropriately bleak in tone and outlook, and previews Cassavetes' own "Gloria," starring Gena Rowlands, eleven years later; and also feels descended from the likes of "Johnny Cool" from earlier in the 60's. It previews too some memorable collaborations of Cassavetes and Peter Falk to come. Falk has a terrific presence here, to the point I was sad to see his departure because I was loving the performance. The actor playing the son is, um, not great here. But, many of the character actors populating the screen are terrific. I sure wish Rowlands had come into the story sooner.

I took off a point for the Euro-dubbing. Dang, I hate that.

This season has been enjoyable, but with some flaws.

Maddie needs more action or less screen time; in any case fewer contemplative close-ups would be appreciated. I like Maddie as a cop. Just wish it was handled with interesting plot rather than very, very, very tired clichés about the female investigator being threatened by the scheming serial criminal.

The flimsy earthquake pretext for not being able to rent the Bosch house for use this season, while understandable, is too clunky. They would have been better off with Bosch starting the show living somewhere else, having sold the glass house in between shows.

Another tired cliché is the super-assassin. This time, it's a woman who would be more at home in Cirque de Soleil. In any case, the way she was fooled by the empty revolver trick is completely unbelievable. She had researched Bosch; she knew who he was and what he could do. She wouldn't have believed for a moment that Bosch would bring one revolver and six rounds to a trap he himself had set for her.

I agree with other reviewers that this was not a solid season wrap-up. I finished thinking there must be at least one more episode coming.

I can't believe how bad this was, from the very first minute. My disappointment is fueled by the contrast with the quality of the Lincoln Lawyer movie being so excellent.

First scene has the main character trying to get over some trauma. Please, give me a break from this trope already. Bosch: Legacy has already made me crazy with two characters being traumatized head cases; I need it here to? Next cliché is the Lincoln. The beauty shots of Mickey driving his classic convertible were straight out of a TV commercial. As a matter of fact, much of the show it a TV commercial for Lincoln. Even the two consecutive close-up shots on his Lincoln keychain at courthouse security. How can you put that in there, and not expect people to notice they're watching a commercial?

More clichés: Not one, but two adoring ex-wives. Late to pick up the kid. The gruff but well meaning police detective. The megalomaniac inventor/industrialist client who may or may not have done the murder. More loving shots of Lincolns, all ugly as except for the classic.

In the movie, Micky rode around in the backseat of a Lincoln. No one ever talked about Lincolns. There were no glamor shots of the car. It was just the way he got around town. The reason for the name is that he ran his practice out of the backseat of a car, which happened to be a Lincoln, not because he ran his practice out of the backseat of a Lincoln.

Then there's the swirling camera, the perpetual 3-day beard, the long boring pointless speeches that sound nothing like how people talk... This is a show for people who think Law & Order is good.

Not much to say beyond the thing that ruins this otherwise good Sherlock story. I don't know why Martin Shaw's (Sir Henry) dialog had to be dubbed over, but it hits the ear like a spike. All the live dialog, from every other character, has the resonance of the setting. Shaw's lacks it completely. It always sounds like he's not in the same room as the other characters. I won't say the accent is wrong, technically, but it sounds like a put-on anyway.

Meanwhile, the performances from Ian Richardson and Donald Churchill are good. Brian Blessed is the real treat. I wish he were in it more (though I don't think his character is in the original story).

Every line of dialog and every performance in the Vampiric Council scene was just awful. Every joke landed like a dud. I have never seen so many funny actors be so unfunny together in one place in my life.

I like the show, but Katja's girl-in-distress predicament depended on a set of plot-convenient cascading incompetencies that were too much to bear, thus spoiling the episode. That Rez and his partner would go knock on Katja's door, then just leave when she doesn't answer, without notifying Kurt, just wouldn't have happened. At least not a show about good cops. The next problem is ridiculously tired internal affairs investigation trope. I know that Sweden has an idealized view of police power than we're used to here in the US, but I don't think even there they would look askance at Rask's interrogation of that teenager 8 years before. Clumsily manufactured drama on 2 fronts.

Wendy is really stepping up her game in the loosest of loose cannons contest. She is increasingly vicious and can't stop plotting to destroy everyone who crosses her. She's obsessed with winning for the sake of it, and has delusions of grandeur. I predict a hard fall for her. Kudos to Richard Thomas as her father. He knows what she's all about.

Oof, those were some lackluster songs in this musical. It's like they decided, in 1941, to turn back the clock to pre-jazz age music hall shlock. The big dance numbers were stiffly staged and look chintzy, a sense which is only enhanced by the garish technicolor splash. Betty G is the highlight, and the sole reason for a 4th star in my rating. The stars Don Ameche and Robert Cummings have no business in a musical. I am embarrassed for both of them, seeing this today. Shoot, even Charlotte Greenwood barely kicks above her head even once. Oh yeah, this is embarrassing for Jack Haley too. It's not fair to say that MGM sucked up all the major talent for making musicals, but seeing this failed effort by 20th Century Fox, I have to wonder.

In the grand tradition of The Closer having grown adults behaving like weird, awkward children, we get yet another comedy episode wherein two LAPD lieutenants in an elite homicide unit display about as much sense as 12-year old amateur detectives. But, that's to be expected. This episode was pretty fun, and Adam Arkin is great in his dual role.

When the entire plot hinges on a silly plot hole though, that's very annoying. The killer followed Provenza, Flynn and Buzz to the victim by following Buzz's car, which the killer easily followed because he had already smashed a tail light. But when did he smash the tail light? Flynn and Provenza cornered Buzz in the office about serving the summons, and then they got in his Prius and went. But the killer had no way of knowing that they would use Buzz's car. Not good, not good at all.

This silly little tale, filled with fantastic coincidences to forward its plot, gets a bump up of a few stars for the sheer fun of seeing Bogey, Bacall, Morehead and host of colorful character actors lay it out in style. Morehead is particularly fun here, unctious and threatening in the early going, and then hammier than a Christmas dinner in her final outburst.

But what I find suspicious is the coincidence of two different people dying in accidental falls while in confrontations with Vincent. First, there's Baker going over the cliff under the bridge while struggling for the gun. Then, there's Madge somehow(?) crashing through the window just after stepping behind the curtain. I'm wondering if this whole thing is Vincent's twisted telling of events, where in actuality he murdered those people in a rage, but gets to feel moral uprightness by convincing himself, and the audience, they both died accidentally through their own fault. That fits conveniently with Warners wanting to be able to give Bogey and Bacall a happy ending within the strictures of the production code.

First of all, how is Mrs. Stewart supposed to see from the bay, on a sunny day into a house at that distance, and discern someone shooting someone else, but also see the faces well enough to recognize them later? When you see the camera angle from boat, it's obvious that the very premise of this episode is completely impossible. Everything else that follows is poisoned from that plot hole. Then you have one of the most off-putting pompous-ass guest killers in the series. The general's romance of the young lady is not to be believed. His manner is extremely grating and his gaslighting of her is nauseating. And, how did he think that tracking down and bothering the witness is a better idea than just staying the hell away from her? He's supposed to be a military Mrs. Stewart's mother is another absurdity. Her acting is completely over the top.

Now, for the production/direction. Hard to believe that NBC allowed this slipshod production on the air. The continuity errors fill every scene. But worst of all is the whacky camera angles. Most notably the over-the-shoulder shots show the side of the face of the person in the reverse, which is makes them look awful on camera. And plenty of dialog in these shots is delivered by an actor whose back of their head you're looking at. And of course there's that particular quirk of so many Columbo episodes, where the dialog is intentionally drowned out by extra-loud machine noise -- in this case it happens on the boat. Why was this a standard thing on Columbo?

Sometimes you see a cop-action flick where a bad guy gets shot about 5 times in the torso, and keeps on going, eventually, slowly crumpling up, but not before squeezing off 10 more rounds. Meanwhile, the cops who hit a body with that many rounds never think to put one in the noggin. That's bad when it happens once, but in this movie, it happens over and over again. It's like LA is populated by maniacs with Kevlar skin. Then you have the plot-necessitated multiple occurrences of massive shootouts in public places, where, for the interminable duration of the Whoopi-based action, no other cops show up. Why be so picayune? Only because these mounting implausibilities invade my consciousness and detract from any possible enjoyment. I am instead asking myself why the writers/director couldn't be bothered to stage even remotely believable scenarios. I could go through every scene of this movie, and catalog multiple things that wouldn't happen, don't make sense or are obviously shoehorned to service a lazily constructed plot.

But let's talk about what's really important. This movie is another in a long line of 80's movies with the absolute worst synth-pop, drum machine musical dreck. Even good 80's movies have been dragged down with crap music. Then there's the ugly-ass 80's wardrobe, but what ya' gonna do? I was even wearing that crap back then. But I sure wasn't enjoying synth-pop.

Everyone, even those who hate it, seem to be praising Foundation for the visuals. I can't get behind that view. This is the darkest, dingiest looking production I have ever seen. Does the Empire not have electric lighting? Does the sun never shine? I think it's meant to add dramatic heft, but all it does is strain the eyes. Add to that the sound design of having all dialog occur in an echo chambers (even outdoors), a regrettably common practice, instead of sounding like normal conversations that people have. On those bases alone, it is unwatchable.

Now, add in the story. Too bad they decided not to make Asimov's story. I understand that the stories as written require lots of creative additions to fill in details for a complete story for a TV series, but the spirit of Asimov is obliterated for dreary turgid dialog delivered by characters with zero personality. I will never care about these characters. None of them. After one episode, I'm done.

Isn't the real story dramatic enough? There is so much fictionalized content, just for the purpose of creating multiple last-second escape scenarios, that anyone who knows what happened can only weep at the absurdity of it. The story of the Eichmann capture is well worth telling. In this movie, it's been set aside for the purpose of crusty clichés in the guise of blood pumping excitement.

So little effort to write a coherent story in this one. Why switch the bodies? He had to hide Richard Farnsworth's body until he could dispose of it later. He could just as well have hidden Rue McClanahan's body and cremated her later the same way. How did he know the puppy wasn't fed? There's an empty food bowl and an already opened can of dog food in the fridge. No one has any way of knowing that the puppy wasn't fed. These are cheap passes at giving Columbo clues.

As for the acting, Sally Kellerman's southern accent is about as believable as a chocolate frying pan. The mortician's convention goofballs are absurd. Lousy attempts at humor decimate the verisimilitude.

McGoohan's direction... well, let's just say I don't think he directed this dreck. I think his name is on it, but a workaday TV director actually did it. If you want to see how great a director McGoohan can be, watch the Season 5 episode "Identity Crisis."

I think the plot mechanics of this episode are quite fine, as good as almost any other. There is not too much that far out, except for the the Director admitting that Nelson Brenner is someone they've been trying to catch for years, but still somehow he's still in this very sensitive position. The seemingly random bits of news on the car radio over the opening credits providing the essential clue (China pulling out of Olympics) that Columbo uses to break the alibi is a fantastic touch.

The real pleasure of this episode is that it is directed like no other Columbo, not even others directed by Patrick McGoohan. First, the artful use of facial closeups in conversations, often from a slightly low angle, add real heft to the import of the words being spoken. It's used not just between Columbo and Brenner, but elsewhere, like in dialog with Sgt Kramer (the great Bruce Kirby), the amusement park photographer, and others. Next is Columbo's attitude. Here the lieutenant is more forceful and straightforward. A nice touch is the very beginning where he directs the criminalists and coroner to get away from the body so he can inspect it. It's an unusual touch. Then, there's the way he interacts with his suspect. Columbo here is smiling, as usual, but this time his smile is derisive, almost mocking, as if to say, "can you believe this jackass." That's very unique for Columbo.

I think McGoohan created one of the best Columbo episodes here, raising it above standard TV fare for the day. He used the camera in a way that elevates the material above its usual standards, and directed his star to appear more consequential in the story. Nicely done!

How many times have I seen this episode? Countless, This is the first time I ever noticed what I describe in this review. It pays to re-watch!