Equaling WHAT LIES BENEATH in its depiction of marital and spousal anxieties, ALLIED swaps out Harrison Ford for Marion Cotillard, both actors matching each other’s slippery distrustfulness. The film is set during WW2, with Brad Pitt playing a spy infiltrating Morocco (specifically Casablanca) and posing as the husband of Cotillard’s character, who is also a spy helping allied forces push back the invading Nazi armies. As the illusion of marriage turns to reality, Brad Pitt’s character seems more and more unsure that his new wife is who she says she is. One of the most unjustly overlooked films presented in this series, ALLIED is undeniably a stone-cold studio classic waiting in the wings for its deservedly massive cult following. Beyond the infectiously tense plot, steel-eyed calm, and meta-cinematic riffings on “performance”, what is so fascinating is the level of studio-craft on display that has almost vanished from films coming out of La La Land. Not only is this just another example of the incredible talent of Zemeckis’ behind-the-camera skills, a fair amount of this film’s budget was able to be reigned in by the forward progress Zemeckis made in the world of CGI, allowing him to ceaselessly weave in locations and situations digitally (good luck spotting them) that would’ve ballooned a movie’s budget to smithereens. This is the kind of filmmaking once found quite commonly in Hollywood, that is now facing near extinction by the cost-effective methods of television production. It feels almost criminal the way this film has been lazily shrugged off into the dustbins of studio drudgery; make no mistake, this is filmmaking of the highest order that finds new ways to enter the world of 1940’s backlot WW2 adventure yarns, recalling the work of Michael Curtiz’s time at Warner Brothers, and the early spy and war films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.