twetestxbox

Allied takes a half decent premise and submerges it under laboured melodrama that snuffs out all tension and intrigue and replaces it with a badly acted and ponderously staged story of doomed loved.

Nothing about Allied is pleasant to watch, from stilted performances and mediocre (and infrequent) action to one-dimensional characters and ugly special effects. Brad Pitt's miscasting in the central role is apparent in his totally lacklustre commitment to playing the man whose wife may or may not be a German spy. Marion Cotillard does OK with the limited scope she's given after the opening third but she never really sells the idea she's madly in love with Pitt and once it's clear to anyone with half a brain that she's under suspicion her actions just don't make any sense.

Wartime London looks utterly bland, totally failing to evoke any sort of historical feel. The direction plods, the music grates, everything is conducted in a strange monotone and then it just ends. There are hundreds of superior wartime espionage movies that demand your attention more than this dreary vanity project.

If season 4 of True Detective isn't the benchmark for pure genre awfulness for years to come, TV will surely be dead. This is pitiful. This is painful. How dare this garbage carry the True Detective name with a straight face?

I strongly advise people to watch it so they can understand how to not make TV. There's a kernel of an idea that should have worked but it's buried deep beneath pretentious storytelling, one-note acting, useless direction, and a plot that goes nowhere and delivers nothing satisfying. Jodie Foster, once a dependable source of quality acting, is horribly miscast and blunders her way through this horrific mess with a twitchy anxiousness that's virtually unwatchable. She at least can express emotion, unlike every other actor who turned up on set for this horror show.

The silly mysticism mixed with half-baked messages on environmentalism, corporate greed, race, gender, police corruption and mental health suffocates the entire production. True Detective season 4 achieves I only one thing... it manages the highly unusual feat of not containing a single redeeming feature.

I'm surprised at some of the negative reviews on here that border on the unhinged. Based on a True Story is a lot of fun and often very funny, helped hugely by its pacing across eight 30min episodes.

To be clear, this is not some sort of rip-off or pale imitation of Only Murders in the Building, which is a totally different type of show and which sits firmly in the whodunnit genre. Based on a True Story is just a dark comedy about desperate people and the American obsession with murder that's been given a revamp thanks to the podcast and streaming industry.

Sure, Kaley Cuoco once again plays Kaley Cuoco proving she has the acting range of a goldfish - but she's watchable, as is most of the cast. And I do agree with others who have pointed out that the frequent dream sequences are both pointless and annoying.

Definitely worth a binge watch and I hope there's more to come because this series felt more like a scene setter than the beginning, middle and end.