… but just can’t seem to summon the motivation to hop up from your chair and get those legs swinging, this trailer for the moody independent mystery Sex and Justice should do the trick.

Sex and Justice Teaser Trailer

An elegant but tragic example of how a film can be beautifully acted and gorgeously photographed yet still fall victim to a fundamentally flawed screenplay, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling has everything going for it as the riveting story builds steam, only to falter at the precise point that it should be winding down to a satisfying conclusion. By the time the long-awaited coda does come, the audience’s patience (and trust) has been eroded, and the one scene that could have had the most emotional impact of all is rendered hopelessly ineffective.

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Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill is a perfectly polished three-star thriller, a compulsively watchable piece of Hollywood product that’s sure to sell popcorn as DeNiro and Pacino fans dutifully file in to receive their recommended weekly allowances of badge-flashing testosterone and pistol-whipping machismo.

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The Killing Kind:

A captivating tale of psychological torment from Night Tide director Curtis Harrington, The Killing Kind has gone largely unseen due to a bungled distribution deal that found it screening in a handful of small southern theaters before being quietly locked away in a Hollywood vault - it’s quite a shame, too, considering this tense little thriller features a smart script from screenwriters Tony Crechales and George Edwards, and a pair of powerhouse performances by John Savage and Ann Southern. Cast as a mother and son whose twisted relationship ultimately turns tragic, Savage and Southern play off one another beautifully; their ambiguously incestuous, eerily symbiotic relationship steadily building steam like a broken pressure cooker of dysfunction set on high, and ready to blow at any second. Watching the film, this viewer couldn’t help but feeling that it shared quite a bit in common (both tonally and thematically) with Bob Clark’s masterful 1974 anti-war frightener Deathdream. Not only did the two films make their original premieres within a mere year of one another, but they both explore the complex family dynamics experienced by young men returning home after a particularly traumatic experience (the Vietnam War in Deathdream, and a forced rape that resulted in an extended prison sentence in The Killing Kind), while highlighting that there’s no easy exit once one has been subjected to such profound psychological torment. The chilling final scenes in both films - each providing a key moment of realization between mother and son - are striking similarity as well.

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