Imagine two twisty crime screenplays turned into feature-length movies starring Avarice, Deceit, Connivance and Revenge. I hope you agree this would be a better use of talent and financing than the production of yet one more film in which agitated alien robots turn themselves into trucks.

Avarice, deceit, connivance and revenge – such vile human traits. And the stuff of so many entertaining Hollywood movies, from the beginning (“Freaks,” “The Thin Man”), through the golden age (“Double Indemnity,” “The Maltese Falcon”), to the present (“House of Games,” “The Usual Suspects,” “LA Confidential”). Yet in recent years, the medium has increasingly become a fountainhead for CGI-dominated wet-dreams, full-length movie versions of mediocre television shows, and money-harvesting sequels that diminish in quality with each iteration.

Allow me to tempt you with the log-lines of the screenplays. First, determined to marry his mistress, a Machiavellian architect enlists three associates in a complex scheme to murder his wife – and each other. And second, after a professional mediator is conned by identical twin businessmen who sought her help to resolve a dispute, she meets another woman in a suspiciously similar circumstance, and the two team up to take down the con artists.

No explosions, dinosaurs or fart jokes. Just delicious lex talionis.