In Clint Eastwood's Changeling, the Los Angeles Police Department puts on a pretence of clearing up crime rather than actually achieving it.

In Pride and Glory, set in New York, crooked cops are involved in drugs and murder.

Set in 1928, Changeling, rated MA, is based on the horrific true story of a mother whose nine-year-old son Walter goes off to school and doesn't return.

Angelina Jolie has gained a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for best actress for her terrific portrayal of the distraught mother, Christine Collins, who waits for news of her son.

Eventually, the LAPD announce that the boy has been found on the other side of the US.

The mother knows and so does the audience that he is not her missing son, even though the boy, and the police, insist he is.

When she complains, the police chief has her branded as an unfit mother and sent to a mental asylum.

Only a local activist, played by John Malkovich, seems willing to believe her.

Meanwhile one honest hard-working cop finds evidence of a serial killer.

Why, you may wonder, did the second boy say he was her son? See the film!

By another cinematic coincidence, Angelina Jolie's father, Jon Voight, stars in another new release this week, Pride and Glory, a flawed film about flawed cops.

Voight plays a New York police chief, Francis Tierney snr, who drinks too much and puts too much faith in the integrity and loyalty of his sons and son-in-law who are also all cops.