Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023). Rarely less than astounding in its majestic misjudgments of tone, structure, and thematic argument, Emerald Fennell’s second feature as a writer-director is part social satire, part woozy sex thriller, and all mess. Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is a sullen student at the University of Oxford who struggles to find his place in the pecking order. Oliver eventually befriends Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), which leads to an invite to spend the summer holiday from school at his family’s sprawling estate. Oliver is entranced by the trappings of wealth and privilege and seemingly set askew by the eccentricities of Felix’s family, notably those of his casually icy mother (Rosamund Pike) and wicked, impetuous father (Richard E. Grant). Fennell maintains the ostentatiously ingenious visual sense that was one of many highlights of her directorial debut, Promising Young Woman, but every other filmmaking calibration is seriously out of whack. The steely provocations of the earlier film turn into queasy, floppy swipes at good taste, and the performances are garishly overdone, like portraits rendered in chunky crayon by tots who were spun in circles five times after spending too much time hanging out by the open glue pot. Saltburn is a special kind of disaster. This is a sophomore film debacle on the level of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.

A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1970). In her feature directorial debut, Elaine May takes the lead role of Henrietta Lowell, a mousy, socially awkward heiress who is the target of a desperate cad (Walter Matthau) in need of ready access to someone’s money to shore up his own depleted fortune. May adapts Jack Ritchie’s short story “The Green Heart” with a ruthlessness and fearless comic ingenuity that was entirely typical of her entire career. The occasional uncertainty in the staging of individual scenes is counterbalanced by moments of blissful visual cunning, and the overall storytelling acumen of A New Leaf — including sly feminist commentary and a acute understanding of what could push Matthau’s character past his own misanthropy — is exemplary. May is dandy as a Henrietta, but Matthau doesn’t always connect with his foppish ne’er-do-well character. Then again, no one else could play the ending’s grudging resignation quite like he could.

Kaleidoscope (Jack Smight, 1966). The British casino caper stars Warren Beatty as Barney Lincoln, an American playboy who concocts a card marking scheme to bilk some high-stakes casinos. In the midst of his lucrative scamming, Barney gets mixed up with a lovely young woman (Susannah York) whose father is, inconveniently enough, a Scotland Yard detective (Clive Revill). To save his own neck, Barney is dragged into a sting against a drug dealer (Eric Porter). The convolutions of the plot are frankly exhausting to keep up with, and, much like other British crime flicks of the era, the pacing is cruelly slow. What salvages Kaleidoscope is the the freakish star power of Beatty, best evidenced by the many scenes in which his turns on his impatient horndog charm. Jack Smight’s directing is largely perfunctory, except for the the series of groovy wipes that evoke the film’s title. Those are indeed a thing to behold.