Italian director Giuseppe Capotondi’s directing career kicked off at age 23. He cut his teeth on music videos and over 250 TV commercials, subsequently winning international awards. The Burnt Orange Heresy, his second feature, is a fascinating Hitchcockian mystery which has more twists and turns than a salted pretzel.

The praise that has rained on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun has a desperate ring, citing it with All Quiet on the Western Front and La Grande Illusion in the roll call of antiwar classics. Trumbo, of course, was one of the Hollywood Ten, refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and eventually imprisoned for 10 months for contempt of Congress.

Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (Warner Bros.) represents a considerable advance over the first film he directed, but what wouldn’t? The Sterile Cuckoo was an abomination, from the clunky camera set-ups and music to Liza Minnelli’s uncontrolled performance, all emotion and no design.