By Kirk Boxleitner For all the films that have been so hotly debated this Oscar season — I will now remind everyone forever that Godzilla is no longer just "King of the Monsters," but also a literally Academy Award-winning onscreen presence — I find it slightly disappointing that two films that offered some of the more unexpected turns in cinema over this past year were all but shut out among the Oscar contenders. Although it received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, "American Fiction" only won Best Adapted Screenplay for writer-director Cord Jefferson, while "Saltburn" didn't even receive a single Oscar nomination. Fortunately, they're both currently streaming online. "Saltburn" on Amazon Prime Video: University of Oxford scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is lonely on campus, until he's taken under the wing of charismatic child-of-privilege classmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), which eventually leads to Felix inviting Oliver to the Catton family's opulent country house, Saltburn, for the summer. "Saltburn" is unsubtle about its initial direction, as Oliver's awed observations allow us to vicariously bask in the frivolous and somewhat decadent affluence of the estate's aristocratic parents and their spoiled children, entitled extended relations and social hangers-on who have overstayed their welcomes. "Saltburn" recruits proven and established acting talents such as Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant and Carey Mulligan, but then lets them run on a slightly amusing autopilot, like Henry James characters being test-driven by Bret Easton Ellis. The real breakout performer here is Keoghan — an "It" boy who's recently distinguished himself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's "Eternals," "The Banshees of Inisherin," and the Apple TV+ miniseries "Masters of the Air" — as he surprises and misleads viewers by turns, weaponizing his distinctive yet ambiguous facial features to obfuscate the film's impending narrative shift. That "Saltburn" succeeds at yanking the rug out from under those watching comes down to the subtle emotional shadings of what Keoghan reveals, over the course of the film, but for all the ingenuity and due diligence with which "Saltburn" lays the groundwork for its biggest revelation, I found that it left a slightly curdled aftertaste on my tongue. "Saltburn" is marginally less restrained in showcasing the graphic excesses and consequences of a "royal" family's debauchery than Denis Villeneuve was with House Harkonnen in "Dune: Part Two," so exercise caution. "American Fiction" on MGM+: College literature professor Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) finds himself facing the same struggle for Black authors that Robert Townsend chronicled for Black actors in 1987's "Hollywood Shuffle," as Monk is pressured to accommodate misconceptions that white audiences harbor about the supposedly "authentic" Black experience. After Monk's well-written novels are repeatedly rejected by publishers and readers alike, for not validating well-intentioned but self-serving white stereotypes about Black hardships, and Monk's mother Abigail (Leslie Uggams) requires expensive elder care, he manufactures a persona as a poorly educated Black criminal, to sell his "true" story to whites who can't get enough of exploitative tales of Black pain. From the white student who objects to her Black professor's study of historic Southern literature not censoring "the N-word," to the panel of white literary judges who recruit two Black authors to be "more diverse," then override those Black judges' disapproval of a book's pandering portrayals of Black people, "American Fiction" shows us how white people who are ostensibly opposed to racism wind up perpetuating it as a direct result. Wright rivals character actors such as Howard Hesseman and James Le Gros in delivering a lived-in depiction of someone so bone-weary of continual disappointment that they've all but resigned themselves to a state of perpetual disgruntlement, but "American Fiction" is far from a one-man show, with Uggams, Sterling K. Brown and Tracee Ellis Ross all joining Wright to evoke the feel of an authentically affectionate and fractious family. There's even an adorable romantic subplot, although not from the couple you might expect. Even better from a storytelling standpoint, Jefferson's screenwriting and direction play creatively with the process of how fictional tales are constructed, as authors weigh how their characters should act, and how their narrative threads should (or shouldn't) be resolved. Seeing the always-welcome Keith David indignantly ask Jeffrey Wright why the writer allowed his half-baked character to get shot made me laugh out loud. Indeed, the stylistically varied options presented during the film's conclusion are perhaps the most hilariously honest representations of the commercial and ego-servicing considerations that determine a screenwriter's preferred finale, ever since Woody Allen's Alvy Singer rewrote reality to give himself a happy ending in "Annie Hall.