Fellini, Hoffman, and The Man Without a Past

ACADEMY LEADERS
Runs Thurs., April 24-Sun., April 27 at Little Theatre

Harnessing together all nine animated and live-action shorts nominated for Oscars this year, this 90-minute package fires on about half its cylindersa better ratio than you'll find at the multiplex this month. The German Rocks makes nice use of stop-motion animation, as two talking stone cairns observe the abrupt emergence of civilization in contrast to their slow-moving geological perspective. I loved the pencil work in the Japanese Mt. Head (no CGI here!), which recalls Bill Plympton in style and sensibility. Back from Monsters, Inc., Mike and Sully experience all-too-familiar automotive problems in Mike's New Car. Among live-action fare, the better entries tend not to preach about love, tolerance, and diversity. The French I'll Wait for the Next One has a single guy literally begging for l'amour in the subway, while the Belgian Gridlock neatly combines road rage, cell phones, and adulteryand we all know how that leads to bloody death. (NR) BRIAN MILLER

James Foley's Confidence gives one new confidence in the future of the B-movie. It's not as complex, skillful, or deeply satisfying as the best in the sting-flick genre (The Spanish Prisoner), but it passes the time with a certain swift bliss. Jake (Ed Burns) is a con man, slick as deer guts on a glass doorknob, who owes a favor to the King (Dustin Hoffman in greaseball mode). The favor concerns a mobbed-up banker (Robert Forster) requiring Jake to assemble a squad of goons, plus a sexpot pickpocket (Rachel Weisz) because . . . well, she's a sexpot, and if the bank-fraud scheme doesn't need one, the viewers do.

There are echoes of Mamet and all the usual tough-guy suspects in the script, but the lingo is jaunty enough. Zippy horizontal wipes goose up the pace, which tends to flag now and then. As the cop chasing Jake's gang, Andy Garcia wears his body like a suit he's slept in for a week in his banged-up car. Hoffman is too mannered as the King (how unexpected): He has tics on his tics. Burns is better, cocky, promisinggive this man an A-movie, already. (R) TIM APPELO

Fellini was "a martinet, a Tartar, a demon . . . almost like a child!" says Donald Sutherland in this delightful, insightful new documentary. Duh, Donald! Being a bratty child was his very genius, as demonstrated by clips of his films, footage of the making of them, and interviews with the Maestro and his minions (including Italo Calvino). "An artist has a childish need to offend," says Fellini. "I need an enemy!" We see him oppressing Sutherland (as Casanova), manipulating actors like a puppeteerphysically pawing them, making them ape his words and gestures. Terence Stamp, the first English actor to be Fellinized, does a bravura impression of the director and what it was like to be in his pawsthough he's more amused by the experience than spluttering Sutherland.

When Stamp asked why Fellini added a little curlicue to his right eyebrow in Spirits of the Dead, Fellini replied, "Eet's like a question markyou're always questioning." It also looks like an exaggeration of the unruly curlicue that erupts from Fellini's own inquisitive right eyebrow. Fellini shaved the rebel Sutherland's eyebrows entirely and replaced them with fake ones, because he thought they looked misplaced after Fellini had shaved three inches off Sutherland's hairline. When Stamp dared to address the Maestro on the set, "He looked at me like I was a puppet come to life." Exactly! (NR) T.A.

I won't spoil the truly peculiar plot twist devised for Identity by writer Michael Cooney, the auteur behind Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman. Let's just say that its very mutant originality strains the willing suspension of disbelief beyond the snapping point and, for me, spoils what could've been an admirable update of Ten Little Indians done in the hardboiled, highly literary style of Raymond Chandler. As odd as Identity is, there's much to admire in James Mangold's direction of Cooney's tale. The entire ensemble is strong: a cracked-up cop (John Cusack, iconic as usual), now reduced to driving a limo for a washed-up gorgon actress (Rebecca De Mornay); a Vegas mattressback (Amanda Peet) who just hung up her hooker high heels; a volatile cop (Ray Liotta) with a convicted killer in tow (Jake Busey, who resembles an unruined Gary Busey); plus others holed up in a motel one dark and stormy night.

The corpses and coincidences mount up with increasing ingenuity. There's also nifty camera work by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael. You get jolt after satisfying jolt of eye-candy thriller shock. (Should that lady really be walking out into the dark to get a cell phone signal?) But despite the movie's claustrophobic psychological intensity, its big plot twist deprives us even of the integrity of an old-time Jamie Lee Curtis slash-a-thon, though some will praise Identity for adding a whole new head trip to the slasher mix. Me, I'd rather take my murder concoctions straight up, without the twist. (R) T.A.