John Hawkes, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, and John Cusack in IdentityIDENTITY and CONFIDENCE

By some bizarre coincidence, this past weekend saw the arrival of two new films, Identity and Confidence, that share an almost frightening number of similarities.

Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton in Minority ReportMINORITY REPORT

Last summer, when Steven Spielberg's science-fiction epic A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was released, it was greeted with a few rave reviews but near-universal audience apathy. Working from material shepherded by the late Sultan of Cynicism, Stanley Kubrick, Spielberg directed the film as if Kubrick's ghost perched on his shoulder, demanding that every scene be moodier, uglier, and above all slower than the one than preceded it; the film was brilliantly designed but emotionally vacant, and it drained you of your energy.

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