The Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts

A weak field hits this year in the Live Action Short category, screening contemporaneously with the superior Animated Short package at the Nuart.

First is the strained comic allegory "Pentecost," in which a priest psychs his altar boys up for a big mass like a Division I football coach. The short has one joke, badly overplayed, and ends with an action that rings false and wouldn't make sense even if it rang true.

The Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts

With his fully developed concept realized in lush black and white, Luke Matheny, the director and star of 

• "God of Love,"

announces his arrival as one to watch. His short is the best of the bunch, but may lose out to 

• "Wish 143,"

the smart comic story of an adolescent cancer patient who gets to "Make a Wish" and asks to have sex with a beautiful girl. 

• "The Crush,"

the story of an Irish second-grader's crush on his teacher, starts brilliantly (he asks his parents how old he has to be to get married; they tell him sixteen and ask, "Why, do you have some news for us?"; "No," he responds, "well, not at the moment"), but takes an abrupt turn toward incongruous violence and profanity that doesn't fit the characters. 

• "Na Wewe"

might have been a fascinating tale of a tour bus stopped by machete-wielding child soldiers in Burundi in the early 90s, but ends up going for a bad joke that trivializes the whole thing. Worst of all is 

• "The Confession,"

which begins interestingly with a young Catholic boy trying to find something good to confess to his priest, but falls back on the overly coincidental plotting that marks most bad short stories.