Alison Lohman

A group of friends (Jason (Justin Chatwin), Neal (Danny Masterson) (& his assistant Theresa (Ashley Greene)), Vick (Chris Geere), Joey (Alexis Knapp), Denise (Bar Paly), Danny (Nick Thune)) enters Man's nightclub, Volcano (On Eastman Island. The friends have gathered on the island for a reunion), where one of them, Jason (Justin Chatwin), is approached by one of the entertainers called the "Red Bastard". Xiomara (Kea Ho) is a dancer at the club. Jason follows the Red Bastard with the intention to buy party drugs from him or his employer. Jason is led to a back room of the club where the Man (Pierce Brosnan) is entertaining some guests. Upon Jason's arrival, the Man cryptically announces that they have been expecting Jason, only to burst out into laughter immediately afterward. After the others have left, the Man introduces Jason to his drug, a new creation called Urge. The Man explains that Urge is something different from normal party drugs - claiming that it is like a key to unlock what is hidden, it basically tones down a person's sense of morality and strips them of their inhibitions. As the Man continues to speak, Jason cuts him short, explaining his distaste for people who are talking too much. The Man then reveals that he knows private information of Jason's life. The Man then takes his leave, telling Jason that the Red Bastard will lead him out and will be the one to sell him the Urge. The Red Bastard provides Jason with the drug and also warns him that every person may only take the drug once in their lifetime. Jason seems unaffected by Urge, much to the surprise of the Red Bastard. Jason provides Urge to his friends who, after taking it, enjoy a wild evening of partying at the nightclub. The next day, Jason and his friends meet up to discuss their plans for the day. Jason's wealthy friend, Neal (Danny Masterson), tells them that he has planned an elaborate day of activities for the day. But the friends, having developed a liking for Urge, respond that they'd rather just go back to the nightclub and do Urge again. Neal relents and throws an Urge-fueled party at his home, also inviting people from the nightclub to join. But this time, inhibitions are not only numbed but completely deactivated. This leads to the night taking a dark turn (Neil dumps Theresa after having sex with her. Fights break out and people are having sex right out in the open) (Joey eats an entire cake. Denise forces Vick to have repeated sex with her, and then forces him to choke her and she dies. Theresa seduces Neil with lingerie and then binds him and proceeds to torture him), leading to various severe injuries and even multiple deaths. Furthermore, it is revealed that not only are Jason and his friends taking Urge, but the Man has provided the entire island with the drug. Jason later heads to a diner as he cannot be affected by Urge. While he sits down in a booth, the Man joins him. Jason claims that the Man is responsible for the chaos on the island caused by Urge, but the Man replies that he cannot be held accountable for other people taking drugs. He also reminds Jason that he tells every person who takes the drug that they are only allowed to use the drug once in their life. At that moment, Jason is distracted by a girl at the counter and when he looks back into his booth, the Man has vanished without a trace. Upon leaving the diner, Jason witnesses a man deliberately jumping in front of a truck in an apparent suicide attempt. Jason rushes him to a hospital where he realizes the true extent of the drug, dozens of people are brought in because of wounds caused under Urge influence. One man shoots a police officer at the hospital for no apparent reason in front of Jason, who flees the hospital. Urge eventually results in the entire island running amok while each person fulfills their deepest desires. Vick dies lifting heavy weights. Joey witnesses a parlor woman stabbing a customer with Botox needles. Niel kills himself when Jason comes home and unties him. Jason & Joey try to escape on a ferry but find Therese on the way. Danny stops all of them from leaving as he like it on the island, and not being treated badly by his friends. Danny stones Theresa to death after she insults him. Eventually, Jason and his last living friend, Joey (Alexis Knapp), escape the island via boat. Exhausted, both fall asleep immediately after boarding the ship. When Jason wakes up again, he finds the ship taken over by the Man and his cronies, including the Red Bastard. Jason disarms one of the men and heads upstairs where he confronts the Man at gunpoint. Jason demands to know why the Man plans to kill every person on the island, only for the Man to reply that he did not even lift a finger. Outraged, Jason demands to know whether the Man intends to play God and to smite the weak, only for the man to reveal that he is God, and that Jason will be the one to do the smiting. He claims that Jason will bring Urge to the mainland to eradicate humanity, a flawed creation, for good but Jason refuses. Furious, the Man shows Jason an apocalyptic vision of the future. Once Jason snaps out of the vision, the Man has once again disappeared without a trace. Jason returns downstairs and sits next to Joey, with the Man's cronies having vanished. The film ends with the boat headed towards the mainland. The back of the boat can be seen with two covered shipping containers that are pulsating and glowing with the same purple color as vials of the Urge drug, suggesting that significant quantities of the drug are being transported to the mainland. Although it is not shown what happens to Jason after the Man's disappearance, a post-credits scene shows an unidentified woman and her young son shopping in a seemingly abandoned supermarket. The son wanders away from his mother to uncover a darkened aisle of the supermarket filled with people mindlessly slaughtering and hurting each other, implying that the Man's plan was successful and that Urge has made its way beyond the island.

Admir comes form Bosnia. His family came to Switzerland as asylum seekers when he was ten. Here or there, what he has known best is violence. Endured or perpetrated. Now he shares his story with us. Like an indelible mark to leave before being expelled. Admir is twenty years old. —Anonymous

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss. Grief, recovery, and human contact. Brian is a great guy - a sweet father, a good husband, and a loyal friend to his boyhood pal Jerry who's a junkie. When tragedy strikes, Jerry tries to help Brian's wife and children cope, and Audrey, Brian's widow, tries to help Jerry kick the habit. Loss and addiction are stubborn. The story starts on the day of the funeral, with Brian appearing in flashbacks. A neighbor's divorce, a dinner party that includes a young woman from the Narcotics Anonymous group Jerry attends, and thinking back to a fire in Brian and Audrey's garage give the story texture. —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

A con man with an obsessive-compulsive disorder finds that his orderly life and latest scam are threatened by the reappearance of a teenage daughter he never knew existed.

At Will Bloom's (Billy Crudup) wedding party, his father Edward (Albert Finney as Old Edward, Ewan McGregor as young Edward) recalls the day Will was born, claiming he caught an enormous catfish using his wedding ring as bait. Will, having heard these stories all his life, believes them to be lies and falls out with his father. Three years later, Edward is stricken with cancer, so Will and his pregnant French wife Joséphine (Marion Cotillard) return to his childhood home in Alabama to spend time with his father. Edward's life is told through flashbacks, beginning with his encounter with a witch in his hometown, Ashton. She shows him his death, but he reacts to it without fear. As he grows into adulthood, he finds his home too confining (his bones grow too quickly as compared to his body and requires extensive bodywork and is made fun of at school (as a freak) to top it all off) (he is a genius in middle school though, with top marks in sports and studies), and sets out into the world with a misunderstood giant, Karl (Matthew McGrory), who has come to town with a traveling circus. The giant is considered a monster as it keeps eating everything in the town & the townsfolk want to kill him when Edward volunteers to talk to him and try to get him to leave the town. Edward talks to Karl in his cave and convinces that the town of Ashton is too small of Karl as well as his own ambitions. They decide to leave together for a big city. Edward and Karl find a fork in the road and travel down separate paths. Edward follows a path through a swamp and discovers the secret town of Spectre, the cheery locals claiming he was expected. There, he befriends Ashton poet Norther Winslow (Steve Buscemi) and the mayor's daughter Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter). However, Edward leaves Spectre, unwilling to settle down but promises Jenny he will return. In the present day, Joséphine speaks to the bed-ridden Edward and asks him to tell her the story of how he met his wife Sandra, with Will listening outside the door. Returning to his story, Edward reunites with Karl after escaping Spectre and they visit the Calloway Circus, where Edward falls in love with a beautiful woman. Karl and Edward get jobs in the circus where the ringmaster Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito) reveals to Edward one detail about the woman at the end of every month. Amos knows the girl that Edward is seeking, but in a bid to keep Karl performing for the circus, he agrees only to reveal 1 detail about the girl at the end of every month. Three years later, Edward discovers that Amos is secretly a werewolf but shows no ill-will towards his employer. Amos, upon returning to normal, reveals the woman is Sandra, and she attends Auburn University. Edward confesses his love to Sandra, but she declines his wedding proposal despite numerous romantic gestures. He then learns she is already engaged to Don Price (David Denman), a fellow Ashton citizen. Don beats Edward in a fight (but only after Sandra makes Edward promise that he won't hurt Don), prompting Sandra to break off their engagement and marry Edward. Shortly after, Edward is conscripted into the army and sent to fight in the Korean War. The service period is 3 years and, in an attempt, to get back to Sandra early, Edward accepts every dangerous mission he could find, to reduce the service period to 1 year. He parachutes into the middle of a North Korean military show, steals important documents, and convinces Siamese twins Ping and Jing (Ada Tai and Arlene Tai) to help him go home in exchange for making them celebrities. Upon returning home, Edward becomes a travelling salesman and crosses paths with Winslow, unwittingly helping him rob a failing bank, inspiring the poet to work on Wall Street (Winslow makes millions in wall street and sends a check for $10,000 to Edward as his fee as his "career advisor") (Edward uses the money to buy Sandra a house with a white picket fence). In the present, Will investigates the truth behind his father's tales (Will simply does not believe the stories that Edward told him about his life. He thinks they are all lies, so Edward asks him to check it out himself) and travels to Spectre. He meets an older Jenny, who explains that Edward rescued the town from bankruptcy and rebuilt it with help from his friends from Calloway Circus. A few years back Edward was travelling in his job when he came across the same road that led to Spectre, on that road he found Spectre again which was not a derelict town, up for auction. Edward bought the whole town with help from Winslow, Amos and the Siamese Twins. Will suggests that Jenny had an affair with his father, but she reveals while she loved Edward, he remained loyal to Sandra. Will returns home but learns Edward has had a stroke and stays with him at the hospital (the attending doctor tells Will about the real story of his birth, and Will finds that the real version is not very exciting, but the version told by Edward had excitement, fantasy and entertainment. Will, at that moment, realized his father's love for story telling). Edward wakes up but, unable to speak much, asks Will to narrate how his life ends. Though struggling, Will tells his father of their imagined daring escape from the hospital to the nearby lake, where everyone from Edward's past is there to see him off. Will takes Edward into the river, where he transforms into the giant catfish and swims away. A satisfied Edward dies, knowing Will finally understands his love for storytelling. At the funeral, Will and Joséphine are surprised when all the people from Edward's stories come to the service, though each one is a slightly less fantastical version than described. Will, finally understanding his father's love for life, passes on Edward's stories to his own son