Dan Jinks

Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) had a son killed in a plane crash with 10 other kids on the way to camp fourteen months previously. Telly is seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Muncie (Gary Sinise). Telly spends time at a dresser every day reminiscing. Her psychiatrist suggests she has to let go. The images of her son start disappearing. Her husband, Jim Paretta (Anthony Edwards), says this is good -- that she is coming back to reality after being delusional. The psychiatrist explains her son was delusional memories manufactured after a miscarriage. He recommends she be sent to a hospital. Telly insists her son was real. Telly goes to Ash Correl's (Dominic West) apartment to convince him that her son, Sam (Christopher Kovaleski), and his daughter, Lauren, played together. Telly finds a children's painting under his office wallpaper. Ash turns her in to the police. NSA Carl Dayton (Robert Wisdom) intervenes. Ash begins to remember his daughter, and decides to help Telly escape the agents. The NSA pursues both Telly and Ash, but they escape, reunite and discuss alien abduction. The NSA pursues and loses them again. Detective Ann Pope (Alfre Woodward ) wonders why the NSA is interested in missing kids. NSA agents meet Ann. The psychiatrist proposes a partnership with Ann to catch Telly. Telly and Ash go to a country cabin and catch Al Petalis (Lee Tergesen) who indicates that the agents are merely helping "them" and it is for the protection of humankind. He mentions an experiment before the roof is ripped from the farmhouse and he disappears, presumably taken by them. Ann visits this country cabin after Telly and Ash have fled. The only evidence left behind is a note written on the window by Ash and Telly, explaining their children were abducted and pleading for help. Telly remembers that the airline her son was flying on that crashed was Quest Air. She and Ash check out Quest Air, which is closed down and being audited by an accountant appointed by the courts. They go on to the former CEO's house which is empty. Ann, still on their trail, follows them to the CEOs house. Ann sees a man at this house, and orders him to freeze. When he doesnt, she shoots him, but his bullet wounds heal within seconds. Ann then realizes Telly was telling the truth. She catches up to Telly before she flees again, and tells her she believes her and will help her find her son, when suddenly Ann gets sucked up into the sky. Ash and Telly leave together, and track down the strange man from the CEOs house. Ash attacks him, and the two struggle for a moment before Ash thrusts backward knocking both of them out the window together. Telly rushes to the window in time to see Ash get sucked up and the strange man disappear. The psychiatrist finds Telly and takes her to the airport where the strange man is waiting. Telly then realizes the psychiatrist has been in cahoots with this man -- who seems to be an alien -- all along. The psychiatrist tells her that the government monitors the aliens trials- aware that they have no power to stop 'them' from doing whatever they want to do. The psychiatrist tells the alien man to finish the experiment and the alien says its not over and walks away. Telly pursues him and demands her son back. He tells her to imagine he is there. She then sees Sam behind the alien and tries to run to him, but he runs away and disappears around a corner. Telly chases him around the corner and runs into the alien who again insists that Telly forget her son. Telly realizes at this experiment was not about the children -- it was about the parents. The alien explains that the connection between parent and child is so strong as to be almost unbreakable. Almost. Every other parent in the experiment had forgotten their children except Telly. He says Telly must forget or experiment fails. The alien begins to choke her, and tells her to remember the first moment she ever saw her son when he was born. She does, and he steals the memory from her. She falls to the ground. The alien asks her the name of the boy she is looking for, and she replies, What boy? The alien looks triumphant and begins to walk away. Telly sits up and thinks about being pregnant, which causes her to remember again. She then, once again, demands the alien return her son Sam to her. The alien panics for a moment and says he needs more time for the experiment before being sucked into the sky. Telly runs home and finds Sam in a nearby park. Telly meets Ash, again, in the park, where each of them are watching their children. Everything is back to normal.

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

A sexually frustrated man undergoing a midlife crisis gets infatuated by his daughter's friend.