Estranged fraternal twins Allen and Allie Foster are reunited by their mother's death, and return to their strange hometown of Obelisk Bay to attend to her lingering matters. Allen, struggling to resolve his latest novel, is enticed by Allie to take a powerful psychotropic drug she calls "the lotus." As if a muse were speaking through him, Allen begins recounting the winding story of a young woman's travels decades earlier. Her life in some ways parallels their own, as she journeys into the desert in search of a statue her own deceased mother left her with an old photograph of. The two lives begin to cross over in unexpected ways, and it becomes apparent that a dark secret at the heart of their old home has far broader ramifications than they could have possibly imagined.

A toy maker's creations display some very human -- and deadly -- tendencies.

When a happily married family man, who would never consider an affair, meets a beautiful woman in red, he is totally infatuated and desperate to make her acquaintance. However, as he tries out various schemes to sneak out to meet her, he realizes that adultery is not quite as easy as it looks.

An earthquake shatters a peaceful Los Angeles morning and opens a fissure deep into the earth, causing lava to start bubbling up. As a volcano begins forming in the La Brea Tar Pits, the director of the city's emergency management service, working with a geologist, must then use every resource in the city to try and stop the volcano from consuming LA.

A fashion designer marries a lawyer only to discover that his father is an imfamous mafia don.

A newly elected District attorney finds himself in the middle of a police corruption investigation that may involve his father and his partner.

The members of a San Diego Wednesday night womens' mah jongg club are five survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. They recognize the owner of a local restaurant, Walter Grossman, as a doctor from the camp who performed experiments on them as young girls. To their horror they learn that he has already been tried as a war criminal and has served but a few years for his crimes. They decide that they will "execute" him, drawing lots to determine which one will perform the act, without letting the others know who it is.

In an ensemble film about easy money, greed, manipulation and bad driving, a Las Vegas casino tycoon entertains his wealthiest high rollers -- a group that will bet on anything -- by pitting six ordinary people against each other in a wild dash for $2 million jammed into a locker hundreds of miles away. The tycoon and his wealthy friends monitor each racer's every move to keep track of their favorites. The only rule in this race is that there are no rules.