Jan Körbelin Movies

A recent college graduate desperate to have one last fling before launching himself into the real world falls into a strange love triangle with a charismatic couple in director Rawson Thurber's feature adaptation of Michael Chabon's freshman novel. Peter Sarsgaard, Mena Suvari, Nick Nolte, Sienna Miller, and Jon Foster star in a film that was adapted for the screen by director Thurber. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Some of the world's most-respected directors align forces to pay tribute to the city of the New York in this unconventional omnibus sister film to 2006's Paris, Je T'Aime. Broken into short segments, New York, I Love You is comprised of ten films, most choosing to take a down-to-earth approach to the stories of the countless lives lived in the city on a given day. The segments are as follows, chronologically:

Segment 1 -- Directed by Jiang Wen; written by Hu Hong and Meng Yao; starring Hayden Christensen, Andy Garcia, and Rachel Bilson.

Segment 2 -- Directed by Mira Nair; written by Suketu Mehta; starring Natalie Portman and Irfan Khan.

Segment 3 -- Written and directed by Shunji Iwai; adaptation by Israel Horovitz. Starring Orlando Bloom and Christina Ricci.

Segment 4 -- Directed by Yvan Attal; written by Olivier Lécot and Yvan Attal; starring Robin Wright Penn, Ethan Hawke, Maggie Q, and Chris Cooper.

Segment 5 -- Directed by Brett Ratner; written by Jeff Nathanson; starring Anton Yelchin, James Caan, Olivia Thirlby, and Blake Lively

Segment 6 -- Directed by Allen Hughes; written by Xan Cassavetes and Stephen Winter; starring Drea de Matteo and Bradley Cooper.

Segment 7 -- Directed by Shekhar Kapur; written by Anthony Minghella; starring Julie Christie, John Hurt, and Shia LaBeouf.

Segment 8 -- Written and directed by Natalie Portman; starring Taylor Geare, Carlos Acosta, and Jacinda Barrett.

Segment 9 -- Written and directed by Fatih Akin; starring Burt Young, Ugur Yucel, and Shu Qi.

Segment 10 -- Written and directed by Joshua Marston; starring Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman.

Transitions in between segments -- Directed by Randall Balsmeyer; written by Israel Horovitz, James Strouse, and Hall Powell; starring Emilie Ohana, Eva Amurri, and Justin Bartha. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

A drug dealer moves on to bigger crimes in an effort to settle a score with disastrous results in this drama inspired by actual events. Though barely out of his teens, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) has already built a lucrative career for himself selling drugs -- he has his own home, a luxury car, and posse of friends who do double duty as his crew, including Elvis (Shawn Hatosy), Frankie (Justin Timberlake), and Tiko (Fernando Vargas). While life at Johnny's house is usually a constant party interrupted by occasional dope deals, Johnny has lost all of his patience with Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster), a regular customer who has run up a large tab that he can't pay. Determined to clear Jake's account, Johnny and his boys plan to kidnap Jake and hold him for ransom, but when they happen upon his 15-year-old stepbrother, Zack (Anton Yelchin), they impulsively decide to take the youngster instead. Jake's father, Butch (David Thornton), and his stepmother, Olivia (Sharon Stone), are already furious with their junkie son when they learn about Zack's disappearance, and aren't sure what they should do. Meanwhile at Johnny's place, Frankie takes a liking to young Zack, who already admires his brother's high-flying lifestyle, and introduces the kid to the joys of grown-up partying, which he takes to with dangerous zeal. Also featuring Bruce Willis as Johnny's father, Alpha Dog was based on the real-life story of Jesse James Hollywood, who at the age of 21 became one of the youngest people to ever appear on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An astronaut doctor and his fellow space traveler return to planet Earth after an extended mission only to find that the human population has been enslaved by a race of evil aliens in director Josh Becker's kitchy tale of terror from the skies. Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and his partner, Kelly (Renee O' Connor), have been away on a mission in deep space for 40 years. Of course, quite a lot can change over the course of four decades, and when Ivan and Kelly discover that the Earth has been overrun by finger-eating bugs from outer space, they set out to start a revolution designed to take back the planet. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A wealthy industrialist in search of a tax break finds himself at the mercy of a deranged scientist in this surreal comic thriller from Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell. While his overwhelming greed and hawkish business sensibilities have helped to ensure pharmaceutical CEO William Cole (Campbell) a fairly comfortable existence, that doesn't stop the money-minded businessman from traveling to Bravoda with his trophy wife, Jackie (Antoinette Byron), in a bid to diversify his company's holdings. As William heads out to meet with city officials and Jackie gets better acquainted with handsome chauffeur Yegor (Vladimir Kolev), Dr. Ivan Ivanov (Stacy Keach) and his hip-hopping assistant Pavel (Ted Raimi) come close to completing an experiment that may revolutionize organ transplants. When an unfortunate encounter with obsessive hotel maid Tatoya (Tamara Gorski) finds William, Yegor, and Jackie all taken under the care of Dr. Ivanov, a series of transplant surgeries result in both William and Yegor sharing William's body and Jackie's brain being transferred into a break-dancing robot. Now, if William ever has any hope of getting his head back to himself, he and Yegor must use their combined knowledge to hit the streets to find the woman responsible for their deaths. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The made-for-cable musical satire Reefer Madness is based on the award-winning play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the notorious -- and deliciously awful -- 1936 anti-marijuana film originally titled Tell Your Children. A smarmy lecturer (Alan Cumming in the first of his three roles in the film) arrives in a typical small town of the late '30s to warn the populace of the dangers of the "evil weed," bringing along a lurid propaganda film to dramatize his message. In broad, unsubtle, and hilarious strokes, the movie-within-a-movie shows how even a squeaky-clean pair of highschoolers named Mary Lane (Kristen Bell) and Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell) can become hopeless dope addicts by succumbing to the lure of marijuana. Reefer Madness is not only a savage skewering of the original black-and-white movie (some of the musical's campiest lines are taken directly from the earlier script!), but also a devastating attack on what playwrights Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney consider to be the real reason that the 1936 movie was made: to frighten the public out of their wits in order to keep them under the thumb of an oppressive government. Thus, the musical manages to take a number of not-so-veiled swipes at xenophobia, racism, McCarthyism, the Bush Administration's Homeland Security policy, and even the recent FCC clampdown on "offensive" TV fare (one of the film's highlights is a garish nightclub number featuring Jesus Christ). The ebulliently staged songs include "The Stuff," "Down at the Ol' Five and Dime," "Lonely Pew," "Listen to Jesus Jimmy," "Mary Jane/Mary Lane," "The Brownie Song," "Tell 'Em the Truth," and the title number. Officially titled Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, this film first aired April 16, 2005, on the Showtime cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a tough-talking FBI agent goes undercover to infiltrate a mob loan-sharking operation in the Big Apple, a fling with his informant's sister threatens to derail the entire investigation in this dark crime comedy from veteran film and television director Adam Bernstein. A streetwise agent who knows how to talk the talk and walk the walk, G-man Mike Tozzi (Chris Noth) is hot on the trail of high-ranking mobsters "Buddha" Stanzlone (Elliott Gould) and Tommy "Bells" Bellavita (Robert Patrick). Though Tozzi and his partner, Cuthbert Gibbons (Colm Meaney), are well on their way to finding the evidence they need to break the case, a severe lapse in judgment finds the womanizing Tozzi entering into an ill-advised fling with his informant's alluring sister, Gina (Dagmara Dominczyk). As the disastrous romance draws the FBI agents and the mobsters into a deadly game of cat and mouse, the only thing that's certain is that viewers will have a pulse-pounding good time finding out who will come out on top. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide