Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
Johan is a two-fisted Gothenburg cop who finds himself in a shoot-out with jewel robbers. After the smoke has cleared, one robber, shot by his accomplice, and an innocent bystander, are dead. Three witnesses, including Helen, identify thug extraordinaire Leo Gaut as being the dead crook's trigger-happy colleague. Gaut soon threatens the three witnesses, and only Johan, the badge-wearing hero, can save them.
Famed movie director Paul Robaix breaks with tradition by not casting his actress-comedienne wife, Lucy Dell, in his latest film production, a version of Madame Butterfly. Undaunted, the resourceful Lucy wings her way to Tokyo and, masquerading as a Japanese geisha, lands the coveted role from her unsuspecting husband! But in front of the cameras (and behind the pancake makeup), Lucy faces greater challenges: her lecherous leading man - and a husband who is beginning to realize that his talented new "discovery" seems vaguely familiar...
Caesar is having a hard time dividing his time between his band and his rich girlfriend, Buffer. Buffer's dad doesn't like Ceasar, so he makes Caesar a bet. If Caesar can make a hundred thousand dollars within six months, he can stay with Buffer... but if he fails, their relationship is over forever. How can Ceasar win the bet if he only knows how jam with his band?
A woman's purpose is redefined when a space alien she encountered as a child returns to reclaim what was left behind.
Ganpat is a village man who is innocent and honest. He makes his living by selling goods on his bullock cart hired by the villagers. At times he has the habit of falling asleep under the cart and children of the village steal the goods and run, which Ganpat then repents. One day a beautiful girl called Sapna comes to the village with her friends and her car breaks down. Ganpat takes them in their cart and tells them stories of the village and they are mesmerized. They laugh till their eyes water and enjoy their four days stay. Ganpat however has fallen in love with Sapna. Soon one day she returns to the village but as a married woman. This shocks Ganpat but he keeps it to himself. Sapna is married to businessman Shakti. Ganpat's mother asks him to accompany Shakti and Sapna to the city and work as their help.
In the end of 1809, Natasha attends her first ball. Andrei falls in love with her and intends to marry her, but her father demands they wait. The prince travels abroad, and Natasha desperately longs for him. But she then meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets of Andrei. At the last minute, she regrets and abandons her plans to elope with Anatol. Bolkonsky hears of this and declares their betrothal is over. Pierre, trying to calm her down, suddenly announces he loves her.
Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman's death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.
Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer".
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920s English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.
From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup.
During the war in Afghanistan a Soviet tank crew commanded by a tyrannical officer find themselves lost and in a struggle against a band of Mujahadeen guerrillas in the mountains.
On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.
In 1970s Hollywood, Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.
The story about three radical environmentalists coming together to execute the most intense protest of their lives: the explosion of a hydroelectric dam.
The true story of Kurt Warner, who went from a stockboy at a grocery store to a two-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl champion, and Hall of Fame quarterback.
Through the Breakers, the 1928 Joseph C. Boyle silent South Seas tropical island seafaring romantic love triangle melodrama about a London socialite who loves a man who is assigned to be a plantation manager on a South Seas island. She agrees to join him after a year, but puts it off, but later winds up shipwrecked on the same island. An island girl there is in love with him, but when he refuses to reciprocate her love and returns to his old sweetheart, she chooses to commit suicide rather than marry one of her own kind.
Pretty student Ina arrives in the small town of Meschede. After setting up a date with the bus driver Speedy, she flirts with other locals at the local private airfield. She soon begins affairs with the banker Peter Nase, the sawmill owner Wagner and the married manager of the airfield, Dirk Karuso. Master butcher Wusch, on the other hand, remains faithful to his wife.
Uptight lawyer Peter Sanderson wants to dive back into dating after his divorce and has a hard time meeting the right women. He tries online dating and lucks out when he starts chatting with a fellow lawyer. The two agree to meet in the flesh, but the woman he meets — an escaped African-American convict named Charlene — is not what he expected. Peter is freaked out, but Charlene tries to convince him to take her case and prove her innocence. Along the way, she wreaks havoc on his middle-class life as he gets a lesson in learning to lighten up.
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
Modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's immortal story about Hamlet's plight to avenge his father's murder in New York City.
Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.
Oskar Roehler's drama Der Alte Affe Angst (Angst) is about the dissolution of a couple. Robert (Andre Hennicke) and Marie (Marie Baumer) have little in common other than their sex life. Since Robert is going through a bout with impotency, they are having a very rocky time. Robert learns that his father, whom he is estranged from, has died. This disturbs Robert so much that he visits a prostitute, and is able to engage in sex with her. Marie discovers the infidelity, and the prostitute has a surprise of her own. Angst was screened at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano, a Mafia hit-man. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of a Senator is buried. Clifford shoots himself and Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says.
Amy is only 13 years old when her mother is killed. She goes to Canada to live with her father, an eccentric inventor whom she barely knows. Amy is miserable in her new life... until she discovers a nest of goose eggs that were abandoned when a local forest was torn down. The eggs hatch and Amy becomes "Mama Goose". When winter comes, Amy and her dad must find a way to lead the birds South.
A suburban family chooses seemingly sweet Peyton Flanders as their newborn's nanny. Only much later does the infant's mother, Claire Bartel, realize Peyton's true intentions -- to destroy Claire and replace her in the family. The nail-biting suspense builds quickly in this chilling psychological thriller about deception and bitter revenge.
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
Set in mid-70's, 12-year old Dvir Avni navigates between the equality values of his home-born Kibbutz and the relationship with his undermined mother, whom the Kibbutz members will to denounce.
Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.
For Jip, Lulu, Koop, Nina and Moff, the dead-end jobs they endure during the week just kill the time until Friday night. That's when they cut very loose and get on the rollercoaster ride that takes them right through to Monday morning.
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
Upon hearing his wife was killed in the Iraq war, a father takes his two daughters on a road trip, all the while searching for the right time and place to tell them about their mother's fate.
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.