Sexually abused as a young girl, Kate "Ma" Barker grows into a violent and powerful woman by the 1930s. She lovingly dominates her grown sons and grooms them into a pack of tough crooks. The boys include the cruel Herman, who still shares a bed with Ma; Fred, an ex-con who fell in love with a fellow prisoner; and Lloyd, who gets high on whatever's handy. Together they form a deadly, bizarre family of Depression-era bandits.
Ruby and her husband Claude are a working-class couple who live in suburban Arkansas. As crazy as they are for each other, their relationship is far from harmonious. (The lack of money doesn't help matters, either.) In fact, their whole family is fraught with unresolved conflicts. Then Claude's uncle is arrested on a felony charge, and everyone rallies round. Ruby's mother Jewel and flirtatious sister Rose (Claude's ex-girlfriend) even fly in from Tennessee; but, far from being a source of support, Jewel seems only to want to break up Ruby and Claude.
A grief-stricken dysfunctional family goes camping.
Shouting Secrets is a hopeful and heartwarming, universal story taking place in a present day Native American family. It's a story that is at once about the constancy and the fragility of love, as well as the importance of family.
Jackie-O is anxiously awaiting the visit of her brother home for Thanksgiving, but isn't expecting him to bring a friend — and she's even more shocked to learn that this friend is his fiance. It soon becomes clear that her obsession with Jackie Kennedy is nothing compared to her obsession with her brother, and she isn't the only member of the family with problems.
Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.
A man tries to warn his brother away from the new girlfriend he brings home during Thanksgiving, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process.
A recovering heroin addict looks after his young daughter for the first time since being out of prison and getting clean.
When Mike Lewis leaves L.A. to stay with his grandfather in Colorado for the summer, he hates the old man's cowboy ways. When Mike demands to go home, the old man agrees and saddles up a couple of horses for a six week trip toward California, home, the Pacific and redemption.
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.
Ever since she broke up with Nigel, Lena soldiers on through life as best she can with her two kids. She valiantly overcomes the obstacles put in her way. But she has yet to confront the worst of them: Her unstoppable family has decided, by any means necessary, to make her happy.
A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.
Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray).
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
Lucía is a greedy mother who needs to feel young, seductive and atractive when she is in her sixties. She will do anything at hand to get what she wants, this behaviour will lead to the total destruction of her dysfunctional family.
Every year, on the anniversary of their parents’ death, Cynthia, Bryce, and Miles gather at the family summer home to reminisce and have brunch at their parents’ favorite restaurant. But the siblings have never fully gotten along, and to make matters worse, Cynthia is in a financial rut this year. When she proposes to sell the summer house, Bryce pushes back with full force. The two turn to Miles for the deciding vote, but Miles doesn’t care all that much about the house: he is hung up on the fact that his longtime girlfriend, Gabby, recently left Thus, the weekend unfolds with the siblings’ relationships unravelling into dramatic, conflicted fever dreams of self-identity, broken bonds, and repressed love.
Gail and Tom Hartman are struggling to stay together and decide to take a white-water rafting holiday adventure in Montana for their son Roarke's 10th birthday, only to meet up with a pair of mysterious men whose desperation grows, turning their vacation into a nightmare.
Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
The hardships of modern life for one of the families, unhappy in its own way and at the same time recognizable to others. A husband and wife are fighting and drinking, their eldest son lives on his parents-in-law's money, the middle daughter is a prostitute, and only the youngest daughter, confined to a wheelchair, mute, is watching it.
A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.