Ray Fulton, a 55 year old owner of an Ice Cream shop, separates from his long-time wife and decides to move in with his 2 bachelor employees. As a result, all are forced to reassess their priorities.
The action unfolds in a country about which we know nothing, a land of snow and forests, somewhere in the North. A family lives in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, a young, pure-hearted man, is a woodcutter. Occasionally suffering from epileptic seizures and overcome by an ecstatic state, he is one with the nature around him. Alexi is very close to his younger sister, Hege. Their blind mother, father, and younger brother, silently observe this uncontrollable love. One day a stranger arrives, a young man slightly older than Alexi.
Based on true events. On the edges of Las Vegas, 17-year-old Andrew's life is spiraling out of control. Unable to cope with the loss of his father, Andrew's descent into drugs and violence is gaining momentum, and the once promising young man is now headed for self-destruction. Andrew's mother, helpless to control her son and fighting an addiction of her own, refuses to watch idly as her only child destroys himself. As a last resort, she hires a private company to forcibly kidnap and confine him in a locked-down and corrupt psychiatric hospital. As Andrew is subjected to the secret physical and emotional abuses of the program something inside him is re-awakened. He must somehow get free to save what's left of his life, but to do that, he knows he must first face his own demons head-on.
In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.
A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.
A young government official, named Dondup, who is smitten with America (he even has a denim gho) dreams of escaping there while stuck in a beautiful but isolated village. He hopes to connect in the U.S. with a visa out of the country. He misses the one bus out of town to Thimphu, however, and is forced to hitchhike and walk along the Lateral Road to the west, accompanied by an apple seller, a Buddhist monk with his ornate, dragon-headed dramyin, a drunk, a widowed rice paper maker, and his beautiful daughter, Sonam.
Local girl Na runs a small hotel where every day is more of less the same until Ta arrives one day. Ta is an architect from the city who has come to oversee the building of a new development and very slowly the two build a friendship that develops into something more romantic.
Tony "Wise" Good, is an internationally famous model. He fought his way out of the inner city and rocketed straight to the top. He had it all... The career, the trophy wife, fame, fortune and all the luxuries that come with success. But his swift rise to the top did not take him high enough to protect him from the sudden fall he was about to experience. The corrupt corporate world, the government's support and participation in that corruption, and the jealousy and greed of people he knew best, all lead to a rapid downward spiral into a living hell.
After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.
The social anxiety of a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher working in a Queens diner provides the psychological engine that powers this blend of drama and magical realism.
Filipino-American high school student Ben works in a comic book shop to earn money to pay his way into Cal Arts. His father, a postman, is determined that his son, who has won a pre-med scholarship to UCLA, will become a doctor. The eighteenth birthday party of Ben's sister, Rose, sets off a comedic and touching series of events and family struggles that will in turn determine young Ben's future.
In downtown Manhattan, twentysomething Allie, whose father is not around and whose mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for meaning in his life and meets some idiosyncratic characters along the way.
At the 2004 Republican Nation Convention, love blooms between a Republican delegate and a Democrat protesting the event.
A single mother and her embattled son struggle to subsist in a small Mississippi Delta township. An act of violence thrusts them into the world of an emotionally devastated highway store owner, awakening the fury of a bitter and longstanding conflict.
A lawyer who is killed in a car accident finds himself resurrected as a character in his daughter's novel.
When a young deli-counter clerk and general slacker in New Jersey accidentally saves a young woman from a serial rapist, he becomes convinced that his new role in life is to become a vigilante.
When her rather explicit copy is rejected, magazine journalist Kate is asked by her editor to come up with an article on loving relationships instead, and to do so by the end of the day. This gets Kate thinking back over her own various experiences, and to wondering if she is in much of a position to write on the subject.
One year after 9/11, an American journalist travels to Afghanistan in an effort to learn the truth about the search for Osama bin Laden.
After a tragic accident caused by the truck of the middle-aged Carl Lee where a woman dies with a crushed stern, he is arrested and sent to the county jail. His son PJ, who works washing dishes and cleaning tables in a restaurant, feels lost, without financial support to keep his father's house, and is fired from his job and evicted from his house.
When schoolteacher Kieran Johnson discovers that his father was not a French sailor (as he had been led to believe) but rather an Irish farmer, he looks to his mother for answers. When she refuses to provide any, Kieran travels to Ireland.