Writer Alex Sheldon must finish his novel within a month. If he doesn't, he won't get paid. And, if that happens, angry Mafia types to whom he owes money will come looking for him. In order to expedite things, Alex hires typist Emma Dinsmore and begins dictating his novel. The book is about a doomed love affair between a character similar to Alex and a character named Polina Delacroix. But, as Alex falls for Emma, his work takes a different turn.
A writer of BAD detective novels is in full writers' block. He pretends to be the alibi of a beautiful woman who was arrested for murder at first thinking her innocent, but as she shows more and more interesting abilities (such as knife throwing) he begins to doubt his first assessment.
Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.
A young man and his girlfriend move into the man's old mansion home, where he becomes possessed by a need to control ancient demons.
Though he began in stand-up comedy, Andre Allen hit the big-time as the star of a trilogy of action-comedies about a talking bear but now he wants to be taken seriously. His passion project about the Haitian Revolution, a movie called Uprize, was panned by the NY Times film critic. A couple days before the wedding to his reality star fiancée, he's forced to spend the day with Chelsea Brown, a profile writer for the New York Times. Unexpectedly, he opens up to her, and as they wind their way across New York, he tries to get back in touch with his comedic roots.
The story of writer Xiao Hong comes alive through memories of her great love affair, literary influence and escape from China during World War II.
A biplane pilot is saddled with a spoiled industrialist's daughter on a search for her missing father through Asia that eventually involves them in a struggle against a Chinese warlord.
Drunken, has-been rock star John Norman Howard falls in love with unknown singer Esther Hoffman after seeing her perform at a club. He lets her sing a few songs at one of his shows and she becomes the talk of the music industry. Esther's star begins to rise, while John's continues to fall. She tries desperately to get John to sober up and focus on his music, but it may be too late to save him.
Two Chinese girls take a film transcription job at a heritage English countryside mansion. Discovering entangled family secrets about the Kunqu Opera star Susu, they find it almost impossible to escape, physically and emotionally.
Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.
A writer with a writer's block is tormented by his lack of inspiration. His girlfriend shows up and talks to him about his writing and her father. After she leaves, her father, an ex officer of the military and ex communist party member, rings the doorbell. After a tense introduction, the father starts to retell his life in order to try to explain why he did things that his daughter hates him for. It is not clear if writer's girlfriend and her father are part of writer's fiction, memories or reality.
A roustabout joins a traveling carny and schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband.
Gladys Glover has just lost her modeling job when she meets filmmaker Pete Sheppard shooting a documentary in Central Park. For Pete it's love at first sight, but Gladys has her mind on other things, making a name for herself. Through a fluke of advertising she winds up with her name plastered over 10 billboards throughout city.
Laura, an unemployed writer in New York City, tries to juggle an unexciting boyfriend, an affair with a performance artist, and a vivid imaginary life.
A writer of pulpy book series in which he's the hero and his beautiful English roommate is the love interest attempts to finish his new book in time at the publisher's demand.
A womanizing city man meets Tillie in the country. When he sees that her father has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him.
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
Debbie, a working class single mother from Leeds, moves her family to Bradford, where they find themselves in an ethnic minority. Daughter Leah must adapt to being the only white girl at school.
During World War II, a small plane somewhere over the Caribbean runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash-land on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The quick-witted yet easily-frightened manservant soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies and ghosts.
Morris navigates his way through a mandatory stay at Sweet Dreams sober living. In an attempt to get his life back on track, he agrees to coach a misfit softball team of his fellow housemates.