An Eastern European tourist unexpectedly finds himself stranded in JFK airport, and must take up temporary residence there.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
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.
A magician in a carnival--who actually can read minds and levitate people and objects--works with a superintelligent chimp named Alex, who can also talk. The magician and the chimp soon become the stars of the carnival, drawing in big crowds. However, the wild-animal trainer, who has been displaced by the team as the carnival's top act, decides to kidnap Alex and sell him to a medical laboratory for experimentation, thereby getting rid of his competition.
New York City newspaper writer J.J. Hunsecker holds considerable sway over public opinion with his Broadway column, but one thing that he can't control is his younger sister, Susan, who is in a relationship with aspiring jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. Hunsecker strongly disapproves of the romance and recruits publicist Sidney Falco to find a way to split the couple, no matter how ruthless the method.
A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.
London, England, on the eve of World War II. Guinevere Pettigrew, a strict governess who is unable to keep a job, is fired again. Lost in the hostile city, a series of fortunate circumstances lead her to meet Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous and dazzling American jazz singer whose life is a chaos ruled by indecision, a continuous battle between love and fame.
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.
An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.
With a reputation for seducing members of the opposite sex, regardless of their marital status, a notorious womanizer discovers a beauty who seems impervious to his charms. However, as he continues to pursue the indifferent lady, he finds himself falling in love.
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.
During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.
Starting from the determination and great desire to create a music concert to embrace peace in Ambon City, Glenn ultimately gave up all his income to hold the concert.
After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals. It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
Roustabout Stanton Carlisle joins a traveling carny and unsuccessfully schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband, Pete.
Enigmatic gangster Silien may or may not be responsible for informing on Faugel, who was just released from prison and is already involved in what should be a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?