A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
Wyatt and Billy, two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.
People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Rick (Rutger Hauer), a disaffected sailor turned hard drinking womanizer, returns home from six months at sea to find his wife (Corrigan), whom he was deeply in love, has unexpectedly left him and is now a junkie whore. Devastated, he tries to ease his pain with booze and cheap thrills. His wife's best friend (Dagmar Lassander) makes a move on him, and when he spurns her (after scewing her first, naturally) she plots her revenge. She does so in an ingenious way, by exploiting a fantasy woman of his, but her plan backfires with tragic consequences.
17-year-old track star, John Owens, has never used any drug stronger than pot, until he meets an older woman who introduces him to crack cocaine. He quickly becomes addicted but is able to hide his problem from all except his best friend, Chris.
A psychological study of the effects of drug addiction on humanity. Helene Ford has been injected with heroin by an unscrupulous physician, causing her to act irrationally. Her husband Stephen, a noted artist, hires a model whom Helene, inflamed by their friend Jack Murray, suspects of having an affair with Stephen. The model is also addicted to drugs and convinces Stephen to try heroin to forget his troubles. Both Stephen and Helene then become addicted to drugs. They abandon their home and then separate, after which Stephen resorts to crime to support his heroin addiction. During an escape from the police after a robbery, Stephen encounters Helene again, this time near death. She sacrifices her own life to shield her husband, but Stephen and his former model plunge to their deaths.
In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
Deep Down redraws a descent into hell of a stripper called America, lost in the very depths of the U.S, taken away by a devastating love-story.
A New York press agent must scramble when his major client becomes embroiled in a huge scandal.
Narcotics Sergeant Nick Tellis, on leave after a trauma, is called back to investigate the murder of fellow undercover operative Michael Calvess, joined by the victim's unpredictable and brutal ex-partner, Henry Oak. Working together in the back alleys of Detroit, Tellis and Oak delve into a dark investigation that leads them to uncover shocking secrets and question the corruption and morality within the department, encountering unorthodox methods and a brutal truth about Calvess's death.
After a friend overdoses, Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their drug habits and attempt to enroll in a government detox program. Their efforts are hampered by seemingly endless red tape, as they are shuffled from one office to another while being chased by drug dealers and the police.
A college freshman returns to Los Angeles for Christmas at his ex-girlfriend's request, but discovers that his former best friend has an out-of-control drug habit.
Vincent LaMarca is a dedicated and well-respected New York City police detective who has gone to great lengths to distance himself from his past, but then makes the terrible discovery that his own son has fallen into a life of crime.
Suffering from addiction and homelessness, Abigail wanders the city on a cold winter late afternoon, suffering withdrawal, slipping in and out of hallucinations and dreams as the cold sets in.
Sammy is a teenage cutter living with her meth addicted mother in a trailer on the Indian Ridge Reservation. Her mother's boyfriend is a drug dealer using the reservation as a cover for his drug trafficking. David, Sammy's best friend, is a foster youth and helps her to escape from this dysfunctional life she's had to endure since her father died.
In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.