In a nursing home, resident Duke reads a romance story to an old woman who has senile dementia with memory loss. In the late 1930s, wealthy seventeen year-old Allie Hamilton is spending summer vacation in Seabrook. Local worker Noah Calhoun meets Allie at a carnival and they soon fall in love with each other. One day, Noah brings Allie to an ancient house that he dreams of buying and restoring and they attempt to make love but get interrupted by their friend. Allie's parents do not approve of their romance since Noah belongs to another social class, and they move to New York with her. Noah writes 365 letters (A Year) to Allie, but her mother Anne Hamilton does not deliver them to her daughter. Three years later, the United States joins the World War II and Noah and his best friend Fin enlist in the army, and Allie works as an army nurse. She meets injured soldier Lon Hammond in the hospital. After the war, they meet each other again going on dates and then, Lon, who is wealthy and handsome, proposes. Meanwhile Noah buys and restores the old house and many people want to buy it. When Allie accidentally sees the photo of Noah and his house in a newspaper, she feels divided between her first love and her commitment with Lon. Meanwhile Duke stops reading to the old lady since his children are visiting him in the nursing home.
In this film, told almost entirely in iambic pentameter, She is a scientist in a loveless marriage to Anthony, a devious politician. He is a Lebanese doctor in self-imposed exile, working as a chef in a London restaurant. They meet at a banquet and fall into a carefree, passionate relationship. But the contempt He perceives as a Muslim immigrant to the UK causes him to break up with She, offering little in the way of explanation, and return to his homeland. She drags his reasons out of him little by little and tries to sympathize. Keenly feeling the loss of his love, She flies to Havana to sort things out on the beach and in the cabarets. She sends him a ticket, but harbors no illusions that He will join her in this Carribean melting pot...
In Manhattan, the brilliant Chinese-American lesbian surgeon Wil is surprised by the arrival of her forty-eight year old widow mother to her apartment. Ma was banished from Flushing, Queens, when her father discovered that she was pregnant. The presence of Ma affects the personal life of Wil, who is in love with the daughter of her boss at the hospital, the dancer Vivian Shing. Once her grandfather has promised that her mother would only return to Flushing remarried or proving that it was an immaculate conception, Wil tries to find a Chinese bachelor to marry Ma.
Early thirty-something American Jesse Wallace is in a Paris bookstore, the last stop on a tour to promote his best selling book, This Time. Although he is vague to reporters about the source material for the book, it is about his chance encounter nine years earlier on June 15-16, 1994 with a Parisienne named Celine, and the memorable and romantic day and evening they spent together in Vienna. At the end of their encounter at the Vienna train station, which is also how the book ends, they, not providing contact information to the other, vowed to meet each other again in exactly six months at that very spot. As the media scrum at the bookstore nears its conclusion, Jesse spots Celine in the crowd, she who only found out about the book when she earlier saw his photograph promoting this public appearance. Much like their previous encounter, Jesse and Celine, who is now an environmental activist, decide to spend time together until he is supposed to catch his flight back to New York, this time only being about an hour. Beyond the issue of the six month meeting, what has happened in their lives in the intervening nine years, and their current lives, they once again talk about their philosophies of life and love, this time with the knowledge of their day together and how it shaped what has happened to them.
When a private satellite encounters an unidentified source of heat in Antarctica and it is found to be a pyramid buried deep underground , a search team comprising of top-of-the-line archaeologists and engineers is sent to Antarctica to find out more . Once there , the team comes across signs which indicate that the place is inhabited by an unknown alien species . It is not long before the aliens begin to hunt the team members . At the same time , a trio of coming-of-age Predators have arrived to collect the skulls of the aliens as trophies , and the humans are caught between a deadly battle between the two warring species .
Peter Parker is an unhappy man: after two years of fighting crime as Spider-Man, his life has begun to fall apart. The girl he loves is engaged to someone else, his grades are slipping, he cannot keep any of his jobs, and on top of it, the newspaper Daily Bugle is attacking him viciously, claiming that Spider-Man is a criminal. He reaches the breaking point and gives up the crime fighter's life, once and for all. But after a failed fusion experiment, eccentric and obsessive scientist Dr. Otto Octavius is transformed into super villain Doctor Octopus, Doc Ock for short, having four long tentacles as extra hands. Peter guesses it might just be time for Spider-Man to return, but would he act upon it?
Blade finds himself alone surrounded by enemies, fighting an up hill battle with the vampire nation and now humans. He joins forces with a group of vampire hunters who call themselves the Nightstalkers. The vampire nation awakens the king of vampires Dracula from his slumber with intentions of using his primitive blood to become day-walkers. On the other side is Blade and his team manifesting a virus that could wipe out the vampire race once and for all. In the end the two sides will collide and only one will come out victorious, a battle between the ultimate vampire who never knew defeat, facing off against the greatest vampire slayer.
Matthew, a young advertising executive in Chicago, puts his life and a business trip to China on hold when he thinks he sees Lisa, the love of his life who walked out on him without a word two years earlier, walking out of a restaurant one day. With a little help from his friend Luke, Matthew obsessively and relentlessly tracks Lisa down and while doing so, runs into another young woman calling herself Lisa whom, unknown to Matthew, is an actress named Alex and may hold the key to Lisa's disappearance, and discovery.
Wanting to learn from the best, aspiring boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) wants Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to train her. At the outset, he flatly refuses saying he has no interest in training a girl. Frankie leads a lonely existence, alienated from his only daughter and having few friends. Maggie's rough around the edges, but shows a lot of grit in the ring and he eventually relents. Maggie not only proves to be the boxer he always dreamed of having under his wing, but a friend who fills the great void he's had in his life. Maggie's career skyrockets, but an accident in the ring leads her to ask Frankie for one last favor.
When her surrogate father who owns the casino she works in gets murdered, Modesty Blaise takes on those that killed him and are now at the casino to rob it. It turns out she is more than just a modest worker.
Having just turned thirty years old, former high school star athlete TYLER WELLS is having trouble settling into his comfortable, middle class life. With a baby on the way and his job at a local plant hanging in the balance, he goes for one last roar of the crowd by entering The Iron Masters King of the Ring Contest, a brutal fight contest where the winner fights four fights in one night. When his troubled younger brother GABE enters, Tyler finds himself fighting not only his past present and future, but his own flesh and blood as well.
After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while cutting apart the tissue, he partially recalls his accident. Later, when he sees a tattoo in the arm of the corpse, he discloses that she was his girlfriend and becomes obsessed to go further in the examination of the body.
More than 10 years after 'Terminator 2', John Connor now exists only as a drifter - living 'off the grid', so no more Terminators from the future can hunt him down. Unfortunately, SkyNet does send another one back - and this one is called the T-X, even more powerful & advanced than the dreaded T-1000. However, another CSM-101 Terminator is also sent back to protect John against the T-X. Now, Skynet is patiently assuming control of civilian computer systems, under the guise of a computer virus. John has also met his future wife, Kate Brewster, whose father - a U.S. Air Force General - is in charge of the military computer systems & is leery of up linking SkyNet. However, when the SkyNet virus infects the U.S military computers & leaves the country open to attack, the machines begin their horrific takeover. Soon a nuclear war will result - and the war against the machines will begin. Can the outdated CSM-101 Terminator eliminate the highly advanced T-X - or will a darker future await man following the nuclear attack?
Wealth can't spare three male generations of the dysfunctional Jewish New York Gromberg family grief or grim reality. However successful in life, Alex never felt pleasing pride or proper parental support from sprightly patriarch Mitchell, who sarcastically imposes his own values and priorities on everyone and everything. Alex starts despairing that his modern permissiveness may ruin his own bright firstborn, college-boy Asher, unlike adoring kid-brother Eli. A dorm-drug-bust pushes things to the limit -- or beyond?
Katherine Ann Watson has accepted a position teaching art history at the prestigious Wellesley College. Watson is a very modern woman, particularly for the 1950s, and has a passion not only for art but for her students. For the most part, the students all seem to be biding their time, waiting to find the right man to marry. The students are all very bright and Watson feels they are not reaching their potential. Altough a strong bond is formed between teacher and student, Watson's views are incompatible with the dominant culture of the college.
In April 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars, H.M.S. Surprise, a British frigate, is under the command of Captain Jack Aubrey. Aubrey and the Surprise's current orders are to track and capture or destroy a French privateer named Acheron. The Acheron is currently in the Atlantic off South America headed toward the Pacific in order to extend Napoleon's reach of the wars. This task will be a difficult one as Aubrey quickly learns in an initial battle with the Acheron that it is a bigger and faster ship than the Surprise, which puts the Surprise at a disadvantage. Aubrey's single-mindedness in this seemingly impossible pursuit puts him at odds with the Surprise's doctor and naturalist, Stephen Maturin, who is also Aubrey's most trusted advisor on board and closest friend. Facing other internal obstacles which have resulted in what they consider a string of bad luck, Aubrey ultimately uses Maturin's scientific exploits to figure out a way to achieve his and the ship's seemingly impossible goal.
"Spin" tells the story of a boy who loses his parents in a plane crash, is taken in by his uncle (Tucci), who then leaves him for ten years in the care of his Hispanic ranch hand (Blades) and his wife (Delany). Once in high school, Eddie (Merriman) reconnects with a girl from his past (Garces), and their growing interracial relationship teaches the sometimes-sullen Eddie to think of others before himself.
In the summer of 1975 in a neighborhood in Boston, three kids- Dave Boyle and his two friends, Jimmy Markum and Sean Devine- are playing on the sidewalk when Dave gets abducted by two men and endures days of sexual abuse. Eventually Dave escapes, but is traumatized throughout adulthood. Jimmy is an ex-con and a father of three, whose daughter Katie is found dead, and Dave becomes the number one suspect. Sean is a homicide detective investigating Katie's murder, and finds himself faced with past and present demons as more is uncovered about Katie's murder. Learning Katie had a boyfriend, ballistics later connect a gun belonging to his father to the murder, setting her boyfriend as the suspect. Will Sean find out who killed Katie? Will Jimmy make it through the investigation? And will Dave ever admit what really happened when he was abducted?
When a Chinese rebel murders Chon's estranged father and escapes to England, Chon and Roy make their way to London with revenge on their minds. Chon's sister, Lin, has the same idea, and uncovers a worldwide conspiracy to murder the royal family but almost no one will believe her.
When folk icon Irving Steinbloom passed away, he left behind a legacy of music and a family of performers he has shepherded to folk stardom. To celebrate a life spent submerged in folk, Irving's loving son Jonathan has decided to put together a memorial concert featuring some of Steinbloom's best-loved musicians. There's Mitch and Mickey, who were the epitome of young love until their partnership was torn apart by heartbreak; classic troubadours The Folksmen, whose records were endlessly entertaining for anyone able to punch a hole in the center to play them; and The New Main Street Singers, the most meticulously color-coordinated neuftet ever to hit an amusement park. Now for one night only in New York City's Town Hall, these three groups will reunite and gather together to celebrate the music that almost made them famous.
When not solving murders in Tinseltown, Detective Joe Gavilan and his rookie partner Kasey Calden both moonlight in other fields: Gavilan sells real estate (poorly), and Calden aspires to become an actor (Brando, namely). Assigned to the vicious in-club slaying of a promising young rap act, the two detective delve into the recording industry where they hope to find answers - ideally ones that also come with property buyers or auditions.
Return of the mythic guitar-slinging hero, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), in the final installment of the Mariachi/Desperado trilogy. The saga continues as El Mariachi makes his way across a rugged landscape on the blood trail of Barrillo (Willem Dafoe), a cartel kingpin with one last score to settle who is planning a coup d'etat against the president of Mexico. Enlisted by Sands (Johnny Depp), a corrupt CIA agent, El Mariachi demands retribution.
Miami is being flooded with ecstasy that's coming from Cuba through drug lord Johnny Tapia. Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are on the case, and are determined to bring the man to justice. Additional drama is provided by friction with the DEA, which counts Marcus' younger sister Sydney among its agents, and from Marcus possibly transferring out of the department, leaving Mike without his longtime partner.
The wide generation gap between Tess Coleman and her teenage daughter Anna is more than evident. They simply cannot understand each other's preferences. On a Thursday night they have a big argument in a Chinese restaurant. Both receive a fortune cookie each from the restaurant owner's mother which causes them to switch bodies next day. As they adjust with their new personalities, they begin to understand each other more and eventually it's the mutual self-respect that sorts the things out.
Wanting to escape city life for the countryside, New Yorkers Cooper Tilson (Quaid), his wife Leah (Stone) and their two children move into a dilapidated old mansion still filled with the possessions of the previous family. Turning it into their dream house soon becomes a living nightmare when the previous owner (Dorff) shows up, and a series of terrifying incidents lead them on a spine-tingling search for clues to the estate's dark and lurid past...
After six months at sea on an unassisted solo circumnavigation, Georgia Perry's 44-foot sloop is becalmed for several days. Cabin fever sets in, and the border between fact and fantasy begins to distort. But if these are just tricks of the mind, how do these encounters leave Georgia with physical manifestations?
After three of its employees have been reported missing in the Southern African Namib desert, the Eland Mining exploration company mounts a search and rescue expedition, comprising more employees which team up with Dr. Zach Straker, who researches extreme survival systems. Amidst the moving sand dunes they find human bones with just some blood on it, and identify them to belong to two of the missing men; then these disappear again, and they observe a strange monster, which according to a native former herdsman is known by the local people as Esikhulu. It's able to (dis)appear, survive shotgun hits, fatally 'incorporate' human bodies -picking them off one by one- and make water turn acid...
Wendell Rohr is a torts lawyer taking on the gun lobby. Rankin Fitch is the jury consultant for the Defendants and between them the battle is for the hearts and minds of the jury. But there is someone on the inside. Nicholas Easter is a juror with a girlfriend, Marlee, on the outside. they have a past ..... and their own agenda.
Mitch, Frank and Beanie are disillusioned with their personal lives beginning when Mitch's nymphomaniac girlfriend, Heidi, cheats on him, then former party animal Frank gets married, but unwilling to let go of his wild life, and Beanie is a family man seeking to reclaim his wild and crazy youth. Beanie suggests that they form their own fraternity in Mitch's new house on a college campus to re-live their glory days by bringing together a variety of misfit college students, losers, middle-aged and elderly retirees as their new friends and later try to avoid being evicted by the new Dean of Students, Pritchard, whom still holds a personal grudge against all three of them.
Earl and Hank have only one thing in common: they're both L.A.P.D. rejects. One just got kicked out, the other can't even get in. After confronting each other on opposite sides of the law during a traffic stop that escalates out of control, these two luckless individuals end up partnered as lowly security guards. Despite being damned to the lowest rung of the law enforcement ladder, Earl and Hank uncover a sophisticated smuggling operation led by Nash and his band of thugs. When Earl and Hank get their hands on some hot property, they go on the run from, first the bad guys, then the L.A.P.D.--led by Lt. Washington and Detective McDuff. What these two unlikely partners do to law enforcement is a crime, but they just might save the day. That is, if they don't kill each other first.
Leonard Grey has been the super of the apartment building Jericho Mansions owned by Lily Melnick for thirty years. Leonard is slow and agoraphobic, as well as having amnesia, and dedicates his leisure time to build a complex bridge with clips. When the husband of the landlady (Lily) dies and she receives a call from her sister that lives in Europe, Lily rebukes Leonard and tries to force him to be fired or arrested by the police, forging evidences that he is a thief. However, most of the dwellers like Leonard and he stays working in the building. When Bill Cherry, husband of the masseuse Donna Cherry and lover of Dolores O'Donell, is murdered in Jericho Mansions during the night, the police investigate. There are many suspects, including Dolores's betrayed husband Eugene; Lily and Leonard. However, Jericho Mansions hides a dark and cruel secret.
A newly promoted book editor discovers a potential best seller, although unfinished, manuscript buried in her predecessor's office. Moved by the passionate love story and drawing parallels to her own life, she embarks on a journey to find the author and the missing ending only to find an old loner who is still struggling to cope with the death of his wife twenty years prior. The two eventually form a close friendship, each drawing wisdom and strength from each other allowing him to write the final chapter on his romance with his wife before succumbing to cancer and inspiring her to find a lost love.
Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature.
Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey are on their way to the hotel where Shrek and Fiona will spend their honeymoon when they encounter Lord Farquaad's ghost! Farquaad sends his henchman, Thelonious, to bring Princess Fiona to him where he will force her to become the queen of the ghostly world. Now, Shrek and Donkey must save the princess in this timeless tale that's filled with spooky-good fun
Driving through the backwoods of Texas, five youths pick up a traumatized hitchhiker, who shoots herself in their van. Shaken by the suicide, the group seeks help from the locals, but their situation becomes even more surreal when they knock on the door of a remote homestead. It's quickly apparent the residents are a family of inbred psychopaths, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives. In hot pursuit is a disfigured, chainsaw-wielding cannibal known as Leatherface.
A young novelist, tormented by his family's history and haunted by the specter of his long-dead, more famous ancestor, falls in love with a woman, a distant relative of his ancestor, whose friends and family begin to disappear mysteriously.
Based off of a one time T.V. show, two Los Angeles S.W.A.T. officers Jim Street and Brian Gamble were sent in to foil an extremely violent bank robbery. Although they thwarted the robbery, they shot a hostage in the process. Street was suspended from S.W.A.T. while Gamble was fired altogether. After 6 months, a veteran S.W.A.T. officer, Daniel Harrelson or "Hondo", is told to assemble a S.W.A.T. team for his division. He chooses other S.W.A.T. officers as well as 3 rookies. However, after they pass the S.W.A.T. training, they receive a message that a French crime boss, known as Alex Montell is trying to escape from prison. This will not be easy to prevent, especially after Montell promises $100 Million to his rescuers.
Middle aged Chris Harper (Dame Helen Mirren) and Annie Clarke (Dame Julie Walters) are best friends. They spend much of their time at their local Knapely, Yorkshire County chapter of the Women's Institute (WI), whose motto is "enlightenment, fun, and friendship". Although they like most of the women at the WI (the friendship part), they, but the perceived flaky Chris in particular, hold the way Marie (Geraldine James), the local President, runs the chapter with derision. They find much of what goes on there, especially the monthly presentations, banal and devoid of enlightenment and fun. Equally as banal was last year's fund-raising calendar, featuring local bridges, which raised a meager £75.60, with this year's proposed calendar, local churches, promising to be even more so. After Annie's husband John (John Alderton) dies from leukemia, Chris wants the WI to provide a memorial in his memory: a new sofa for the family room at the hospital. The one Chris wants to buy costs nine hundred ninety-nine pounds sterling, which she proposes to raise by changing the fund-raising calendar to one featuring tasteful photographs of nude Knapely WI members. She got the idea by seeing all around her the notion of the old adage that sex sells. Annie likes the idea as it is analogous to one of horticultural-loving John's last statements about plants being the most glorious in the latter stages of their life, after which they quickly go to seed. To get the project off the ground, they not only have to convince nine other WI members to pose (December to be a group photograph), but they have to find a photographer they trust that will treat this task as an art project. Conversely, they aren't sure if they and the calendar will meet with the same contempt from Marie, the national WI organization and their friends and family that they are so trying to change in the Knapely WI, and in the process not only not raise the necessary money, but, in fact lose money instead. or the project in any form may have its own consequences, especially for Chris.
Jim Levenstein has finally found the courage to ask his girlfriend, Michelle Flaherty to marry him. She agrees to get married, but the problems don't stop there for Jim. Now along with Paul Finch and Kevin Myers, Jim must plan the wedding. Unfortunately Steve Stifler is in town and won't let the wedding go past without having some fun himself, which includes setting up a secret bachelor party.
Mild-mannered timid businessman Dave Buznik works for a pet clothing company out of New York City. He's got an abrasive boss named Mr. Frank Head who frequently takes credit for his work and steps on him in return. He's got a loving girlfriend, Linda, whose best friend is her condescending college ex, Andrew. But when a misunderstanding aboard an airplane goes haywire, Dave is ordered by the court to undergo anger management therapy at the hands of specialist Dr. Buddy Rydell, who is an unpredictable, psychopathic character. As the relationship between Dave and Buddy becomes more tense, when the unorthodox treatment wreaks havoc Dave's life, and Buddy might be the only one who can save him from a problem he recognizes right away in his patient, that could only get worse.
Charming, relatively poor, somewhat goofy Tom falls in love with haughty snob tycoon McNerney's spoiled daughter Sarah, who was destined for a more socialite match, such as slick Peter Prentiss. They still get married and fly to Europe for a romantic honeymoon Tom can't afford. Their love gets tested dangerously by misfortune of technical and other kinds all the way. Worse, Peter catches up with them on a mission to 'make Sarah see sense' just when the newlyweds are furious at each other.
In four days, Jerry Peyser and Steve Tobias will become in-laws when their respective offspring, Melissa Peyser and Mark Tobias, get married. Married Jerry is a Chicago area podiatrist. He is risk averse to an extreme, afraid of heights including being in tall buildings and flying, even watching airline commercials. He is also extremely controlling, having organized the lavish wedding against the simple affair Melissa had envisioned. He is aggravated that he has not yet met Steve, who has missed one family function after another. Divorced Steve is a photocopy machine salesman... or so Mark says. In reality, Steve is a deep undercover CIA field agent, something that Mark knows but is unable to divulge to anyone, even Tracy and her family. His work, which has always overtaken his life, is the reason Steve has missed all these family events. Steve is unwilling to hand over reigns of his cases to his junior partner, the capable Angela Harris. Steve finally meets the Peysers, which Steve manipulates into an undercover work dinner. Steve's current mission involves setting up the sale of twenty year old runaway "Olga" to a French arms dealer, violent Jean-Pierre Thibodoux, which is purely a cover to obtain information clandestinely from Thibodoux. Jerry inadvertently gets embroiled in Steve's case when he overhears the beginning of the deal going down. Jerry does not believe Steve to be one of "the good guys", especially as he learns that the FBI is after Steve, who they believe has become a rogue agent. This belief may affect not only their time together, but their lives and whether Melissa and Mark will get married. Thrown into the mix is Mark's mother/Steve's ex-wife, Judy Tobias, who hates almost everything about her ex-husband except one thing...
The lead character, called 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, who, on the day of their wedding rehearsal was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill (with the assistance of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad). Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby. The saga of Kill Bill Volume I begins.
Off the coast of the volcanic island of Santorini, the intrepid archaeologist, Lara Croft, makes the unexpected discovery of a throbbing golden orb able to guide its holder to the mythical Pandora's Box. As the legendary artefact contains ancient mysteries of unfathomable power, Lara needs to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, especially the unscrupulous former Nobel Prize winner and now a bio-weapons dealer, Jonathan Reiss. With the aid of the former agent, Terry Sheridan, the fearless adventurer travels the world in pursuit of the precious item; however, can she retrieve it in time to save the day?
Meet Roy and Frank, a couple of professional small-time con artists. What Roy, a veteran of the grift, and Frank, his ambitious protégé, are swindling these days are "water filtration systems," bargain-basement water filters bought by unsuspecting people who pay ten times their value in order to win bogus prizes like cars, jewelry and overseas vacations--which they never collect. These scams net the flim-flam men a few hundred here, another thousand there, which eventually adds up to a lucrative partnership. Roy's private life, however, is not so successful. An obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe with no personal relationships to call his own, Roy is barely hanging on to his wits, and when his idiosyncrasies begin to threaten his criminal productivity he's forced to seek the help of a psychoanalyst just to keep him in working order. While Roy is looking for a quick fix, his therapy begets more than he bargained for: the revelation that he has a teenage daughter--a child whose existence he suspected but never dared confirm. What's more troubling, 14-year-old Angela wants to meet the father she never knew. At first, Angela's appearance disrupts her neurotic father's carefully ordered routine. Soon, however, with his own unique spin on parenthood, Roy begins to enjoy a relationship he never dreamed of having with his daughter. But while he develops paternal feelings for the 14-year-old, she's developing a fascination with Daddy's questionable career.
In the 1870s, Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a cynical veteran of the American Civil War, who will work for anyone, is hired by Americans who want lucrative contracts with the Emperor of Japan to train the peasant conscripts for the first standing Imperial Army in modern warfare using firearms. The Imperial Omura (Masato Harada) cabinet's first priority is to repress a rebellion of traditionalist Samurai, hereditary warriors, who remain devoted to the sacred dynasty, but reject the Westernizing policy, and even refuse firearms. Yet, when his ill-prepared superior force sets out too soon, their panic allows the sword-wielding samurai to crush them. Badly wounded, Algren's courageous stand makes the samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) spare his life. Once nursed to health, he learns to know and respect the old Japanese way, and participates as advisor in Katsumoto's failed attempt to save the Bushido tradition, but Omura gets repressive laws enacted. He must now choose to honor his loyalty to one of the embittered sides when the conflict returns to the battlefield.
United Press International journalist Will Bloom and his French freelance photojournalist wife Josephine Bloom, who is pregnant with their first child, leave their Paris base to return to Will's hometown of Ashton, Alabama on the news that his father, Edward Bloom, stricken with cancer, will soon die, he being taken off chemotherapy treatment. Although connected indirectly through Will's mother/Edward's wife, Sandra Bloom, Will has been estranged from his father for three years since his and Josephine's wedding. Will's issue with his father is the fanciful tales Edward has told of his life all his life, not only to Will but the whole world. As a child when Edward was largely absent as a traveling salesman, Will believed those stories, but now realizes that he does not know his father, who, as he continues to tell these stories, he will never get to know unless Edward comes clean with the truth before he dies. On the brink of his own family life beginning, Will does not want to be the kind of father Edward has been to him. One of those stories from Edward's childhood - that he saw his own death in the glass eye of a witch - led to him embracing life since he would not have to fear death knowing when and how it would eventually come. The question is whether Will will be able to reconcile Edward's stories against his real life, either directly from Edward before he dies and/or from other sources, and thus allow Will to come to a new understanding of himself and his life, past, present and future.
A boy named Walter is dropped by his mother Mae at his great-uncles' house. Later, Walter will find out his great-uncles' big secret, and rumors say that Hub and Garth, Walter's great-uncles, have stolen a lot of gold and money. (some say they stole it from Al Capone) Did they really steal that money or not?
