In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction, is rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor, Simon. After Simon is hospitalized, Melvin finds his life turned upside down when he has to look after Simon's dog. In addition, Carol, the only waitress at the local diner who will tolerate him, must leave work to care for her sick son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast.

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.

An American man returns to the village of his birth in Ireland, where he finds love and conflict.

A widow struggles with the dilemma of her own growing sexual needs, and her desire to remain faithful to the memory of her late husband.

Magali, forty-something, is a winemaker and a widow: she loves her work but feels lonely. Her friends Rosine and Isabelle both want secretly to find a husband for Magali.

After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds an ex-soldier living in her apartment. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver.

At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

Martha Beck, an obese nurse who is desperately lonely, joins a "correspondence club" and finds a romantic pen pal in Ray Fernandez. Martha falls hard for Ray, and is intent on sticking with him even when she discovers he's a con man who seduces lonely single women, kills them and then takes their money. She poses as Ray's sister and joins Ray on a wild killing spree, fueled by her lingering concern that Ray will leave her for one of his marks.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.

In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.

A young Arab-American girl struggles with her sexual obsession, a bigoted Army reservist, and her strict father during the Gulf War.

A widow's life is thrown into turmoil by her hippie daughter, her rebellious teenage son, and an ill-starred love affair she is having with a much younger man -- and then a former suitor comes back into the picture.

Yuka Shibuya, a struggling actress, and Hatsue, a widowed chestnut farmer, meet a mysterious, bloodied man in the farm. The three end up living together during chestnut season and form a special bond while a miracle slowly unfolds.

A foster family in South Central a few weeks before the city erupts in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992.

When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.