The chronicle of an average American housewife who just happens to be addicted to gambling.
Social & External
Eleanor Anderson
Bill Anderson
Rick Santos
Edie Gould
Beverly Craig
Anne Barclay
Leonard Fields
Stacy Anderson
Arnie
Sara
Jerry
Bob
40-year Maria is living in a monotonous and deadlocked marriage with her husband. In addition, she has to take care of her ill despotic father. One day, she falls in love with her sensitive neighbour Dieter. But her attempt to leave her gloomy everyday life behind leads straight into tragedy.
Swedish efficiency researchers come to Norway for a study of Norwegian men, to optimize their use of their kitchen. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norström) is assigned to study the habits of Isak Bjørvik (Joachim Calmeyer). By the rules of the research institute, Folke has to sit on an umpire's chair in Isak's kitchen and observe him from there, but never talk to him. Isak stops using his kitchen and observes Folke through a hole in the ceiling instead. However, the two lonely men slowly overcome the initial post-war Norwegian-Swede distrust and become friends.
A shy teenage boy trying to escape the influence of his domineering mother, has his world changed when he begins to work for a retired actress.
A woman who killed her husband by accident comes out of prison after sixteen years to meet with her two children at municipality office. Before children's arrival, she recalls her supposedly happy marriage that turned into a nightmare when her husband's brother came back from Germany and begun to influence her husband in a bad way.
A journalist lives his smooth citizen life, married to a woman from respected family. But, conflicts with manager at work are becoming more often, his marriage is unstable and the outer manifestation of all this is a strange skin disease. Doctors recommend resting in nature and self-examination. In the mountains, in a lonely house near the lake, he meets a woman, also unadjusted and lonely. The consequences of this encounter are beneficial. Capable to love again, he gets his moral strength, and disease retreats. He breaks off his contacts with his wife's family and with "petit bourgeois" of his former life, confronts his boss and wins, realizing that this is only a first victory which has straightened him up.
Passion concentrates on Grainger's unusual relationship with his mother and his sexual peculiarities (especially his obsessive self-flagellation, though homosexuality is also hinted at) which affect his relationship with a woman who comes to love him. It is set mainly in London in 1914, when Grainger's mother Rose was ill (she would later jump to her death in New York, upset by ill-founded rumours of incest with her son).
Stifled Ania, trapped in a grimy grocery store, is suffocating under her mother’s toxic control. Salvation arrives via a discarded cauliflower that, unsettlingly, starts talking. At first a witty mentor, the vegetable’s advice soon sours into a grotesque push for revenge. As her rebellion escalates from petty pranks to radical acts, Ania must decide: is this edible oracle her savior or a deranged voice of self destruction? A darkly comic journey where freedom tastes like rot.
Hubert, a brash 17-year-old, is confused and torn by a love-hate relationship with his mother that consumes him more and more each day. After distressing ordeals and tragic episodes, Hubert will find his mother on the banks of Saint Lawrence river, where he grew up, and where a murder will be committed: the murder of childhood.
A rebellious student embarks on an affair with the mother of his best friend, leading to disastrous consequences.
Overwhelmed and extra-sensitive, Katrine has a hard time coping when her more relaxed boyfriend, Andreas, takes a business trip just days after the birth of their first child. The fussy baby has difficulty breastfeeding, and vulnerable, insecure Katrine feels like a failure. When Katrine’s emotionally withholding mother Lise consents to stay for a few days, the two quickly fall into what are clearly familiar dysfunctional behavior patterns.
The teenage daughter of a Brooklyn beauty-parlor owner blossoms under the influence of her recently-returned show-biz aunt.
A Midwestern housewife supports her large family by entering contests for ad slogans sponsored by consumer product companies, while dealing with abuse from her alcoholic husband. Based on a true story.
A small-time conman has his loyalties torn between his estranged mother and his new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.
When Mona Friedman is cast in a bit part at a small community theater, she transforms from a shy, unassuming housewife into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her marginal role—even if it means waging war against the show’s domineering director.
When Albert Stockwell comes home from work one day he finds a note from his wife of 15 years, Nancy, saying she has gone to see friends. After waiting several days, Albert realizes that his wife is missing. Nancy has met her salvation on the Internet in the form of Louis Farley. Nancy and Louis, both wounded souls, take comfort in one another through e-mail, pictures, and promises of perverse sexual encounters.
Five random strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator in the World Trade Center's North Tower on 9/11. They work together, never giving up hope, to try to escape before the unthinkable happens.
The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations.
After the death of his boss's wife, a young engineer faces the sudden psychological metamorphosis of his own wife, seemingly possessed by the soul of the deceased...
Louise, who has just written a novel, comes to Paris to meet with a potential publisher. While in the city, she stays with her older sister, Martine, who in many ways is the exact opposite of Louise: she lives in a fashionable neighborhood, is cold to others, and has snobby friends, while Louise lives in a small town and is thoroughly unpretentious. Louise's apparent happiness -- and similarities to their mother -- gradually gets on Martine's nerves.
A writer's young assistant becomes both pawn and catalyst in his boss's disintegrating household.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.
A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.
Poker addict Mike McDermott knows the game inside out, but loses his money one night in a game to Russian-American gangster Teddy KGB. Promising his partner Jo he'll give up, he meets up with best friend Lester 'Worm' Murphy, just out of prison and owing lots of money to the wrong kind of people. McDermott becomes his co-guarantor and now there's only one way to raise the money, the pair have to get back into the game.
A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.
Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent student at M.I.T. who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 tuition as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor to a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa to count cards at blackjack.
Amid the glittering casinos of Macau, a gambler running from his past—and his debts—becomes fascinated by an enigmatic woman at the baccarat table.
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.
A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.
Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.
A guy gets more than he bargained for after entering into an affair with the wife of an investment banker. Soon, a suspicious death and substantial life insurance policy embroil him in a scandal.
Slevin is mistakenly put in the middle of a personal war between the city’s biggest criminal bosses. Under constant watch, Slevin must try not to get killed by an infamous assassin and come up with an idea of how to get out of his current dilemma.
Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.
A gambler’s bet spiraling into chaos, a gangster's prophetic visions, a pop star’s dark entanglement, a doctor’s desperate race against time to rescue his beloved... Four interconnected stories reveal life unfolding through four emotional pillars — joy, passion, grief, and love.