Goldcrest Films is a British film production company founded by Jake Eberts in January 1977. It enjoyed great success in the 1980s with films such as Local Hero (1983), The Killing Fields (1984) and Hope and Glory (1987) mostly produced by David Puttnam on modest budgets. The company also benefited from the new investment of Channel 4 in film production. The company won two Academy Awards for Best Picture, for Chariots of Fire in 1981 and Gandhi in 1982. After these initial successes the company backed more expensive productions with established Hollywood stars that often ran over schedule and budget culminating in Revolution, The Mission (1986) and Absolute Beginners that all turned out to be box office flops.
Henry est un tueur à gages à la retraite. Recherché, il mène aujourd'hui une vie solitaire au bord d'un lac au Nord des États-Unis. Un jour, il recueille dans son chalet une jeune femme ayant subi un grave accident de motoneige. Il va ensuite découvrir qu'elle est elle aussi recherchée. Celui qui a jadis appris à tuer va devoir apprendre à protéger quelqu'un.
Abe (Jordan Gelber), a man in his thirties who suffers from arrested development, meets suicidal Miranda (Selma Blair) who recently moved back home after a failed literary/academic career and a divorce. While waiting outside Miranda's house for their first date Marie (his secretary) runs up and tells him to give up the girl, he has no shot but then he wakes with a start revealing it was a dream.
The film begins in September 2008 (opening against the backdrop of news of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing) with an elderly Lady Thatcher buying milk unrecognized by other customers and walking back from the shop alone. Over the course of three days, we see her struggle with dementia and with the lack of power that comes with old age, while looking back on defining moments of her personal and professional life, on which she reminisces with her (now-dead) husband, Denis Thatcher, whose death she is unable to fully accept. She is shown as having difficulty distinguishing between the past and present. A theme throughout the film is the personal price that Thatcher has paid for power. Denis is portrayed as somewhat ambivalent about his wife's rise to power, her son Mark lives in South Africa and is shown as having little contact with his mother, and Thatcher's relationship with her daughter Carol is at times strained.
Anna (Emily Browning) has been in a psychiatric institution for ten months, following her suicide attempt after her terminally ill mother died in a boathouse fire. Upon her discharge, she has no memory of the event but frequently suffers related nightmares. While packing, Anna is startled by a disturbing, talkative patient from the room across the hall. Shortly after, she leaves with her father, Steven (David Strathairn), a writer who has dedicated his latest book to Anna and her sister.
Cass is based on the true story of the life of Cass Pennant, adapted from his book. The film tells of how he was adopted by an elderly white couple in 1958 and brought up in Slade Green, an all-white area of London. Cass is forced to endure racist bullying on a daily basis from local children, who also ridicule his feminine sounding name, "Carol", a name give to him by his Jamaican biological parents. Cass adopts his new nickname after the boxer Cassius Clay. His adoptive father starts taking him to see West Ham United on a regular basis, and he becomes involved in hooliganism aged 14 after helping the Inter City Firm, the West Ham hooligan firm, fight Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters in 1972.
In 1955, Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) meets April (Kate Winslet) at a party. He is a longshoreman, hoping to be a cashier; she wants to be an actress. Frank later secures a sales position with Knox Machines, for which his father worked for twenty years, and he and April marry. The Wheelers move to 115 Revolutionary Road in suburban Connecticut when April becomes pregnant.
Groomed by her overly ambitious mother, Anabelle is on the road to winning the Miss Texas Rose title when she dies tragically due to an eating disorder after being crowned on stage. Her death lands her on the embalming table of Elvis Moreau, an embittered young man whose sense of family duty and love for his ailing father keep him from following his dreams. When Anabelle is miraculously resurrected on Elvis' embalming table, the two unexpectedly connect and sparks fly. With the help of each other and Elvis' father, they discover love, freedom and happiness as the real world and their own demons threaten to force them apart.
Iris (Collette) is a subservient young professional who doesn't want to rock the boat at the office where she temps. Margaret (Posey) is the polar opposite, and serves as a catalyst to help Iris become more assertive. Paula (Kudrow) eagerly awaits post-work happy hours and the chance to form relationships with the company's executives. Jane (Ubach) is engaged to marry a jerk who is already cheating on her. Margaret hopes to become a permanent employee as an assistant to Mr. Lasky (Bob Balaban) but her dreams are thwarted when he suddenly dies.
Chanticleer is a rooster, whose job is to wake the sun up every morning, but the Grand Duke of Owls, who hates sunshine sabotages him to make it look like the sun comes up on its own without Chanticleer's crow. Detested by the farm animals, he leaves the farm to look for work in the city. Afterward, perpetual darkness and rainfall threaten the farm with flooding. Turning out to be a story read to a young human boy named Edmond, it seems that the flooding has found his family and when his mother goes to help them stop it, he calls out to Chanticleer and is heard by the Grand Duke himself who takes a dislike to Edmond's attempts to foil his plans. He turns him into a kitten to devour him, but he is saved at the last second by Pattou, a bloodhound from Chanticleer's farm. He is accompanied by Snipes, a claustrophobic magpie, and Peepers, an intellectual field mouse, as well as several animals from the farm hoping to find Chanticleer and apologize to him for their behavior. Edmond accompanies Pattou, Snipes and Peepers to the city while the rest of the animals remain at Edmond's house. En route, they are attacked by Hunch; the Duke's diminutive nephew, assigned by him to stop Edmond and the others from finding Chanticleer. They narrowly escape and enter the city.
Rosanna Arquette stars as Martha Travis, a medium who hosts a touring clairvoyant show with her alcoholic father Walter (Jason Robards) where she helps members of the audience make contact with deceased relatives. At one meeting, she foretells the violent death of a local factory employee (Olek Krupa), a whistleblower who was set to reveal corporate malpractice at the plant, and soon becomes the target of the killer herself. At a subsequent meeting in the town, she appears to identify several other individuals who are set to die or be killed. A sceptical local journalist investigating the death, Gary Wallace (Tom Hulce), begins following the couple and the story. The story is told in flashback, with the opening scenes showing Wallace searching for the reclusive Martha many years after the events depicted in the main body of the film.
In 1939 New Orleans, a roguish German Shepherd named Charlie B. Barkin escapes from a dog pound with the help of his friend, a dachshund named Itchy Itchiford. They return to a casino riverboat on the bayou, which is formerly run by Charlie with his partner, a bulldog named Carface Caruthers. Not wanting to share the profits with Charlie, Carface persuades him to leave town with 50% of the casino's earnings. Charlie agrees, but is later intoxicated and murdered by Carface. He is sent to Heaven where a whippet angel named Annabelle (who was named in the sequel) tells him that a gold watch representing his life has stopped. He steals and winds it, sending Charlie back to Earth, but is told that if he dies again, he will go to Hell. After reuniting with Itchy, they discover that Carface is holding an orphan girl named Anne-Marie (presumably kidnapped from the orphanage by Carface), who has the ability to talk to animals and gain knowledge of a race's results beforehand, allowing Carface to rig the odds on the rat races and become rich. They rescue her, intending to use her abilities to get revenge on Carface, though Charlie tells her that they plan to give their winnings to the poor and help her find parents.
Beginning just before the start of the Second World War, the film tells the story of the Rowan family: Bill, his sisters Sue and Dawn, and his parents Grace and Clive, living in a suburb of London. After the war starts, Clive joins the army, leaving Grace alone to watch over the children.
With much of the rest of the world at war, a number of bored British aristocrats live dissolute and hedonistic lives in a region of British Kenya known as Happy Valley, drinking, drugging and indulging in decadent sexual affairs to pass the time.