Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) was once a promising graduate of Boston College Law School and a lawyer at an elite Boston law firm. But he was framed for jury tampering some years back by the firm's senior partner because he was going to expose their corrupt practices. Although he retains his license to practice law, Frank has become an alcoholic ambulance chaser who has had only four cases over the last three years, all of which he has lost.
Ben Sanderson (Cage) is a Hollywood screenwriter whose alcoholism costs him his job, family, and friends. With nothing left to live for, he moves to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. As he drives drunkenly down the Las Vegas Strip, he nearly hits a woman, Sera (Shue), on the crosswalk. Sera chastises him and walks away. Sera is a prostitute working for an abusive pimp, Yuri Butso (Julian Sands), a Latvian immigrant. Polish mobsters are after Yuri, so he breaks his relationship with Sera in fear that the Poles may hurt her. Yuri is murdered (off-screen) shortly afterwards.
Boozy Arthur Bach (Russell Brand) and his chauffeur, Bitterman (Luis Guzmán), dress up in Batman and Robin costumes for a formal dinner hosted by Arthur's mother, Vivienne (Geraldine James). The dinner is intended to announce Arthur as the new chairman of her corporation, Bach Worldwide. Driving to the dinner in a Batmobile, an intoxicated Arthur is chased by police, arrested and released the next day.
In 2002, six-year-old Mason, Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) live with their single mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) in Texas. Mason overhears Olivia arguing with her boyfriend, saying she has no free time. Olivia then moves the family so she can attend the University of Houston, complete her degree, and get a job.
Otis "Bad" Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a 57-year-old alcoholic singer-songwriter who was once a country music star. He now earns a modest living by singing and playing his guitar at one-night stands, in small town bars, in the southwestern United States. Having a history of failed marriages (four that he admitted to, although a reference is made to a fifth he does not discuss) Blake is without a family. He has a son, aged 28, with whom he has not had contact in 24 years. He is mostly on the road performing, staying in cheap motels and traveling in his old '78 Suburban alone. The film opens with his arrival at a bowling alley for a show.
Gary King (Simon Pegg), a middle-aged alcoholic, tracks down his estranged schoolfriends and persuades them to complete "the Golden Mile", a pub crawl encompassing the 12 pubs of their hometown of Newton Haven. The group attempted the crawl as teenagers, but failed to reach the final pub, The World's End.
The story revolves around Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo), a former Mexican Federal. The film opens in Mexico with Machete and his younger partner on a mission to rescue a kidnapped girl (Mayra J. Leal). During the operation, his partner is killed, the kidnapped girl stabs him before being killed herself, and Machete is betrayed by his corrupt Chief to the powerful drug lord, Rogelio Torrez (Steven Seagal), who kills Machete's wife and implies that he will kill his daughter before leaving him for dead.
Zachary "Zach" Hutton is a successful author who has a weakness for alcohol and beautiful women. Zach's mistress walks in on him in the process of cheating on her with her attractive hairdresser, followed by his estranged wife Alex discovering his mistress about to shoot him with his revolver. Following the breakup of those relationships, Zach engages in a long period of binge-drinking and solace-seeking with a string of women. He avoids work, continues to strain relations with his ex-wife and drunkenly attends a formal party dressed in a genie's costume.
Jack Torrance arrives at the mountain isolated Overlook Hotel, 25 miles from the closest town, Sidewinder, Colorado, interviewing for the position of winter caretaker, planning to use the hotel's solitude to write. The hotel, built on the site of a Native American burial ground, becomes snowed-in during the winter; it is closed from October to May. Manager Stuart Ullman warns Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, developed cabin fever and killed his family and himself. In Boulder, Jack's son, Danny Torrance, while brushing his teeth, has a terrifying premonition about the hotel, viewing a cascade of blood emerging from an elevator door, before falling in trance. Jack's wife, Wendy, tells a doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend named Tony, and that Jack has given up drinking because he dislocated Danny's shoulder following a binge.
The film is set in Washington state in 1964 and focuses on Selma Ježková (Björk), a Czech immigrant who has moved to the United States with her son, Gene Ježek (Vladica Kostic). They live a life of poverty as Selma works at a factory with her good friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), whom she nicknames "Cvalda" (which means "chubby" in Czech). She rents a trailer home on the property of town policeman Bill Houston (David Morse) and his wife Linda (Cara Seymour). She is also pursued by the shy but persistent Jeff (Peter Stormare), who also works at the factory.
The film opens during the recording of Jim's An American Prayer and quickly moves to a childhood memory of his family driving along a desert highway in 1949, where a Young Jim sees an elderly native American dying by the roadside. In 1965, Jim arrives in California and is assimilated into the Venice Beach culture. During his film school days studying at UCLA, he meets his future girlfriend Pamela Courson, and has his first encounters with Ray Manzarek, as well as the rest of the people who would go on to form the Doors, Robby Krieger and John Densmore.
Set on the campus of a small New England college, the film focuses on the volatile relationship of associate history professor George and his hard-drinking wife Martha, the daughter of the college president. George and Martha engage in dangerous emotional games with one another. After they return home drunk from a party, Martha reveals she has invited a young married couple, whom she met at the party, for a drink. The guests arrive – Nick, a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches math), and his wife, Honey. As the four drink, Martha and George engage in scathing verbal abuse in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple is first embarrassed and later enmeshed. They stay.
Marty Faranan (Farrell) is a struggling writer in Los Angeles, California who dreams of finishing his screenplay, Seven Psychopaths. Marty's best friend, Billy Bickle (Rockwell), is an unemployed actor who makes a living by kidnapping dogs and collecting the owners' cash rewards for their safe return. His partner-in-crime is Hans Kieslowski (Walken), a religious man with a cancer-stricken wife, Myra. Billy helps Marty with Seven Psychopaths, suggesting he use the "Jack of Diamonds" killer, perpetrator of a recent double murder, as one of the seven "psychopaths" in his script. Marty writes a story for another psychopath, the "Quaker", who stalks his daughter's killer for decades, driving the killer to suicide and ultimately cutting his own throat to follow him to hell.