Fisheries expert Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) receives an email from financial adviser Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), seeking advice on a project to bring salmon fishing to the Yemen—a project being bankrolled by a wealthy Yemeni sheikh. Alfred dismisses the project as "fundamentally unfeasible" because Yemen cannot provide the necessary environment for salmon. Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister's press secretary Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas) suggests the salmon fishing story to the Prime Minister's office as a positive story to help improve relations between Britain and the Islamic world.
In 1796 William Wilberforce is severely ill and taking a recuperative holiday in Bath, Somerset, with his cousin, Henry Thornton. It is here that William is introduced to his future wife, Barbara Spooner. Although he initially resists any romantic overtures, she convinces him to relate the story of his career.
After the untimely death of a small-town church choir director (Kris Kristofferson) in Pacashau, Georgia, Vy Rose Hill (Latifah), a no-nonsense mother raising two teens alone, takes control of the choir using the traditional Gospel style that their Pastor Dale (Courtney B. Vance) approves of. However, the director's widow, G. G. Sparrow (Parton), the main benefactor to the church, believes she should have been given the position. As in previous years, the choir reaches the regional finals of the national amateur "Joyful Noise" competition, only to be disappointed when a rival choir beats them. Tough times in the town have led to budget problems that threaten to close down the choir, at the same time as the town needs the choir's inspiring music more than ever.
Chance (Peter Sellers) is a middle-aged man who lives in the townhouse of an old, wealthy man in Washington, D.C. He is simple-minded and has lived there his whole life, tending the garden. Other than gardening, his knowledge is derived entirely from what he sees on television. When his benefactor dies, Chance naively says he has no claim against the estate, and is ordered to move out. Thus he discovers the outside world for the first time.
In Manhattan, cockroaches are spreading the deadly "Strickler's disease" that is claiming hundreds of the city's children. Entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) uses genetic engineering to create what her colleague (and husband) Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) and she call the Judas breed, a large insect (looking like a cross between a termite and a praying mantis) that releases an enzyme that kills off the disease-carrying roaches by speeding up their metabolism. The Judas breed works spectacularly and the crisis is abated. The released population was all-female and designed with a lifespan of only a few months, so that it would only last one generation.
In the small town of Endora, Iowa, Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is busy caring for Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), his brother with a developmental disability, as they wait for the many tourists' trailers to pass through town during their "yearly ritual" of camping at a nearby recreational area. His mother, Bonnie (Darlene Cates), gave up on life after her husband hanged himself seventeen years earlier. She spends almost all of her time on the couch watching TV. With Bonnie unable to care for her children on her own due to her morbid obesity, Gilbert has taken responsibility for repairing the old house and looking after Arnie, who has a habit of climbing the town water tower, while his sisters Amy and Ellen do the rest. The relationship between the brothers is of both care and protection, as Gilbert continually enforces the "nobody touches Arnie" policy. A new FoodLand supermarket has opened, threatening the small Lamson's Grocery where Gilbert works. In addition, Gilbert is having an affair with a married woman, Betty Carver (Mary Steenburgen).
Will Francis (Jude Law), a young Englishman, is a landscape architect living a detached, routine-based life in London with his Swedish-American girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and her autistic daughter Bea. The 13-year-old girl's irregular sleeping and eating habits as well as her unsocial behaviour (she has trouble relating to people and seems only interested in doing somersaults and gymnastics) reach worrying proportions and start to put a lot of strain on Will and Liv's relationship. Complicating the situation further is his feeling of being shut out of their inner circle since Bea is not his biological daughter. He and Liv start relationship counselling, but their drifting apart continues.
A man named Alderson awakens in a cube-shaped room with a hatch in each wall, the ceiling and the floor, each of which leads to other cube-shaped rooms, identical except for their color. He enters an orange room and, without warning, is killed by a trap. In another such room, five people – Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Rennes, and Leaven – meet. None of them knows where they are or how they got there. Quentin informs the others that some rooms contain traps, which he learned by nearly being killed by one. Rennes assumes each trap is triggered by a motion detector and tests each room by throwing one of his boots in first. Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the passageways between rooms. Quentin, a policeman, recognizes Rennes as "the Wren", an escape artist renowned for getting out of jails. After declaring one room trap-free, Rennes enters and is killed when he is sprayed with acid. The others realize that there are different kinds of detectors, and Quentin deduces that this trap was triggered by heat.
Fourteen-year-old Amelia "Milly" Michaelson (Deakins) and her family move into a new suburban home shortly after the death of her father. Milly makes friends with her new neighbor Geneva, and Milly and her eight-year-old brother Louis (Savage) have difficulty adjusting to their new schools, while their mother Charlene (Bedelia) copes with a demotion at work and her inability to learn how to use a computer. Louis is also plagued by bullies down the street who won't let him get around the block.
On the Isle of Wight, just off the South Coast of England, a train accident means that the main hospital is completely full and is unable to take in any more patients. The smaller and older hospital, Mercy Falls which is more isolated, is being closed down however this accident means that some of the patients, including the childrens ward, need to remain at the site until there is availability elsewhere. The hospital has three floors with the children's ward on the first floor. The second floor was closed off twenty years before and is unaccessable due to the elevator buttons being disabled and the stairs blocked off.
Fifteen-year-old Thomas Mollison (Rhys Wakefield) and his family move to a new home in the early 1990s. It begins with Charlie, his autistic brother banging a wooden spoon on the grass with neighbors staring and pointing, then it cuts to the house where there are locks on the drawers and Maggie, their mother, locking star shaped stickers in her bathroom cabinet. Thomas is anxious because he has to start at a new school, and make new friends - all he wants is to do is fit in and be regarded in the same way as everyone else. However, it seems he struggles to achieve this goal. Although his family appears to be a fairly happy one, Thomas often feels isolated; it seems as if his mother only dotes upon his brother, Charlie (Luke Ford), and does not pay any attention to him. Thomas, however, is devoted to his brother and shows affection for him. Charlie is Thomas's older brother who lives with autism, as well as Attention Deficit Disorder. Charlie enjoys dressing up like a monkey, playing computer games using a Commodore 64 and receiving gold stars for good behaviour. Charlie communicates with the rest of his family by using Sign Language.
Simon is an 18-year-old man with Asperger syndrome. Incapable of living independently, he is cared for by his endlessly loving and patient brother, Sam, and Sam's girlfriend, Frida. He lives by an unchanging daily routine and finds any change in his life very stressful. He spends his day working as a groundskeeper in a special program for mentally disabled people, tending athletic fields and roadsides. He imposes routine on his two housemates with a wall chart that allocates chores and schedules leisure. When the world becomes too stressful, Simon seals himself in a large pot and imagines himself floating in space, where everything is perfectly quiet and predictable. These habits cause a lot of tension with his two housemates. One night, Simon interrupts Sam and Frida while they are having sex in order to ask for toilet paper. For Frida, this is the last straw, and the next day she dumps Sam and moves out.
Tim Warden, a boy with autism, has supposedly witnessed his parents' double murder. Jake Rainer, a former child psychiatrist turned therapist, is called on to probe the child's mind in order to solve the case.
Vincent Barteau, un quarantenaire divorcé, est un ex footballeur professionnel désormais entraîneur d'un club de recrutement de jeunes talents du football. En rupture avec sa famille, il avait définitivement claqué la porte de ses parents dès l'âge adulte quand son père avait refusé de le voir embrasser la carrière de footballeur. Sa sœur, personnage compliqué qui court le monde, a abandonné son fils Léonard aux grands-parents, propriétaires d'un château sur une île de la côte atlantique. Alors que Françoise Barteau est à l'hôpital pour subir un pontage, ses deux employés espagnols, Antonio et Lidia se débarrassent de Léonard, de surnom Léo, pour le confier à Vincent, contre son gré, alors que ce dernier se prépare à partir en Chine pour aller y entraîner une équipe de football.
Adam Raki (Dancy) is a young man, who has Asperger syndrome, living alone in Manhattan after his father's recent death. He has a friend, Harlan Keyes (Frankie Faison), an old army friend of his father's, who is always there for him. Because of his condition, Adam has difficulty communicating with others and likes to escape into his love of space exploration. His fixation on detail, repetitive behaviors, and mind-blindness cost him his job at a toy manufacturing company and nearly get him arrested after he is mistaken for a pedophile. He does not want to leave the apartment he and his father had been living in, but the loss of his job leaves him with an uncertain future, including the problem of continuing to pay the mortgage. Although he has Asperger syndrome and likes to stick to his own routine, avoiding socializing with others, Adam is lonely and wishes things could be different.