On a hot day in a highway gas station men's room, a man Michel doesn't recognize says they went to school together. He's Harry. He suggests they have a drink, so he and his girlfriend follow Michel and his family to their summer place. Michel is amazed when Harry quotes from memory a poem Michel wrote in school. Harry thinks Michel is a great writer, and he's distressed that Michel hasn't written in years. Harry stays awhile (since his father's death, he's a man of leisure) and sets out to eliminate distractions that might keep Michel from writing. First he buys Michel a car (with air conditioning) and then suspicious things happen. Michel picks up a pen, Harry is gratified, but he's not finished being Michel's self-appointed patron.

Legendary/notorious Japanese novelist and cultural icon Yukio Mishima makes a rare screen appearance as Takeo, a young yakuza who reluctantly leaves prison to re-enter a dizzying world of kidnappings, attempted assassinations, attacks and retaliations. Torn by family duty, self-preservation, and his desire for his new-found love Yoshie (Ayako Wakao, "Manji" ), Takeo blasts and bluffs his way through this treacherous maze until he finds he can no longer outrun destiny. Japanese New Wave master Yasuzo Masumura propels this delirious, fast paced yakuza satire with a jazzy score, eye-popping visuals, and a trademark sense of the absurd.

Anzukko, the daughter of a successful novelist, lives with her parents in the provinces. She turns down several suitors before marrying Ryokichi a rookie writer. They then settle in Tokyo. Ryokichi persists in wanting to live by his trade despite the constant refusals by publishers. He starts drinking and blaming his wife for his failures. The young couple sinks into despair...

Orin, a blind traveling musician who is expected to remain celebate, is sexually violated and is expelled from her group. An outcast, she ultimately links up with a young man who is opposed to Japanese militarism. Although she is "available" to him, he will not take advantage of her, as he resists a culture where hypocrisy reigns and where women (and men, also) are expected to yield to superior force.

A rich girl, engaged to a well-to-do farmer, ends up penniless and is forced to go to work for her fiancee's relatives. We are in the Po Valley in the mid 1800's. Peasant unrest, carried to extremes by both workers and landowners, leads to violence.

Hayat, her father and bedridden grandfather live in a riverside shack near the dangerously dark but breathtakingly beautiful waters of the Bosphorus. Hayat's father owns a small boat that secures the family's survival through a miscellany of not always lawful ventures. Beyond the motion and romance of the water, Hayat's life is harsh and unrelenting. But Hayat has an instinct for survival. Her capacity for courage, endurance and hope in the face of these trials suggest that there is Life despite the manifold injustices of an unjust world.

In Sidney Lumet's harrowing portrayal of police brutality, Detective Sergeant Johnson has been with the British Police Force for 20 years. In that time, the countless murders, rapes and other serious crimes he has had to investigate has left a terrible mark on him. His anger and aggression that had been suppressed for years finally surfaces when interviewing a suspect, Baxter, whom Johnson is convinced is the man that has been carrying out a series of brutal attacks on young girls. Throughout the interview Johnson brutally beats Baxter and during this ordeal he inadvertently reveals that the state of his own mind is probably no better than that of the offenders who committed the crimes that disgusted Johnson originally.

Frank and Cathy Whittaker are, as far as the outside world can tell, the perfect couple. Young, attractive and well-off, they represent all that middle-class America is supposed to be in the 1950s. Below the surface however, all is not as it seems. Cathy feels unfulfilled and begins to realize that her marriage is not what it should be. When she discovers her husband making love to a man in his office late one evening, she begins to understand why.

The Marx Brothers take on high society. Two lovers who are both in opera are prevented from being together by the man's lack of acceptance as an operatic tenor. Pulling several typical Marx Brothers' stunts, they arrange for the normal tenor to be absent so that the young lover can get his chance.

Yoshii and his family move to a Tokyo suburb, to the same neighborhood as his boos. His two boys are initially terrorized by the school bully, and run truant. Eventually, they beat up and usurp the bully's place, lording it over all the boys, including the boss' son.

George, after getting out of prison, begins looking for a job, but his time in prison has reduced his stature in the criminal underworld. The only job he can find is to be a driver for Simone, a beautiful high-priced call girl, with whom he forms an at first grudging, and then real affection. Only Simone's playing a dangerous game, and when George agrees to help her, they both end up in a huge amount of trouble with Mortwell, the local kingpin.

Mike Leigh’s brilliant and controversial Naked stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming, eloquent, and relentlessly vicious drifter on the lam in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him, the volcanic Johnny hurls himself into a nocturnal odyssey through the city, colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed, and scorching everyone in his path. With a virtuoso script and raw performances from Thewlis and costars Katrin Cartlidge and Lesley Sharpe, Leigh’s panorama of England’s crumbling underbelly is a showcase of black comedy and doomsday prophecy, and was the winner of the best director and actor prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

Lucien Bourrache is a legionnaire who captivates any woman he meets, earning him the nickname of Gueule d’Amour. Then one day he meets and is entranced by a beautiful young woman. At first she appears to reciprocate his feelings but later Lucien fears that she may be playing him along. Is Madeleine really in love with him or is she just a manipulative adventurer?

Can a straight-laced woman find happiness with a scruffy hippie who has a bad habit of getting beaten up? Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) was a prom queen in high school but has become disillusioned with life now that she is a divorcée who has just turned 40. Her marriage ended badly, and her current relationship with her boyfriend Jim (John Cassavetes), who is inconveniently married to another woman, is hardly going any better...

A young man who has left the countryside to come to the city, earns his keep by pulling a little cart around, delivering small items for merchants and others. One day he helps the manager of a textile factory deliver some items to his home, and the wealthier man befriends him because he is from the same part of the countryside as he is. This puts him in a position to observe what happens next, for the manager is caught between his exploitative and cruel boss and the workers in the factory, and his sympathies lie with the workers.