Addiction

Camille's life as a lonely suburban teenager changes dramatically when she befriends a group of girl skateboarders. As she journeys deeper into this raw New York City subculture, she begins to understand the true meaning of friendship as well as her inner self.

In 1967, Susanna Kaysen had a headache and chased a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. This landed her in the mental institution, Claymoore. Here she is diagnosed, by Dr. Melvin Potts, with borderline personality disorder. When she arrives at Claymoore, she is greeted by Nurse Valerie Owens and shown round the woman's ward. Here she meets Georgina Tuskin, a pathological liar who is fixated with The Wizard of Oz; Polly Clark, a childlike schizophrenic; Janet Webber, a sardonic anorexic patient; Daisy Randone, a girl who won't let anyone in her room, and only eats her father's chicken; and Lisa Rowe, a sociopath who controls the other patients, and makes lives hard for the nurses at Claymoore. Through the movie, Lisa gains and loses control over Susanna and we see how bad she really can be. The movie's ending shows Susanna being released from Claymoore after an 18-month stay. How does Susanna take back her control? This movie battles subjects such as mental heath, abuse, self-harm and suicide.

Years ago, the fiercely independent Lee took off for Ohio, while her older sister Bessie stayed home to look after their bedridden father, Marvin. Lee has troubles of her own, including her mischievous son Hank, who has a knack for burning down the neighborhood when she's not looking. Seventeen years since her last visit, and after an unexpected call from Bessie, Lee's packs up Hank and his younger brother Charlie for the trip home.

At the edge of adolescence, Tracy is a smart straight-A student--if not a little naive (it seems...she smokes and she cuts to alleviate the emotional pain she suffers from having a broken home and hating her mom's boyfriend, Brady.) When she befriends Evie, the most popular and beautiful girl in school, Evie leads Tracy down a path of sex, drugs and petty crime (like stealing money from purses and from stores). As Tracy transforms herself and her identity, her world becomes a boiling, emotional cauldron fueled by new tensions between her and her mother--as well as, teachers and old friends.

Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mock-up of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria. He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counselling him. His second daughter, Ariel, is disabled. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.

Sherry Swanson returns home to New Jersey after serving a three year prison sentence. Eager to reestablish a relationship with her young daughter, Sherry soon discovers that coming back to the world she left behind is far more difficult than she had planned.

A gay teenage prostitute and another teen, both from the same small town in Kansas, narrate separate stories from their childhoods. The prostitute's story is about a disturbing homosexual encounter with his pedophile baseball coach, and the other teen's story revolves around an amnesia blackout during which he thinks he may have been abducted by aliens. Later, the second teen finds clues linking the gay prostitute (now living in New York City) to his possible alien abduction, so he tracks him down to finally seek out the truth.

Disturbing, dark, low-budget independent film about teen-agers in New York City. The story focuses on Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a teen who has a goal to de-flower as many virgins as he can. When one of his old encounters discovers that she is H.I.V.-positive, after only one encounter with a guy, Telly remains undaunted.

Twenty-eight year olds Jon and Vince, friends from high school, meet in Vince's seedy motel room in Lansing, Michigan. Jon had invited Vince to town from his current residence of Oakland to help celebrate the fact of his latest movie, independently shot, having a screening at the local film festival the following day, the first public screening of one of his movies. While Jon seems to have grown up in having this career path and a nice room in an upscale hotel provided by the festival, Vince, who, in preparing for the evening has already had a few beer by the time Jon arrives, hasn't, he who deals drugs for a living with no change on the horizon, and his girlfriend, who was supposed to accompany him to Lansing, having broken up with him, indirectly because of his immaturity. This divergence quickly becomes an issue of contention between the two. But as Vince's behavior is seemingly more and more substance affected, he having broken out the weed and coke, his intention with Jon may be clearer than it appears on the surface, it having to do with an issue from high school which always seems to emerge in some respect every time they meet. That issue begins to hit home for Jon with a specific action by Vince. But everything may take a turn onto its head with the arrival onto the scene of a third - Amy - also a friend from high school involved in that issue ten years ago, she, now an Assistant D.A. in Lansing, who Vince had invited without Jon's knowledge and who Jon has not seen since high school.

As a detached kid spends time in juvenile hall for the unspeakable murder of a special needs kid, a writer and the people around him try to comprehend and cope with his reasoning for commiting this murder from the writings in a classroom book from his juvenile class, where he tries to let people know "the why".

Adult film director Jack Horner is always on the lookout for new talent and it's only by chance that he meets Eddie Adams who is working as a busboy in a restaurant. Eddie is young, good looking and plenty of libido to spare. Using the screen name Dirk Diggler, he quickly rises to the top of his industry winning awards year after year. Drugs and ego however come between Dirk and those around him and he soon finds that fame is fleeting.

Lyle Jensen is subject to sudden and violent outbursts, and he is committed to the juvenile wing of the Northwood Mental Institution. Several other youths are there with a variety of serious problems. Lyle interacts with other patients and staff on a human, and sometimes not so human level. The psychological problems of the patients also forms the fabric by which we see what's right with them, and what's wrong with the society that affects them.

A group of drug users in the 1970's help finance their habit by robbing drug stores. Matt Dillon's character is very superstitious and eventually his luck runs out.

Set in 1950s Montana, "Wildlife" shows and tells the drama and angst that a teenage boy, Joe, goes through, witnessing both his parents split up in his presence. His father, Jerry, loses his job. And though he was offered his job back, he refuses to take it back because he "won't work for those kind of people anymore". So instead, he takes a job fighting a forest fire, which his wife, Jeanette, is dead set against, both for safety reasons, and because she's convinced that he will be unfaithful while away. But he leaves anyway. And yet, without anything happening to him, or any evidence of hanky-panky on his part, she acts the way one would expect her to act had he perished in the fire, or if she had found out that he had been unfaithful while away. This fact causes Joe to acquire uneasy feelings toward his mother. His father does return however. But the three are no happier for it, as Jeanette has taken up with a new significant other in her life. And Jerry reacts furiously against this. The parents wind up separating as she moves to take up a teaching job in Oregon, while Joe continues to live with his father. And then, she suddenly announces that she's taking the bus to visit over the weekend. Perhaps in an odd way, this movie combines both a satisfactory and unsatisfactory ending.

What's Eating Gibert Grape is a beautifully shot movie of tenderness, caring and self-awareness that is set amongst the fictional working class one street town Endora. Centred around the Grape family Ellen and Amy and their two brothers Arnie and Gilbert, who, along with their morbidly obese widowed mother Bonnie Grape are striving to survive and coexist with the absence of a father figure, low wage work and seventeen-year-old Arnie's severe mental condition. It is in this awkward and extremely one sided affair that the unfortunate Gilbert has to constantly, while working for the town's slowly dying convenience store, take care of his younger brother Arnie. Gilbert's life, his future, is thwarted he knows this, but it is in this guardian angel that his love and bond for Arnie cannot, and will not, be let go. That is until the free spirit of Becky arrives in town, and with her grandmother are stranded for the week while waiting for parts for their vehicle. This realization unties new feelings, new thoughts and new hope for the put upon Gibert, something new is eating Gilbert Grape.

Shy, sensitive April is the class virgin, torn between an illicit flirtation with her soccer coach Mr. B and an unrequited crush on sweet stoner Teddy. Emily, meanwhile, offers sexual favors to every boy to cross her path - including both Teddy and his best friend Fred, a life wire without filters or boundaries. As one high school party bleeds into the next - and April and Teddy struggle to admit their mutual affection - Fred's escalating recklessness starts to spiral into chaos.

24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize men about to die: both are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad. Earl Partridge's son is a charismatic misogynist; Jimmy Gator's daughter is a cokehead and waif. A mild and caring nurse intercedes for Earl, reaching the son; a prayerful and upright beat cop meets the daughter, is attracted to her, and leads her toward a new calm. Meanwhile, guilt consumes Earl's young wife, while two whiz kids, one grown and a loser and the other young and pressured, face their situations. The weather, too, is quirky.

In the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino is forced into the worst year of her life. Her best friend, Rachel Bruin, has turned against her with all other of Melinda's fellow students looking away; not daring to take a single glance at Melinda. All because of one stupid end-of-summer party.