American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy

Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

Based on the true story of would-be Brooklyn bank robbers John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile. Sonny and Sal attempt a bank heist which quickly turns sour and escalates into a hostage situation and stand-off with the police. As Sonny's motives for the robbery are slowly revealed and things become more complicated, the heist turns into a media circus.

Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.

In the sleepy town of Centerville, the lives of a number of interconnected characters are disrupted by the undead.

A suicidally disillusioned liberal politician puts a contract out on himself and takes the opportunity to be bluntly honest with his voters by affecting the rhythms and speech of hip-hop music and culture.

The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.

Suburbanite Ron is spoiled, young and not overly worried about the marijuana charges leveled against him. But, after being made out to be a drug dealer, he faces a five-year jail sentence in San Quentin State Prison. Physically frail and unaccustomed to his rough surroundings, Ron is primed to fall victim to sexual predators and bullying guards – that is, until he's befriended by Earl, a veteran inmate who finds meaning in protecting the vulnerable new kid.

New York layabout Willie forms an unexpected bond with his young Hungarian cousin Eva when she pays him a surprise visit. Later, Eva moves in with their aunt in Cleveland, and Willie takes his best friend Eddie to see her—a visit that culminates in a strange, eventful trip to Florida.

A foster family in South Central a few weeks before the city erupts in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992.

Music From Another Room is a romantic comedy that follows the exploits of Danny, a young man who grew up believing he was destined to marry the girl he helped deliver as a five year old boy when his neighbor went into emergency labor. Twenty-five years later, Danny returns to his hometown and finds the irresistible Anna Swann but she finds it easy to resist him since she is already engaged to dreamboat Eric, a very practical match. In pursuit of Anna, Danny finds himself entangled with each of the eccentric Swanns including blind, sheltered Nina, cynical sister Karen, big brother Bill and dramatic mother Grace as he fights to prove that fate should never be messed with and passion should never be practical.

Tommy has lost his job, his love and his life. He lives in a small apartment above the Trees Lounge, a bar which he frequents along with a few other regulars without lives. He gets a job driving an ice cream truck and ends up getting involved with the seventeen-year-old niece of his ex-girlfriend. This gets him into serious trouble with her father.

A Louisiana governor becomes a controversial political kingpin during the Depression.

Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.

Two misfit brothers hustle cash and chase dreams in the desert. When a mysterious woman threatens to repo their beloved houseboat the brothers cook up an epic con to finally leave their dusty town and sail off on a beam of sunshine to California.

The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.

Alice ends up in the derelict houses of Coney Island and Times Square. She sinks into a wonderland of decadence and despair, into the no-mans-land of lost souls, charlatans, broken dreams and cheap perversions.

30-minute short subject film that would become Stranger Than Paradise. This short was released as a standalone film in 1982, and shown as "Stranger Than Paradise" at the 1983 International Film Festival Rotterdam. When it was later expanded into a three-act feature, that name was appropriated for the feature itself, and the initial segment was renamed "The New World".

Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.

In the words of Robert Frank, Hunter is about “. . . a man whose destiny is not to find a destination. . . . A man who fears that he will never find what his imagination compels him to look for, a mystical traveler going by train and by car through . . . language and landscape.” The film was shot entirely on location in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region in September/October 1989.

A botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse. Crime begets violence as the survivors -- veteran Mr. White, newcomer Mr. Orange, psychopathic parolee Mr. Blonde, bickering weasel Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie -- unravel.

In order to foil a terrorist plot, an FBI agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and assumes the identity of a criminal mastermind. The plan turns sour when the criminal wakes up prematurely and seeks revenge.

When a man claiming to be long-lost Uncle Fester reappears after 25 years lost, the family plans a celebration to wake the dead. But the kids barely have time to warm up the electric chair before Morticia begins to suspect Fester is fraud when he can't recall any of the details of Fester's life.

A thief with a unique code of professional ethics is double-crossed by his crew and left for dead. Assuming a new disguise and forming an unlikely alliance with a woman on the inside, he looks to hijack the score of the crew's latest heist.

Disillusioned with romance, Beth, an ambitious New Yorker, travels to Rome for her sister's wedding, where she plucks magic coins from a special fountain of love. The coins attract unwanted attention from an assortment of odd yet ardent suitors: a sausage merchant, a street magician, an artist, and a male model. But when the best man from the wedding, persistent reporter Nick, throws his hat in the ring, Beth wonders if his love is the real thing.

A high school girl encounters a variety of kookie characters and humorous sexual situations while searching for the meaning of life.

Brantley Foster, a well-educated kid from Kansas, has always dreamed of making it big in New York City, but once there, he learns that jobs - and girls - are hard to get. When he visits his uncle, Howard Prescott, who runs a multi-million-dollar company, he is given a job in the mail room.

With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.

Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."

Set in the year 2005, a division of the FBI, called "NetForce" has been initiated to investigate Internet crime. A Bill Gates-type character finds a loophole in his new web browser which enables him to gain control of the Internet. Net-Force, headed by Kristofferson and Bakula's characters set out to stop him.

In 1910, John Flinders is warden of Red Rock Territorial Prison, in Arizona. When a condemned man's last request brings Flinders into contact with the man's widow, Flinders finds himself falling in love. Meanwhile, a new convict, Mike Sullivan, turns out to be an old friend of Flinders'. They talk over old times, but it's clear that Sullivan has plans to leave the prison before his time is up. When those plans come to pass, Flinders sets out to re-take his old pal.

A waitress, a barman and an underwear designer try to rob a New York restaurant where two of them work.

Once the centre of the New York bohemia, Greenwich Village is now home to lux restaurants, and buzzer door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche. But one shop in the heart of the Village remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars. There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. Nothing looks or sounds quite like a Rick Kelly guitar, which is the reason they are embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, just to name a few. Featuring a cast of prominent musicians and artists, the film captures five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars, while examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life.