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In the tradition of films like NORMA RAE and ERIN BROCKOVICH, this film follows one courageous woman as she stands up to injustice. Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron, MONSTER) has just left her abusive husband. She has taken her two kids Karen (Elle Peterson, film debut) and Sammy (Thomas Curtis, THE CHUMSCRUBBER) and moved back in with her parents — Hank (Richard Jenkins, FLIRTING WITH DISASTER) and Alice (Sissy Spacek, THREE WOMEN). She works at a low-paying job at a hair salon until her old friend Glory (Frances McDormand, FARGO) suggests that she get a job up at the mine where she works.

With the prospect of making enough to get a house for her kids, she takes the job, despite the anger of her mine veteran father, who refuses to speak to her there after. For the meantime, Josey and her kids move in with Glory and her husband Kyle (Sean Bean, FLIGHTPLAN), who try to set her up with local sports hero turned lawyer Bill White (Woody Harrelson, NATURAL BORN KILLERS). From day one, Josey experiences mild to overt sexual harassment from many of the male workers, especially Bobby Sharp (Jeremy Renner, DAHMER), who was Josey’s boyfriend in high school and is rumored to be the father of Sammy.

This hyperlink film where various characters’ lives intersect is composed of nine vignettes about nine different women. For all intents and purposes, it’s a feature film comprised of nine short stories. Some are more powerful than others, but as a whole the film is extremely well written and strangely compelling. The film proves that one well written scene can develop characters more fully than entire films do.

We begin with Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo, BREAD AND ROSES), an inmate in prison, who desperately tries to do her time so she can be reunited with her daughter. Next, pregnant Diana (Robin Wright Penn, FORREST GUMP) runs into an old flame named Damian (Jason Isaacs, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS) in the supermarket. Both are now married, but seeing each other stirs up many old feelings. Next, distraught Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton, JACKIE BROWN) comes home to confront her abusive father. Then, Sonia (Holly Hunter, THE PIANO) brings her boyfriend Martin (Stephen Dillane, THE HOURS) to see her friends’ new apartment and the evening disintegrates into a row over secrets revealed.

The only reason to see this frothy romantic comedy is if you’re a fan of Reese Witherspoon and/or Mark Ruffalo. Even if you’re a fan you still might not like it, but it’s a reason.

At the start, we meet Elizabeth Masterson (Witherspoon, WALK THE LINE), a young, workaholic doctor who has zero social life. On the way home one evening, she is involved in a car accident. Cut to three months later — depressed David Abbott (Ruffalo, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME) sublets Elizabeth’s apartment. Soon enough David begins seeing Elizabeth, who won’t believe that she is dead. In seeking advice on what to do about his apparition problem, David meets psychic bookstore worker Darryl (Jon Heder, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE), who believes Elizabeth is a spirit, but isn’t dead. Because Elizabeth can’t remember much about her life, her and David set out to discover who she is and what happened to her.

Actor/ director Harold Ramis (GROUNDHOG DAY) takes on this dark comedy that mixes film noir crime with black humor.

Charlie Arglist (John Cusack, SAY ANYTHING…) is a mob lawyer who has been skimming money for years with the help of mobster Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton, BAD SANTA). It's Christmas Eve and they have taken the millions and are ready to leave Wichita behind. Charlie visits a strip club where the beautiful owner Renata (Connie Nielsen, GLADIATOR) taunts Charlie with her sexuality. She says if he wasn't such a nice guy maybe they could be together.

Charlie is a nice guy to the strippers and to his best friend Pete Van Heuten (Oliver Platt, DIGGSTOWN), who happens to be married to Charlie's ex-wife. Charlie is nice in comparison to the people around him. Vic is violent and uncaring while Pete is an obnoxious drunk, who berates his in-laws at a family dinner. However, Charlie isn't the greatest father in the world. Just remember the Christmas gifts he gets for his kids. Charlie's desire to get out of Wichita quickens when mob hitman Roy (Mike Starr, JERSEY GIRL) starts asking about him and Vic around town.

Kyle (Jodie Foster, PANIC ROOM) is an airplane engine engineer who is distraught over the recent death of her husband. She and her daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston, film debut) are taking the maiden voyage of a new double-decker plane Kyle worked on. Kyle and Julia go to sleep and when Kyle wakes up her daughter is missing.

After searching the entire plane, she enlists flight attendants Stephanie (Kate Beahan, CHOPPER) and Fiona (Erika Christensen, TRAFFIC) to help her search again, but Julia does not turn up. Then the flight attendants inform Kyle that her daughter does not appear on their passenger logs and that no one ever remembers seeing her on the plane, including air marshal Carson (Peter Sarsgaard, GARDEN STATE). Kyle demands to see Captain Rich (Sean Bean, THE ISLAND), who placates the distraught Kyle by having the entire plane searched. Tensions build and it is unsure whether Kyle is insane or telling the truth about her missing daughter.

This haunting theatrical-directing debut from Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones (THE FUGITIVE) is a modern Western that works like parable. In a simple definition the film is a revenge saga, but poetic in its instrument for revenge.

Pete Perkins (Jones) owns a small cattle ranch in Texas and hires illegal Mexican immigrant Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo, 2004's THE ALAMO) as a cowboy. Over the years, the two become the best of friends. Pete makes Melquiades a promise that if the Mexican dies in the U.S. that Pete will take his body back to his family in a tiny town in Mexico. Pete is distraught when Melquiades is found dead in the desert, shot in the chest.

The beginning of the film intercuts between the current investigation into Melquiades' death and the events that led up to his murder. The sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yoakam, SLING BLADE) is not interested in finding the killer of an illegal immigrant. It turns out that hotheaded, rookie border patrol officer Mike Norton (Barry Pepper, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) shot Melquiades, mistaking the Mexican's shots at a fox as shots at the officer. He beats Mexicans trying to cross the border and treats his wife Lou Ann (January Jones, AMERICAN WEDDING) like an object. The characters' lives cross throughout the film, including the lonely waitress Rachel (Melissa Leo, 21 GRAMS), a blind old man (Levon Helm, THE RIGHT STUFF) and a medicine woman named Rosa (Cecilia Suarez, SPANGLISH).

This South African film earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film in 2005. It never received a theatrical release in the U.S., debuting on HBO in November 2005. In a quiet unforced way, the film brings the tragic and devastating nature of the AIDS crisis in Africa to a personal human level. The film exposes the continent’s lack of basic health care, the plague of ignorance and superstition over the disease and the social stigmas that it brings.

Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo, SARAFINA!) lives in a small village and has to walk two hours to see a doctor, who comes to a clinic one day a week. She is virtually raising her young daughter Beauty (Lihle Mvelase, film debut) by herself, because her husband (Kenneth Khambula, I DREAMED OF AFRICA) works in Johannesburg and only comes home to visit on special occasions.

One of the seven Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “road” pictures — this installment has the comic duo heading off to Alaska with a map to a goldmine. At first Chester (Hope) doesn’t want to have anything to do with the get-rich-quick scheme Duke (Crosby) has cooked up. But Chester gets conned into it anyway.

On the ship to Alaska they snatch a map to a goldmine from Sperry (Robert Barrat, ROAD TO RIO) and McGurk (Nestor Paiva, MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE), who murdered the father of Sal Van Hoyden (Dorothy Lamour, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH) to get the map. In Alaska, Duke and Chester pose as Sperry and McGurk and Sal poses as a dance hall girl at the saloon of shady Ace Larson (Douglass Dumbrille, SON OF PALEFACE), who has plans to get the mine for himself.

Let’s not hide the fact that the film is written in iambic pentameter — the verse of Shakespeare. This detail seems to be the central problem for some of the film’s critics and I can completely understand why. It’s off-putting at first, but grows on you if you allow it to.

Joan Allen (THE CONTENDER) plays the lead named simply She. She discovers that her husband Anthony (Sam Neill, DEAD CALM) is cheating on her. At a dinner party, She meets a Lebanese chef named simply He (Simon Abkarian, ARARAT). She and He strike up a passionate affair, but soon their differences begin to pull them apart.

She is a rich Irish-American agnostic, who does research on stem cells. He is a poor chef, who was a surgeon in Beirut before he was virtually forced to move to London. He is religious and proud. But She is proud too and in that similarity they clash. Narrating the story is She’s maid known as Cleaner (Shirley Henderson, INTERMISSION), who tells us that dirt can never really be gotten rid of because we humans are always producing more of it. W