Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble.
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him.
Amidst her own personality crisis, a southern housewife meets an outgoing old woman who tells her the story of Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison, two young women who experienced hardships and love in 1920s Whistle Stop, Alabama.
Hell's Kitchen, New York. Terry Noonan returns home after a ten-year absence. He soon reconnects with Jackie, a childhood friend and member of the Irish mob, and rekindles his love affair with Jackie's sister Kathleen.
Freddy Heflin is the sheriff of a place everyone calls “Cop Land” — a small and seemingly peaceful town populated by the big city police officers he’s long admired.
A young man desperately in love with a nightclub singer sees an opportunity to spend some time alone with her when they're traveling through the Nevada gold country, and he takes the carburetor off her car and throws it in the river, stranding them there.
After Fred von Bergen, a German immigrant in America, is forced from his job by anti-German hysteria before the first world war, he and his friend Bob Wilson leave America and join the German air force.
A north-country chimney sweep standing for Parliament is opposed by a local bigwig. His campaign is imperiled when his artist son, Tony, falls in love with a girl who has reason to hope that the bigwig will be elected.