Uxbal lives in a shabby apartment in Barcelona with his two young children, Ana and Mateo. He is separated from their mother Marambra, a woman suffering from alcoholism and bipolar disorder. Having grown up an orphan, Uxbal has no family other than his brother Tito, who works in the construction business. Uxbal earns a living by procuring work for illegal immigrants and managing a group of Chinese women producing forged designer goods along with the African street vendors who are selling them. He is able to talk to the dead and is sometimes paid to pass on messages from the recently deceased at wakes and funerals. When he is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer leaving him with only a few months to live, his world progressively falls apart.
American Splendor retrace la véritable histoire du scénariste de comics Harvey Pekar. Au début du film, celui-ci mène une existence plutôt morose entre son travail de documentaliste, quelques conversations sur tout et rien avec ses collègues et quelques connaissances, et sa passion pour le jazz, qu'il assouvit en recherchant des pièces rares dans les garage sales (équivalent américain des vide-greniers) ou les magasins d'occasion. C'est ainsi qu'il fait la connaissance du célèbre dessinateur de bande dessinée Robert Crumb, alors inconnu, qui est lui aussi collectionneur. Plusieurs années plus tard, alors que Crumb est devenu célèbre, Harvey lui soumet les story-boards d'un projet de bande dessinée basée sur sa vie, lui proposant d'en assurer le dessin. Crumb accepte, et contre toute attente, cette série intitulée American Splendor relatant une vie simple, banale, obtient un grand succès. Harvey Pekar acquiert ainsi une certaine célébrité aux États-Unis, dont les conséquences sur sa vie quotidienne sont présentées dans le film. En particulier, American Splendor lui permet de rencontrer sa future femme Joyce Brabner, qui écrit elle aussi des comics, et avec qui il va réaliser d'autres histoires autobiographiques, également intégrées en partie dans le film (notamment Our Cancer Year).
Blue-collar mechanic Carter Chambers (Freeman) and billionaire hospital magnate Edward Cole (Nicholson) meet for the first time in the hospital after both have been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Although Edward is reluctant to share a room with Carter, complaining that he "looks half-dead already", they become friends as they undergo their respective treatments.
George Monroe (Kevin Kline), a fabricator of architectural models, is fired from the job he has held for twenty years when he refuses to fall into step with his co-workers and use the computer technology available to them. In a fit of rage at his boss's refusal to let George keep a few of the models that he had built, he destroys all of the models with a spindle from an architectural drawing, keeping only one for himself. As he exits the building, he collapses on the pavement and is rushed to the hospital, where it is revealed he has cancer of such an advanced stage that the doctor feels any treatment would be futile.
Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger) are both searching for deep romantic love. Beginning with Emma's early childhood, Aurora reveals how difficult and caring she can be by nearly climbing into Emma's crib in order to make sure her daughter is breathing—only to be reassured when Emma starts crying (after being woken up). After the death of Aurora's husband and Emma's father Rudyard (A. Brooks), Aurora and Emma develop an extremely close love-hate mother/daughter relationship as Emma grows up.
Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island socialite and heiress with a passion for horses, fast cars, and too much smoking and drinking. She initially ignores severe headaches and brief episodes of dizziness and double vision, but when she uncharacteristically takes a spill while riding, and then tumbles down a flight of stairs, her secretary and best friend Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) insists she see the family doctor, who refers her to a specialist.
In 2012, Notaro was diagnosed with breast cancer before she decided to perform a set of new material at the L.A. comedy club Largo, a performance that made her a viral sensation. This documentary focuses on the year that followed that night. Notaro performs at clubs across the country while dealing with a new relationship with the actress Stephanie Allynne, trying to have a child, and coping with the passing of her mother.
Ann (Sarah Polley) is a hard-working 23-year-old mother with two small daughters, an unemployed husband (Scott Speedman), a mother (Deborah Harry) who sees her life as a failure, and a jailed father whom she has not seen in ten years. Her life changes dramatically when, during a medical checkup following a collapse, she is diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer and told she has only two months to live. Deciding not to tell anyone of her condition, using the cover of anemia, Ann makes a list of things to do before she dies. She decides to change her hair, record birthday messages for the girls for every year until they're 18, and tries to set up her husband with another woman. Feeling a longing to experience a life that was never available to her, she seeks out a man to experience how it feels to be in a sexual relationship with someone other than her husband. Her experiment ends up taking an emotional toll when she meets with a man named Lee, who ends up madly in love with her and is left heartbroken when Ann breaks up. He meets with her one last time and says that he will do anything to make her happy, taking care of her daughters and even finding her husband a job. She ends their relationship and never tells him that she is dying. At the end of the film Ann records a message to her husband telling him that she loves him and another one to Lee telling him the same. She then leaves all tapes she has recorded with her doctor asking him to deliver them after her death.
The film begins with Geoffrey Griffin (Peter Falk) in the midst of a camping trip with his estranged wife Jean Griffin (Dorothy Tristan) and children Randy (Randy Faustino) and Bob (Stephen Rogers) at Yosemite National Park. His children and especially his wife are bored with the trip and uninterested in any family togetherness, despite his insistence. As the family is traveling back home, Griffin is driving the car while his wife and kids are being hauled in the camper behind him. He has a flashback to a doctor's visit where he is told that he has an inoperable form of terminal melanoma and will soon die, which is assumed to have been the motivating factor behind his initiative to take the trip, which his family had talked about doing before he and his wife separated. After becoming increasingly frustrated at his family's apathy about the trip, their reviling attitude toward him, and their trivial demands such as that he stop to walk the dog, he detaches his car from the camper and drives away, deserting them.
Popular and rebellious teenager Landon Carter (Shane West) is threatened with expulsion from school after he and his friends leave evidence of underage drinking on the school grounds and seriously injure another student as the result of a prank gone wrong. The head of the school gives Landon the choice of being expelled or atoning for his actions by tutoring fellow students and participating in the school play. During these functions, Landon notices Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), a girl he has known since kindergarten and who has attended many of the same classes as him, and who is also the local minister's daughter. Since he's one of the in-crowd, he has seldom paid any attention to Jamie, who wears modest dresses all the time and owns only one sweater. She makes no attempt to wear make-up or otherwise improve her looks or attract attention to herself.
Conceived by means of in vitro fertilization, Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) was brought into the world as a savior sister at the informal suggestion of Kate's doctor, Dr. Chance (David Thornton) (a formal suggestion from the doctor would have been a violation of legal and medical ethics). As a genetic match for her older sister, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who suffers from acute promyelocytic leukemia, to donate compatible organs, blood and tissue in order to keep her sister alive. Her family members are introduced one by one, and each tells about how Kate's illness has affected them personally. When Kate turns 15, she goes into renal failure. Eleven-year-old Anna knows that she will be forced by her parents to donate one of her kidneys. She also realizes that she may not be able to live the life she will want to lead - she may be unable to cheerlead, play soccer, or be a mother. Anna tells her parents that she does not want any of this and proceeds to sue them for medical emancipation and the rights to her own body. Her domineering mother, Sara (Cameron Diaz), who leads an obsessive campaign to keep Kate alive, is indignant at Anna's decision when she receives the notice of court proceedings. Attorney Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) agrees to work for Anna as her guardian ad litem, suing for partial termination of parental rights. It is later learned he agreed to take the case not for the notoriety, but because he suffers from epilepsy, and is genuinely sympathetic to her predicament.
After celebrating his 29th and - as everyone including himself knows - last birthday, James, a young man terminally ill with cancer, sets out on a last hiking trip with his three best friends, Davy, Bill and Miles. Their destination is James's favourite beach at Barafundle Bay, on the Pembrokeshire coast.
The Flemish boys Lars, Philip and Jozef are somewhere between 20 and 30 years of age and each has a physical handicap. Jozef is almost blind and needs to use a magnifier. Philip suffers from paraplegia. He can only move his head and can use one hand which gives him the strength to control his automated wheelchair. Lars has an incurable brain tumor a side effect of which is that he is restricted to a wheelchair as a result of his increasing paralysis. The three are good friends and visit each other frequently.