In 1885, Shostka, Russia, the Mousekewitzes—a Russian-Jewish family of mice—who live with a human family named Moskowitz are having a celebration of Hanukkah where the father gives his hat to his son Fievel and tells of a wonderful place called America, where there are no cats. The celebration is interrupted when a battery of Cossacks ride through the village square in an arson attack and the Cossack cats likewise attack the village mice.
Thirty-seven-year-old Loretta Castorini (Cher), a Sicilian-American widow, is an accountant in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where she lives with her family: her father Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) who is a successful plumber, her mother Rose (Olympia Dukakis), and her paternal grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin, Jr). Her boyfriend, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) proposes to her before leaving for Sicily to attend to his dying mother; she accepts, but is insistent that they carefully follow tradition as she believes her first marriage was cursed by her failure to do so, resulting in her husband's death when he was hit by a bus. They plan to marry one month later, and Johnny asks Loretta to invite his estranged younger brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) to the wedding. Loretta returns home and informs her parents of the engagement. Cosmo dislikes Johnny and is reluctant to commit to paying for the "real" wedding Loretta insists on, while Rose is pleased that Loretta likes Johnny but does not love him; she believes that one can easily be driven crazy by a partner whom one loves.
Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra is the 18-year-old daughter of Punjabi Sikh Indians from Hounslow in west London. Jess is infatuated with football but her parents have forbidden her to play because she is a girl. She plays in the park sometimes with her good friend Tony, and his buddies, where her skills draw the attention of Juliette "Jules" Paxton, who plays for the women's team of the local club, the fictional Hounslow Harriers. Their coach, Joe, is impressed with her play and puts her on the team. Jess pretends to have a job to play with the team and Jules and Jess become best friends, despite the fact that both are attracted to Joe. Jess enlists her sister Pinky to cover for her when the team travels to Germany for a big match, but everything unravels when Jules spies Joe and Jess almost kiss, causing a breach between them, and Jess's parents find out and forbid her to continue. Meanwhile, Jules's mother wrongly thinks Jules is a lesbian and the girls' spat is a lovers' quarrel. Jess's parents are confronted by a similar accusation before Jess reveals the truth about her attraction to Joe. While the elder Bhamras are distracted by the elaborate preparations for Pinky's upcoming wedding, Jess continues to play and the Hounslow Harriers make their way towards the top of the league. Joe encourages Jess to come clean with her parents and eventually approaches Mr. Bhamra to explain she has a chance to win a prestigious scholarship, but Mr. Bhamra refuses to believe it. Jess and Jules must sort their differences, make peace with their parents, and overcome cultural prejudice to win the league championship, and earn scholarships to Santa Clara University in California.
During Prohibition in 1930s, Al Capone (De Niro) has nearly the whole city of Chicago under his control and supplies illegal liquor. Bureau of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Costner) is assigned to stop Capone, but his first attempt at a liquor raid fails due to corrupt policemen tipping Capone off. He has a chance meeting with Irish-American veteran officer Jimmy Malone (Connery), who is fed up with the rampant corruption and offers to help Ness, suggesting that they find a man from the police academy who has not come under Capone's influence. They recruit Italian-American trainee George Stone (Andy García) for his superior marksmanship and intelligence. Joined by accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith), assigned to Ness from Washington, D.C., they conduct a successful raid on a Capone liquor cache and start to gain positive publicity, with the press dubbing them "The Untouchables." Capone later kills the henchman in charge of the cache as a warning to his other men.
The film opens with an Afghan-American writer Amir Qadiri (Khalid Abdalla) and his wife, Soraya (Atossa Leoni), who are watching children flying kites at a bayside park. When they arrive home, Amir finds waiting for him packages of his new novel, A Season for Ashes, which has just been published. Soraya refers to the book as Amir’s “baby,” hinting at the couple’s inability to have a child of their own. Amir then receives an unexpected call from an old friend of his father’s, Rahim Khan (Shaun Toub), who is living in Peshawar, Pakistan.
In 2027, after 18 years of global human infertility, civilization is on the brink of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The United Kingdom, the only stable nation with a functioning government, is deluged by asylum seekers fleeing the chaos and war which have taken hold around the world. In response, Britain has become a militarized police state as British government forces round up and detain immigrants. Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes, a militant immigrants' rights group. They are led by Theo's estranged wife, Julian Taylor, from whom he separated after their son's death.
In 1980, Cuban refugee Antonio "Tony" Montana (Al Pacino) arrives in Miami, where he is sent to a refugee camp with his best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) and their associates Angel (Pepe Serna) and Chi-Chi (Ángel Salazar). The four are released from the camp in exchange for assassinating a former Cuban government official at the request of wealthy drug dealer Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), and they are given green cards. They become dishwashers in a diner.
Young Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) navigates her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of the USA, Eilis departs Ireland and the comfort of her mother's (Jane Brennan) home for the shores of New York City. The initial shackles of homesickness quickly diminish as a fresh romance sweeps Eilis into the intoxicating charm of love. But soon, her new vivacity is disrupted by her past, and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within.
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a restaurant owner in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, with a loving wife Edie (Maria Bello), teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). One night two men (Stephen McHattie and Greg Bryk) attempt to rob the restaurant. When a waitress is threatened, Tom deftly kills both robbers with surprising skill and precision. He is hailed as a hero by his family and the townspeople, and the incident makes him a local celebrity.
Henry Hill says, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster", referring to his idolizing the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn. Wanting to be part of something significant, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. He is able to make a living for himself and learns the two most important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut", the advice given to him after being acquitted of criminal charges early in his career.
The story revolves around Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo), a former Mexican Federal. The film opens in Mexico with Machete and his younger partner on a mission to rescue a kidnapped girl (Mayra J. Leal). During the operation, his partner is killed, the kidnapped girl stabs him before being killed herself, and Machete is betrayed by his corrupt Chief to the powerful drug lord, Rogelio Torrez (Steven Seagal), who kills Machete's wife and implies that he will kill his daughter before leaving him for dead.
The film is set in Washington state in 1964 and focuses on Selma Ježková (Björk), a Czech immigrant who has moved to the United States with her son, Gene Ježek (Vladica Kostic). They live a life of poverty as Selma works at a factory with her good friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), whom she nicknames "Cvalda" (which means "chubby" in Czech). She rents a trailer home on the property of town policeman Bill Houston (David Morse) and his wife Linda (Cara Seymour). She is also pursued by the shy but persistent Jeff (Peter Stormare), who also works at the factory.
The film has a nonlinear narrative. It contains numerous flash-forward and flashback cuts, indicated with an overlaid digital clock showing the time advancing rapidly forward/backward to the next scene. In chronological order:
Brontë Parrish (MacDowell), a horticulturalist and an environmentalist, enters into a sham marriage with Georges Fauré (Depardieu), an illegal alien from France, so he may obtain a green card. In turn, Brontë uses her fake marriage credentials to rent the apartment of her dreams. After moving in, to explain her spouse's absence, she tells the doorman and neighbors he is conducting musical research in Africa.
Jahangir "George" Khan is a Pakistani Muslim who has lived in England since 1937. He has a wife in Pakistan. He and his second wife Ella, a British Roman Catholic woman of Irish descent, have been married for 25 years and have 7 children together: Nazir, Abdul, Tariq, Maneer, Saleem, Meenah, and Sajid. George and Ella run a popular fish and chips shop in the neighbourhood.