In 1912, a teenage boy named Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) from Devon, England, witnesses the birth of a Bay Thoroughbred foal and subsequently watches with admiration the growth of the young horse. Much to the dismay of his mother Rose (Emily Watson), his father Ted (Peter Mullan) buys the colt at auction, despite their needing a more suitable plough horse for the farm work. Albert's best friend, Andrew Easton (Matt Milne), watches as Albert teaches his colt many things, such as to come when he imitates the call of an owl by blowing through his cupped hands.
In the year 1919, the Opéra Populaire holds a public auction to clear the theatre's vaults. The Vicomte de Chagny purchases a papier-mâché music box in the shape of a monkey and eyes it sadly as Madame Giry, an aged woman dressed in black, watches him. The auctioneer then presents a shattered chandelier as the next item up for bid, explaining that it once played a key role in "the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opéra." As the chandelier is displayed for all to see, it flickers to life and slowly ascends to its original place in the rafters as the audience is transported back in time to the year 1870.
In 1846, a barber named Benjamin Barker arrives in London, accompanied by sailor Anthony Hope ("No Place Like London"). Fifteen years earlier, he had been falsely convicted and sentenced to penal transportation from London by the corrupt Judge Turpin, who had lusted after Barker's wife Lucy ("The Barber and His Wife"). Barker adopts the alias "Sweeney Todd" and returns to his old Fleet Street shop, situated above Mrs. Nellie Lovett's meat pie shop ("The Worst Pies in London"). From her, he learns that Turpin raped Lucy, who then poisoned herself with arsenic. The couple's daughter, Johanna, is now Turpin's ward, and, like her mother before her, the object of Turpin's lust ("Poor Thing"). Todd vows revenge, and re-opens his barber shop after Mrs. Lovett returns his straight razors to him ("My Friends"). While roaming London, Anthony becomes enamored of Johanna, but is caught by Turpin and driven away by his corrupt associate, Beadle Bamford ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird", "Alms! Alms!", "Johanna").
In the fictional "Verona Beach", the Capulets and the Montagues are arch-rivals. The animosity of the older generation—Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet and Ted and Caroline Montague—is felt by their younger relatives. A gunfight between the Montague boys led by Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, and the Capulet boys led by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, creates chaos in the city. The Chief of Police, Captain Prince, reprimands the families, warning them that if such behavior continues, their lives "shall pay the forfeit of the peace".
In 1948, Mrs. ("Miss") Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), a 72-year-old wealthy, white, Jewish, widowed, retired school teacher, lives alone in Atlanta, Georgia, except for a black housemaid named Idella (Esther Rolle). When Miss Daisy wrecks her car, her son, Boolie (Dan Aykroyd), hires Hoke Coleburn (Morgan Freeman), a black chauffeur who drove for a local judge until he recently died. Miss Daisy at first refuses to let Hoke drive her, but gradually starts to accept him.
In a cinema in Buenos Aires on July 26, 1952, a film is interrupted when the news breaks of the death of Eva Perón, Argentina's first lady, at the age of 33. The nation goes into public mourning. Ché, a member of the public, marvels at the spectacle and promises to show how Eva did "nothing, for years." The rest of the film follows Eva Duarte (later Eva Duarte de Perón) from her humble beginnings as an illegitimate child of a lower class woman to her rise to become First Lady and Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina, with Ché assuming many different guises throughout Eva's story.
In Harlem, 10-year-old Annie Bennett lives in foster care with several other girls in the care of the cruel Colleen Hannigan. She spends each Friday waiting outside the restaurant Domani's where she believes her parents will return to collect her.
Peter (Levi Miller) is a young boy who is left as a baby on the steps of an orphanage in London by his mother Mary (Amanda Seyfried), an establishment under the care of Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke). Several years later, during World War II,The Cold War, upon learning that she is hoarding food for herself, Peter and his best friend Nibs try to steal it to distribute amongst themselves and the other orphans but they get caught. In the process, Peter finds a letter written by his mother, declaring her love and assuring Peter they will meet again "in this world or another".
Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas) is a Wall Street hedge fund manager whose investments and speculations allow him to live an extravagant upper class lifestyle with his much younger wife Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow). Unfortunately for Taylor, his illegal investments are unraveling; to alleviate the pressure being put on him by large upcoming margin payments he will need his wife's personal fortune (roughly 100 million dollars) to maintain that status and lifestyle.
In Edwardian-era London, in the nursery of the Darling home, Wendy Darling (Wood) tells her younger brothers, John (Harry Newell) and Michael (Freddie Popplewell), stories that enthrall Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter) and his fairy friend Tinker Bell (Ludivine Sagnier). Life is disrupted when their Aunt Millicent visits the family. Judging Wendy to be an "almost" full-grown woman, Aunt Millicent advises Mr. and Mrs. Darling to think of Wendy's future, saying that Wendy should spend less time with her brothers and more time with her as she learns how to be a proper young lady. The very idea terrifies the children.
An aging couple, Ethel and Norman Thayer, continue the long tradition of spending each summer at their cottage on a lake in the far reaches of northern New England called Golden Pond. When they first arrive, Ethel notices the loons calling on the lake "welcoming them home". As they resettle into their summer home, Norman's memory problems arise when he is unable to recognize several family photographs, which he copes with by frequently talking about death and growing old. They are visited by their only child, a daughter, Chelsea, who is somewhat estranged from her curmudgeon of a father. She introduces her parents to her fiance Bill and his thirteen-year-old son Billy. Norman tries to play mind games with Bill, an apparent pastime of his, but Bill won't hear of it, saying he can only take so much. In another conversation, Chelsea discusses with Ethel her frustration over her relationship with her overbearing father, feeling that even though she lives thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, she still feels like she's answering to him. Before they depart for a European vacation, Chelsea and Bill ask the Thayers to permit Billy to stay with them while they have some time to themselves. Norman, seeming more senile and cynical than usual due to his 80th birthday and heart palpitations, agrees to Billy's staying. Ethel tells him that he's the sweetest man in the world, but she is the only one who knows it.
About eight years after a zombie apocalypse, R, a zombie, spends his days wandering around an airport which is now filled with hordes of his fellow undead, including his best friend M. R and M achieve rudimentary communication with grunts and moans and occasional near-words. As a zombie, R constantly craves human flesh, especially brains, as he is able to "feel alive" through the victims' memories he experiences when he eats them.
The story focuses on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie, his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, and his close friendship with her sons named George, Jack, Peter, and Michael, who inspire the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Never Grew Up.
In the opening scene, twenty-four-year-old Alice Ayres (Natalie Portman) and Dan Woolf (Jude Law) see each other for the first time from opposite sides of a street as they are walking toward each other among many other rush hour pedestrians. Alice is a young American stripper who just arrived in London, and Dan is an unsuccessful British author who is on his way to work where he writes obituaries for a newspaper. Alice looks in the wrong direction as she crosses the street and is hit by a taxi cab right in front of Dan's eyes. After he rushes to her side she smiles to him and says, "Hello, stranger." He takes her to the hospital where Alice is treated and released. Afterward, on the way to his office, they stop by Postman's Park, the same park that he and his father visited after his mother's death. Pausing in front of the office before he leaves her and goes to work, he reminds her that traffic in England tends to come on from the right, and on impulse, he asks her for her name. They soon become lovers.