The film opens with the murder of gangsters relaxing in a tanning salon. This shooting occurs between clans of the Di Lauro Camorra syndicate which rule Scampia-Secondigliano, and triggers the so-called Faida di Scampia (Scampia feud) which is the backdrop of the entire movie. The Faida erupts between members of the Di Lauro syndicate and the so-called scissionisti (separatists), who are led by Raffaele Amato, brother of two of the killed men in the opening scene.
Set in the year 1950, Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island in Italy for political reasons. His wife accompanies him. On the island, local Mario Ruoppolo is dissatisfied with being a fisherman like his father. Mario looks for other work and is hired as a temporary postman with Neruda as his only customer. He uses his bicycle to hand deliver Neruda's mail (the island has no cars). Though poorly educated, the postman eventually befriends Neruda and becomes further influenced by Neruda's political views and poetry.
À l'occasion d'une éclipse de Lune qu'ils vont observer depuis la terrasse de leur appartement romain, Eva et Rocco reçoivent à dîner leurs amis de toujours : Bianca et Cosimo, Carlotta et Lele et enfin Peppe, le divorcé de la troupe qui doit leur présenter sa nouvelle copine. Mais Peppe arrive seul, prétextant que son amie est souffrante. À l'apéritif, ils évoquent un couple d'amis récemment séparé à la suite d'une tromperie découverte par un texto. Ils réalisent que les téléphones sont devenus notre boîte noire, et se demandent alors combien de couples se sépareraient si chacun avait accès au téléphone de l'autre. Eva propose, malgré la gêne perceptible de certains, de jouer au jeu de la vérité le temps de la soirée : chacun pose son téléphone sur la table et toute conversation, message ou appel reçu sera lu et écouté de tous…
Fabio Speranza (Fabio de Luigi) has always been in love with his colleague Linda Vita (Michelle Hunziker) but she has never seen in four years despite attempts to Fabio. The latter contact but due to a mistake she believes is her boyfriend (Paolo Conticini), thus creating a series of misunderstandings.
During the holidays of Christmas, three groups of funny characters depart from Italy to spend the Christmas season in New York. Camillo is a penniless pianist who meets the fortune marrying a rich woman. However Camillo, although the happy living in comfort with a dependent daughter (Canalis), is still in love with Barbara, a Roman working with whom he had an affair. Barbara, however, is now married to Claudio, but this is segretely in love with the daughter of Camillo.
The film opens with a quote from Céline's Journey to the End of the Night: "To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength." The main character is an aging socialite, Jep Gambardella, who once wrote a famous novel in his twenties, only to retire into a comfortable life writing cultural columns and throwing parties in Rome. After his 65th birthday party, he walks through the ruins and city streets, encountering the various characters, reflecting on his life, his first love, and sense of unfulfillment.
The story is told in medias res as a series of flashbacks. Max Tooney, a musician, enters a secondhand music shop just before closing time, broke and badly in need of money. He has only a Conn trumpet, which he sells for less than he had hoped. Clearly torn at parting from his prized possession, he asks to play it one last time. The shopkeeper agrees, and as the musician plays, the shopkeeper immediately recognizes the song from a broken record matrix he found inside a recently acquired secondhand piano. He asks who the piece is by, and Max tells him the story of 1900.
The film begins in Florence, Italy in 1935, where a group of cultured expatriate English women — called by the Italians "the Scorpioni" — meet for tea every afternoon. Young Luca (Charlie Lucas) is the illegitimate son of an Italian businessman (Massimo Ghini) who shows little interest in his son's upbringing; the boy's mother, a dressmaker, has recently died. Mary Wallace (Joan Plowright), who works as the man's secretary, steps in to care for him, turning to her Scorpioni friends – including eccentric would-be artist Arabella (Judi Dench) – for support. Together, they teach Luca many lessons about life and especially the arts. Elsa Morganthal (Cher), a brash rich young American widow whom Scorpioni matron Lady Hester Random (Maggie Smith) barely tolerates, sets up a financial trust for Luca when she learns of the death of his mother, whom she was fond of and to whom Elsa still owed money for her dressmaking services.
The film tells a story of love and deceit, set in Europe (Trieste, Bolzano, Fidenza, Rome, Milan, Merano, Vienna, Prague) in the world of high-end art auctions and antiques. The story revolves around Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush), an aging and esteemed, but somewhat eccentric, managing director of an auction house. Oldman is hired by a reclusive young heiress, Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks), to auction off the large collection of art and antiques left to her by her parents. Claire always refuses to be seen in person, obviously suffering from severe agoraphobia and never leaving her room. Soon enough Virgil, a life-long bachelor, understands that he has fallen in love with her.
The story begins sometime after Valtor was defeated. An unseen narrator begins to speak about a girl who discovered that she is a fairy and a princess: Bloom. Though her story is a magical one, it is one without an ending. The story will only have one when the girl writes the ending—i.e., creates the ending.
The film recounts life in the Sicilian town of Bagheria (known as Baarìa in Sicilian), from the 1930s to the 1980s, through the eyes of lovers Peppino (Francesco Scianna) and Mannina (Margareth Madè).
Giovanna (played by Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and her husband Filippo (Filippo Nigro) have settled into life. They both have jobs that make them unhappy. She works as an accountant. He works the graveyard shift because he is too weak to ask his boss for a daytime slot. They argue about money, sex, time and work... There is a subtle sense that this is a marriage whose love is dwindling fast. Perhaps they are only going through the motions for the sake of their kids
The Man with No Name—"Monco"/"Manco"— and Colonel Douglas Mortimer—the "Man in Black"—are two bounty hunters in pursuit of "El Indio," one of the most wanted fugitives in the Wild West, and his gang. El Indio is ruthless, clever, and brutal. He has a musical pocketwatch that he plays before engaging in gun duels: "When the chimes finish, begin," he says. Flashbacks reveal that El Indio took the watch from a young woman whom El Indio found with her lover (in Joe Millard's novelization of the film, her newly wed husband), killed him, and raped her; she killed herself while being raped. There is a photograph of the woman inside the cover of the watch; it was a gift from her lover (in the novelization, it was a wedding gift from her brother).
A stranger arrives at the little Mexican border town of San Miguel. Silvanito, the town's innkeeper, tells the Stranger about a feud between two families vying to gain control of the town: on the one side, the Rojo brothers: Don Miguel, Esteban and Ramón; on the other, the family of the town sheriff, John Baxter. The Stranger decides to play each family against the other in order to make money, and proves his speed and accuracy with his gun to both sides by shooting the four men who teased him as he entered town with ease.