The town of Swallow Falls, located on a tiny island hidden under the “A” in "Atlantic" on the world map (corresponding to the real-life location of Bermuda), suffers an economic downturn after the demand for sardines plummets ("everyone in the world realized that sardines are super gross"). Now stuck with their supply, sardines became the sole food in Swallow Falls. The audience is introduced to Flint Lockwood, (Bill Hader) a scientist whose inventions, beginning as a child (Max Neuwirth), have all ended in disaster. Flint's latest invention, Flint Lockwood's Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (or the FLDSMDFR, which several characters unsuccessfully try to pronounce), is a device which mutates water molecules into food; he hopes that it will end the town's sardine dependency, but his home does not have enough power to make it work……

Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and unhinged free spirit Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) strike up a relationship on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk, New York. They are inexplicably drawn to each other, despite their radically different personalities.

Although they apparently do not realize it at the time, Joel and Clementine are in fact former lovers, now separated after having spent two years together. After a nasty fight, Clementine hired the New York City firm Lacuna, Inc. to erase all her memories of their relationship. (The term "lacuna" means a gap or missing part; for instance, lacunar amnesia is a gap in one's memory about a specific event.) Upon discovering this, Joel is devastated and decides to undergo the procedure himself, a process that takes place while he sleeps……

Based on a best-selling novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, and boasting the star-power of three prior Oscar winners--Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osmont--PAY IT FORWARD spins a heartwarming yarn about an eleven-year-old boy who comes up with an utopian idea as a project for school. History teacher Eugene Simenot (Spacey) offers the same ongoing extra-credit assignment he has proffered every year: Come up with an idea that will change the world. However, he expects nothing more from his students than half-hearted efforts that fall far shy of their mark. Simenot is therefore unprepared for precocious, irrepressible Trevor McKinney (played with wide-eyed wonder by Osmont), who conjures up a stunning scheme. Trevor suggests the concept that every person who benefits from someone else's good deed should "pay it forward," instead of paying it back, and in turn offer favors to three other people. The first guinea pig for Trevor's experiment is his overworked, imperfect mom (Helen Hunt) for whom he tries to find a boyfriend……

In 1981, in San Francisco, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) invests his family's savings in portable bone-density scanners which he tries to demonstrate and sell to doctors. The investment proves to be a white elephant which financially breaks the family and as a result, his wife Linda (Thandie Newton) leaves him and moves to New York. Their son Christopher (Jaden Smith) remains with his father. While downtown trying to sell one of his scanners, Chris meets a manager for Dean Witter and impresses him by solving a Rubik's Cube during a short cab ride. Chris does not have enough money for the cab fare and flees the cab driver into a subway station where he barely escapes the cab driver but loses one of his bone scanners in the process. This new relationship with the Dean Witter manager earns him the chance to become an intern stockbroker……
Concluding his internship, Chris is called into a meeting with his managers. His work has paid off and he is offered the position. Fighting back tears, he rushes to his son's daycare, hugging him. They walk down the street, joking with each other and are passed by a man in a business suit (the real Chris Gardner in a cameo). The epilogue reveals that Chris went on to form his own multi-million dollar brokerage firm.

The first half of the movie is a whimsical, romantic, somewhat slapstick comedy set in the years before World War II. Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), a young Italian Jew, arrives in Arezzo, where he plans to set up a bookstore, taking a job as a waiter at his uncle's hotel.Guido is both funny and charismatic, especially when he romances a local school teacher, Dora (portrayed by Benigni's actual wife Nicoletta Braschi), saying she is beautiful like the morning sunrise. Dora, however, comes from a wealthy, aristocratic, non-Jewish Italian family. Dora's mother wants her to marry a well-to-do civil servant, but Dora falls instead for Guido where he ends up stealing her away at her engagement party from her aristocratic and arrogant fiancé.Several years pass in which Guido and Dora marry and have a son, Giosuè (Giorgio Cantarini).

In the second half of the film, World War II has already begun. Guido, Uncle Eliseo and Giosuè are forced onto a train and taken to a concentration camp on Giosuè's birthday. Despite being a non-Jew, Dora demands to be on the same train to join her family and is permitted to do so.In the camp, Guido hides his son from the Nazi guards, sneaks him food and tries to humor him. In an attempt to keep up Giosuè's spirits, Guido convinces him that the camp is just a game, in which the first person to get 1,000 points wins a tank. He tells him that if he cries, complains that he wants his mother or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the camp guards earn points……

Dora is a former school teacher who is now a bitter old woman. She works at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, writing letters for illiterate customers in exchange for some money. She hates her customers and does not mail the letters she writes, putting them in a drawer or even tearing them apart. Josué is a poor 9-year-old boy who has never met with his father, but hopes to do so. His mother sends letters to his father through Dora, saying that she hopes to reunite with him soon, but when she is run over and killed in a bus accident just outside of the train station, he is left homeless. Dora takes him in and sells him, but she is made to feel guilty by her neighbor and friend Irene and later steals him back.Dora is initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, but she ends up deciding to take a trip with him to Northeast Brazil in order to find his father's house and leave him there.

Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus, but he follows her, forgetting his rucksack which contains Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, religious truck driver who abandons them when Dora grows too friendly. Dora trades her watch for a ride to Bom Jesus on the back of a truck. They find the only address Josué's mother had for his father in Bom Jesus, but the current residents say that Jesus won a house in the lottery, and now lives in the new settlements; but they also say that he lost the house and money through drinking. With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for the pilgrims who have arrived in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage. This time she posts the letters……

Sam Baldwin, a Chicago architect, loses his wife to cancer. He and his young son Jonah start new lives in Seattle, but Sam still grieves.18 months later, on Christmas Eve 1992, Jonah—who wants his father to find a new wife—calls into a talk radio show. Jonah persuades Sam to go on the air to talk about how much he misses his wife. Hundreds of women from around the country hear the program, and touched by the story, write to Sam.

One of the listeners is Annie Reed, a Baltimore Sun reporter. She is engaged to a sweet, awkward man named Walter but feels there is something missing from their relationship. After watching the film An Affair to Remember, Annie impulsively writes a letter suggesting that Sam meet her on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. She does not intend to mail it, but her friend and editor Becky does it for her and agrees to send Annie to Seattle to "look into doing a story on those radio shows."……

Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a workaholic advertising executive who has just been assigned a new and very large account. After being given the news, he returns home to find his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) in the process of leaving him. Saying that she needs to find herself, she leaves Ted to raise their son Billy (Justin Henry) by himself. Ted and Billy begin to resent each other as Ted no longer has time to carry his increased workload, and Billy misses the love and attention he received from his mother. After many months of unrest, Ted and Billy begin to cope with the situation and eventually grow to love and care for one another.

Fifteen months after she walked out, Joanna returns to New York in order to claim Billy, and a custody battle ensues. During the custody hearing, both Ted and Joanna are unprepared for the brutal character assassinations that their lawyers unleash on the other. For instance, Margaret is forced to confess that she advised Joanna to leave Ted if she was as unhappy as she professed, although she also attempts to tell Joanna on the stand that her husband has profoundly changed. Eventually, the damaging facts that Ted was fired because of his conflicting responsibilities with his son, forcing him to take a lower-paid job, come out in court, as do the details of Billy's accident.

In 1981, Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) sits at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia, telling his life story to strangers nearby. His tale starts about the childhood braces he wore around his legs. At Forrest's home, he meets Elvis Presley and teaches him a dance move, which Elvis later displays at a concert. On his first day of school, Forrest meets a girl named Jenny Curran (Robin Wright), with whom he immediately falls in love and whose life is followed parallel to his. Despite his below average intelligence quotient (IQ), his ability to run very fast gets him into the University of Alabama on a football scholarship. He ultimately becomes an All-American and meets President John F. Kennedy. While attending college he witnesses George Wallace's attempt to prevent integration at the school……

W?adys?aw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a famous Polish Jewish pianist working for Warsaw Radio, sees his whole world collapse with the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. After the radio station is rocked by explosions from German bombing, Szpilman goes home and learns that the United Kingdom and France have declared war on Nazi Germany. He and his family rejoice, believing the war will end quickly.

When the German Army enters Warsaw, living conditions for the Jewish population gradually deteriorate as their rights are slowly eroded: first they are allowed only a limited amount of money per family, then they must wear armbands imprinted with the blue Star of David to identify themselves, and eventually, in November 1940, they are all forced into the squalid Warsaw Ghetto. There, they face hunger, persecution and humiliation from the SS and the ever-present fear of death, torture and starvation. The Nazis become increasingly sadistic and the family witnesses many horrors inflicted on other Jews. In one scene, a group of Einsatzgruppen, led by an NCO, go into the apartment across from the Szpilmans. They order the family on the top floor to stand, then when an elderly man in a wheelchair is unable to comply, the SS throw him off the balcony. The rest of the family are then taken out into the street and shot, and the SS drive off, running over the bodies along the way……