Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.

A woman moves into a Manhattan apartment, where she learns that the previous tenant's life ended under mysterious circumstances.

A young South African boy from the Johannesburg ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster, leaves home as a child to get away from his helpless parents. Now a teenage thug, Tsotsi finds a baby in the back seat of a car he's just stolen. He decides that it is his responsibility to care for the infant and in the process learns that maybe the criminal life isn’t the best way.

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Two gangsters seek revenge on the state jail worker who during their stay at a youth prison sexually abused them. A sensational court hearing takes place to charge him for the crimes.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.

The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

A man's relationship with a bipolar woman becomes dangerous.

Loosely based on the true story of the killing of Kitty Genovese: A young woman's murder is witnessed by fifteen of her neighbors who do nothing to help and refuse to cooperate with the police.

Precocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.