Rochelle Oliver
Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving looking after retired U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a cantankerous middle-aged man who lives with his niece and her family.
The close bond between two elderly sisters is threatened when one of them begins to have romantic feelings for a local mechanic.
Dennis Jennings (Steven Wright) is an introverted daydreamer, sleepwalking through life. He is a professional waiter and has an equally-dull girlfriend, Emma. In an attempt to release his pent-up feelings of isolation, he begins seeing a psychiatrist (Rowan Atkinson), only to discover that the doctor is somewhat less than interested in what he has to say. After finding his doctor sharing his intimate secrets with a group of fellow psychiatrists at a bar, and then finding that his girlfriend is cheating on him with the doctor, Dennis decides he has had enough. He hunts the doctor down in the woods and shoots him, ending up in jail with an equally uncaring prison shrink.
18-year-old John Dakota is running from his past: his hateful father blames him for the tragic death of his brother. On his own now, Dakota winds up in trouble in a small Texas town and finds work at the Diamond Thoroughbred Horse Ranch. Although out of his element, he begins to build a life for himself. He comes to know the Lechners: Walt, a horseman of unexpected wisdom; Molly, a spirited and independent girl who captures Dakota's heart; and Casey, a persistent 12-year-old boy who stirs memories he would rather ignore. When his past inexorably catches up with him, Dakota must choose to keep on running, or face his enemies with the beautiful woman he has come to love.
It's 1918, the height of United States involvement in World War I - Liberty Bonds are sold, German immigrants are suspected as traitors or saboteurs, young men everywhere succumb to the patriotism and propaganda and enlist. In a small Texas town, Horace Robedaux feels the pressure - he doesn't want to leave his young wife Elizabeth and their young child Jenny - but Elizabeth's can't-do-anything-right little brother is constantly talking about the war, and Elizabeth's stern father, who opposed the marriage initially, now has plans to take care of his daughter and the child so Horace can fight for his country. But the influenza epidemic sweeping the town (and the nation) may change everyone's plans.
When a female lawyer finds a girl hiding in the back of her car, it starts her thinking, and she decides to give up her job to open up a refuge for neglected children.
An aspiring Jewish actor moves out of his parents' Brooklyn apartment to seek his fortune in the bohemian life of Greenwich Village in 1953.
