Vargas is a 54 year-old man who gets out of prison in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. Now that he’s free, he wants to find his now adult daughter who lives in a swampy remote area in the middle of the jungle. In order to get there, he has to travel long distances in a small boat, through a labyrinth of rivers carved upon the thick bush. Vargas is a silent and introvert man, with the usual reserve of those who live close to nature. Around him, there is a great mystery ‚ present in the people he finds and with whom he shares the Mate ritual, and in the places he passes by ‚ taking over a world that remains unchanged for him, despite the many years he spent in jail. Minute by minute, Vargas discovers the world, as he makes his way through the jungle in a canoe, moving towards his daughter’s house.
It all begins in a small Oregon town, when shy Sam confesses to his protective older brother Rocky that he is getting pummeled daily by the towering school bully George. Together, they plan the perfect payback, inviting George on a birthday river trip tailor-made to end in the bully’s humiliation. Rocky’s pals Clyde and Marty and Sam’s budding girlfriend Millie also join the journey, which starts almost immediately with misgivings. Seeing George in a new light, as a lonely kid desperate for friendship and attention, Sam wants to call the whole thing off. But the boat and the plot are already in motion, and no one can foresee the surprises and accidents that are to come. Set in a small Oregon town where secrets are hard to keep and lies even harder, Mean Creek flows with a simple elegance of truth and consequences as it follows a crisis in the lives of its teen characters.
12-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a Mom. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it’s hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.
Growing up with her drifting single mother, sixteen-year-old HEIDI (Abbie Cornish) has learned to use sex as a survival tool. After a confrontation in her suburban Canberra home, Heidi feels unable to remain with her mother. She flees to Jindabyne, seeking work in the snowfields. With little money or practical experience, she accepts a job at a petrol station beside Lake Jindabyne. Heidi befriends her co-worker BIANCA (Hollie Andrew), and, over time, Bianca’s mother (Leah Purcell) and family. She begins a romance with a wealthy local farmer JOE (Sam Worthington), and finds a home behind the motel of kindly IRENE (Lynette Curran). Heidi’s new life unfolds happily. Joe’s relationship with Heidi challenges his ideas of sexuality, class and his future in this place. When Heidi’s past invades her new world, her resulting behaviour damages every relationship she has formed, until she discovers the transforming power of forgiveness and learns that she is more than she had realised.
Something magical is in the air. Times are happy and love is uncomplicated for young soldier Keng and country boy Tong. The film starts with a sensual love story, pleasant evenings with Tong’s family and song-filled nights in town… Then life is disrupted by a disappearance. And some kind of wild beast has been slaughtering cows. Local legends say a human can somehow be transformed into another creature… Then begins a tale of a soldier who goes alone into the heart of the tropical jungle, where myth is often real.
Addiction can take many forms: drugs, gambling, sex and food are common ones. But for Justin Cobb, it’s thumbsucking. A brigh but awkward high-school teen, he wants to quit, but nothing works. He tries everything from putting ink on his thumb (a tip from his woefully uncommunicative father) to hypnosis from his New Age orthodontist. He gets so desperate that when a school psychologist suggests using medication to help him focus, Justins leaps at the chance, despite his loving mother’s concern. In a refreshingly original and humorous spin, the meds begin to work. But are they the answer or just a more acceptable form of pacification?
On the opposite sides of the law, two man with parellel fate are about to cross paths. Yan is na undercover cop in the triads, recruited before he graduated from the police academy. A decade of hard work has planted him deep in the largest triad in Hong Kong. Ming is a mole in the police force, assigned by his triad boss to become a cop when he was barely eighteen. With the exclusive intelligence on his triad rivals, Ming has been promoted swiftly to head the Criminal Intelligence Bureau. Both men are feeling increasingly trapped in the inferno between good and evil; they are merely shadows with no identities. But on one fateful evening, all means point to an end: Ming is assigned to a police operation to bust none other than his own triad boss, while the police intelligence originates from their mole Yan, who happens to be the boss’s most trusted henchmen. As the operation unfolds, both sides realize there is a mole amongst themselves. To make things even worse, Ming is tranferred to Internal Affairs and his first mission is to ferret out that mole in the police force…
Infernal Affairs opens with Yan and Ming as young men in 1991 embarking on theirs journeys as moles for life, and then jumpstarts to 2002 when their pasts finally catch up with them, culminating in a climatic showdown in the finale. Set between the years 1991 and 1997, Infernal Affairs II supplies the missing link as to how and why these two Fledgling innocents will ultimately become a callous mole and an undercover cop with ennui. While Yan is embroiled in the family saga of a triad cartel inextricable tied to his origins. Ming is enmeshed in an Oedipal fixation with his boss’s wife. Meanwhile, mind-boggling twists and turns are injected into the plot that both shatter established presumptions and shed new light on the characters convoluted relations. Friendships fracture. Foes join forces. Nothing is what it appears to be.
Infernal Affairs III is presented in a parallel time frame, 2001 and 2004, delineating what transpires before and after the dead of Yan in the first film, leading to an ultimate showdown where the past and present converge and all hell breaks loose. 2004: Ten months after the murder of Yan, a new star, Yeung, has emerged in the police force. Suspecting that, like himself, Yeung could be a mole from the triads, Ming begins his clandestine investigation, only to find himself constantly shadowed by a mysterious cripple called Shen, that is secretly linked to Yeung. 2001: After working under Sam’s wing for two years, Yan finally gains his confidence by committing egregious crimes. His first big mission is to build up a smuggling network with Shen, a mysterious busissman from China. Little does he realize that Sam actually has his own hidden agenda, which will place him in great danger. Yan is sentenced to mandatory psychiatric counselling by the court. The brief encounters with Dr. Lee brings temporary calm to his disturbed inner psyche. When ordered by Sam to deal a final blow to Shen, Yandecides to betray SP Wong and go all the way.
