Meander

Yoko is an ordinary housewife living in an ordinary apartment block. She has no real complaints as she goes about her tedious days, although her husband, Shinichi, is rather predictable in bed. They have one son, Junichi, and Yoko feels at a loss regarding his recently-acquired adolescent interest in sex and his secret stash of erotic magazines. Junichi is about to write his junior high school entrance exams, so he's heading off to cram school camp for New Years. Before going, he makes a surprising suggestion, Why don't you guys go somewhere for New Years? Yoko and Shinichi are suddenly faced with the prospect of New Years apart from their son. How will this couple, who've already lived half of their lives, change their behavior when it's just the two of them?

An asocial and enigmatic office clerk refuses to do his work, leaving it up to his boss to decide what should be done with him.

A woman and a little girl find solace and joy during secret stairwell meetings, bonding over playful games.

On the 29th of November, a young man murders and dismembers his girlfriend. The head, torso and limbs are found in various dumpsters in Vienna. The motive for the crime is still unclear.

Rodeo rider's marriage is endangered because of his commitment to the sport.

2009. Angela Logan has always struggled financially, but has always managed to pull through. Long having divorced her deadbeat ex-husband Bobby, she has sole custody of their three now mid- to late-teenaged sons. She has not dated in five years in her focus on the boys and her doubt in her own self, especially in this aspect of her life. She and the boys live in what was Angela's grandmother's house in Teaneck, New Jersey. One problem after another, which includes the house needing major repairs, has led to Angela having taken out a mortgage on the house. But she is getting little work as a substitute teacher - which she admits is not her dream job - while she still has to feed the growing boys. She has even forgone certain luxuries in life, such as fixing what is her broken down car and giving up her cell phone, to save money. These items in combination still have both a city inspector on her case about the incomplete work on the house, and the bank within ten days of foreclosing unless she can come up with $4,000. Despite these financial issues, Angela actively volunteers her time, most specifically at a mission in a job of assisting homeless women get back on their feet by providing them with resume writing and job interview skills. She volunteers as she believes in the strength of community, and that she and the boys are still more blessed than the women she helps. On top of these issues, fifteen year old Nicholas, her youngest, is at a rebellious stage of his life, much of his rebellion against her. To deal with the immediate financial problem of the $4,000, Angela, with the support of the boys and her closest friends, decides to sell apple cakes, famous within her social circle, at $40 a cake, meaning an average of ten cakes a day over those ten days, the campaign she coins her apple mortgage cake sale. But with every step forward she is able to make in the campaign, something or someone seems to take her one step back from reaching the finish line. One of those friends by her side is Melvin George, a comedian with a modicum of success who she dated ten years ago and who recently reentered her life in wanting to be that significant person in her life. Angela succeeding in this ten day task and allowing Melvin into her life seem largely to be dependent upon she having faith in herself, such faith she seems so easily to have in others but not in herself.