Natural Reactions

Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.

When a twenty-something retail clerk encounters a rising pop star, he takes the opportunity to edge his way into the in-crowd. But as the line between friend and fan blurs beyond recognition, access and proximity become a matter of life and death.

Agnes feels stuck. Unlike her best friend, Lydie, who’s moved to New York and is now expecting a baby, Agnes still lives in the New England house they once shared as graduate students, now working as a professor at her alma mater. A ‘bad thing’ happened to Agnes a few years ago and, since then, despite her best efforts, life hasn’t gotten back on track.

In the wake of their friends' marriages and eventual offspring, longtime pals Julie and Jason decide to have a child together without becoming a couple. By becoming "time-share" parents, they reason, they can experience the joys of parenthood without significantly curbing their personal freedom. However, when Julie and Jason both become involved with others, they discover that they secretly harbor romantic feelings for each other.

Starting from childhood attempts at illustration, the protagonist pursues his true obsession to art school. But as he learns how the art world really works, he finds that he must adapt his vision to the reality that confronts him.

Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.

Two law school friends find themselves at odds when one becomes a Justice Department lawyer and the other goes into politics.

The Peanuts gang is nervous about going to a new school, so Lucy starts her own. She soon learns that teaching is tougher than she thought—and that change can be a good thing.

Socially inept 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller gets a job at a video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older female manager.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two senior students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music and love.

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

George, a lonely and fatalistic teen who's made it all the way to his senior year without ever having done a real day of work, is befriended by Sally, a popular but complicated girl who recognizes in him a kindred spirit.