"Ghost World" is an offbeat comedy/drama about an unusual friendship between an alienated teenage girl and an eccentric middle-aged man. After Enid (Thora Birch) finishes her last year of high school, she has no plans for the future. She doesn’t get along well with her father at home, and she has to take a remedial art class from a depressing teacher (Illeana Douglas) in order to graduate. At first Enid spends most of her time hanging out with her friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), but then Enid befriends a strange loner named Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a middle-aged man who collects 78 rpm records. As her friendship with Seymour grows, Enid and Rebecca start to drift apart. But somehow her knowing Seymour has brought Enid to a place in her life where she no longer feels hopeless. Ninety-four percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked "Ghost World."

Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, and Julia Stiles star in the drama "O," which is based on Shakespeare’s "Othello." Odin James (Phifer), called O, is the star basketball player and the only black student at an otherwise all-white private high school. O and the dean’s daughter, a white girl named Desi (Stiles), are in love, but O is the jealous type. Hugo (Hartnett) is the son of the basketball coach (Martin Sheen), and being envious of O, tells him that Desi might be cheating on him with Michael Casio (Andrew Keegan). Hugo manages to work O into a jealous rage, leading to tragedy. "O," which contains gun violence in a high school setting, was completed and originally scheduled to be released in 1999, but its appearance in theaters was delayed until 2001 because of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

"The Taste of Others" is a witty French-language romantic comedy directed by Agnes Jaoui and written by Jaoui and her husband Jean-Pierre Bacri. Both husband and wife star in the movie as well. Castella (Bacri), an affluent businessman who is unhappily married to the unlikable Angelique (Christiane Millet), falls in love with an actress named Clara (Anne Alvaro). Clara finds Castella too crass at first, but she gradually discovers that he has many good qualities. As Clara sorts through her feelings about Castella, a romantic relationship develops between Castella’s bodyguard Moreno (Gerard Lanvin) and Manie (Jaoui), a barmaid who sells a little hashish on the side. The charm of the film lies in its astute observation of how matters of taste enter into relationships. Of the 48 reviews of "The Taste of Others" on Rotten Tomatoes, all 48 were positive.