Movies by Bob Balaban
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Isle of Dogs
In the future, an outbreak of canine flu leads the mayor of a Japanese city to banish all dogs to an island used as a garbage dump. The outcasts must soon embark on an epic journey when a 12-year-old boy arrives on the island to find his beloved pet.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind
After an encounter with UFOs, an electricity linesman feels undeniably drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where something spectacular is about to happen.
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No Reservations
Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.
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2010
While planet Earth poises on the brink of nuclear self-destruction, a team of Russian and American scientists aboard the Leonov hurtles to a rendezvous with the still-orbiting Discovery spacecraft and its sole known survivor, the homicidal computer HAL.
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The Mexican
Jerry Welbach, a reluctant bagman, has been given two ultimatums: The first is from his mob boss to travel to Mexico and retrieve a priceless antique pistol, known as "the Mexican"... or suffer the consequences. The second is from his girlfriend Samantha to end his association with the mob. Jerry figures alive and in trouble with Samantha is better than the more permanent alternative, so he heads south of the border.
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Capote
A biopic of writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book "In Cold Blood".
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Lady in the Water
Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep rescues what he thinks is a young woman from the pool he maintains. When he discovers that she is actually a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the journey back to her home, he works with his tenants to protect his new friend from the creatures that are determined to keep her in our world.
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Howl
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.
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Fading Gigolo
Fioravante decides to become a professional Don Juan as a way of making money to help his cash-strapped friend, Murray. With Murray acting as his "manager", the duo quickly finds themselves caught up in the crosscurrents of love and money.
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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
A young nurse takes care of an elderly author who lives in a haunted house.
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Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy
This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about a humane and groundbreaking masterpiece and the flawed but gifted people who made it. It is about a troubled era of cultural ferment, social and political change, about broken dreams and strivers, then and now. It is about an era that made a movie and a movie that made an era.
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Ghost World
Two quirky, cynical teenaged girls try to figure out what to do with their lives after high school graduation. After they play a prank on an eccentric, middle aged record collector, one of them befriends him, which causes a rift in the girls' friendship.
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Conversation with the Beast
An American historian (Mr Webster) comes to Berlin to visit an old man who claims to be the real Adolf Hitler and to be 103 years old. The Hitler who died in 1945, the old man says, was just one of his six doubles - one for each weekday - while Hitler himself retired into a bunker below the S-Bahn tracks and married a second time.
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The Making of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'
A documentary film on the making of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'
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Do You Like to Read?
The librarian of the town of New Penzance introduces six animated segments illustrating Suzy's favorite books.
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Dead Bang
Los Angeles homicide detective Jerry Beck searches for the murderer who killed a police officer on Christmas Eve. The investigation takes Beck inside the violent world of hate groups and white supremacists, who are hatching a deadly plot to attack even more innocent people. Beck must also confront his own personal demons, including his growing problem with alcohol, if he wants to track down and stop the violent neo-Nazis before it is too late.
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The Face of Fear
Graham Harris was once one of the world's foremost mountain climbers, until a fall five years earlier left him with a lame leg, a fear of heights...and a frightening psychic ability in which he can see murders as they are happening.
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The Five Stages of Grief
Daniel's father died yesterday. He seems to be totally fine. Luckily his friends can teach him to be miserable.
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Marriage: Year One
A medical student marries a millionaire's daughter but insists they live on the money he earns.
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Jakob the Liar
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.