Bob Balaban – MRQE

Fantasy Life

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

After losing his job as a paralegal, Sam Stein suffers a panic attack and stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters. The girls’ mother, Dianne, is an actor whose once-promising career has stalled; she’s in a difficult marriage to David, a rock bassist. When David goes abroad on tour, Dianne and Sam discover an easy rapport as well as a shared history of mental illness. Sam joins Dianne’s family to babysit for the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, and he ends up in a house with the woman he pines for, her husband, the three kids, and all four grandparents, including his psychiatrist.

Recount (TV)

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

In 2000, the election of the U.S. Presidential boiled down to a few precious votes in the state of Florida and a recount that would add “hanging chad” to every American’s vocabulary.

“Show Me a Hero”

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Mayor Nick Wasicsko took office in 1987 during Yonkers’ worst crisis when federal courts ordered public housing to be built in the white, middle class side of town, dividing the city in a bitter battle fueled by fear, racism, murder and politics.

The Late Shift (TV)

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

David Letterman vies with Jay Leno and his manager to succeed Johnny Carson, retiring from “The Tonight Show.”

2010

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

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.

“Chair, The”

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

At a major university, the first woman of color to become chair tries to meet the dizzying demands and high expectations of a failing English department.

Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about a dark and difficult masterpiece and the deeply gifted and flawed people who made it. It is about New York in a troubled era of cultural ferment and social change. It is about an era that made a movie and a movie that made an era. The 1969 movie tells the story of two homeless loners who join forces out of desperation and struggle to survive.

Dedication

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

A modern love story in which a misanthropic, emotionally complex author of a hit children’s book is forced to team with a beautiful illustrator after his best friend and collaborator passes away. As Henry struggles with letting go of the ghosts of love and life, he discovers that sometimes you have to take a gamble at life to find love.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

A young nurse takes care of an elderly author who lives in a haunted house.

Eva Hesse

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

German American artist Eva Hesse (1936 1970) created her innovative art in latex and fiberglass in the whirling aesthetic vortex of 1960s New York. Her flowing forms were in part a reaction to the rigid structures of then-popular minimalism, a male-dominated movement. Hesses complicated personal life encompassed not only a chaotic 1930s Germany, but also illness and the immigrant culture of New York in the 1940s. One of the twentieth centurys most intriguing artists, she finally receives her due in this film, an emotionally gripping journey with a gifted woman of great courage.