The new movie “Late Night”, is the first I have seen since “The Devil Wears Prada” released in 2006 that shows the working reality of so many millions of Americans. The Devil in this movie is the star of late night talk show, Katherine Newbury, played very well by Emma Thompson. Katherine is so rude and abrupt with all the writers in her staff, she doesn’t care to remember any of their names and at one point starts calling them numbers, “you are 1, 2, 3, etc”. This level of condescending and outrageous treatment of other people is all too common in the working world, and this film, written by Mindy Kaling does a very good job of showing this reality.

Not only is Katherine Newbury rude to everybody who works for her, she only hires men for her staff, because she hates women. This is where Molly Patel, played by Mindy Kaling comes in, as the token woman hired to fix this men only problem. Molly is hired into the writing staff even though she has no experience as a writer and works at a Chemical Plant in Pennsylvania. In real life, something like this would almost never happen, but this situation was believable enough for this story. It turns out that Katherine is losing her show after many years because of low ratings and there are many scenes of stressful talk show reinvention debates with Molly and Katherine that I thought were very well done.

There was the expected screenplay paradigm in this story as a major conflict comes in the middle, followed by resolution at the end, and I thought the ending was a strong resolution to a very good story.

This is Mindy Kaling’s first screenplay but it comes off as a story written by a more seasoned screenwriter. The best line in this movie was “people who hate themselves do whatever they can to make other people feel the same as they do”. A great line, and very true of real life and the cut throat world of working for other people.

The Rotten Tomatoes for Late Night are a very solid 81% and I agree with this rating and highly recommend this movie.

As for the latest sequel in the Men in Black series, the newest movie “Men in Black International” has most likely has ended this movie franchise, because this is a bad movie. If I were a Hollywood executive I would recognize the long term financial windfall these movies will provide and protect the franchise by making sure there was always a great script first, before large amounts of money was invested for special effects. Once again, the same mistake has been made by an executive who believes that name recognition and special effects are all that are needed, not the long term commitment required for a great screenplay. In my opinion this movie was bad in every aspect, including both the acting and the story, that was boring and all over the place.

Men in Black International stars Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson and Liam Neeson. As far as Neeson, he probably just agreed to do this movie for the money and never read the script. A bad sign for me was looking at my watch many times, waiting for the 2 hours to be finally over and it was never over soon enough.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a very low 26% and I agree with this rating. This movie should be missed with the possible exception of die hard Men in Black fans, but even for them this is a pretty bad movie.
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The movie “Tomorrow Man” is about an unlikely pairing of two single people in their 70’s who at first seem very similar, but we find out that Ed, played by John Lithgow believes that the world will soon be coming to an end, and Ronnie played by Blythe Danner is of all things, a hoarder.

I thought the acting was good throughout this simple film about dating and the expected problems that occur in all relationships. Unfortunately most of this is rather mundane and boring in too many areas to recommend, despite the solid acting. I thought the ending was an ironic surprise that almost saved the story, but not quite enough.

I mostly agree with the below average ratings of 49% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its a shame because with a better script, I would have recommended this movie.