FILM: Late Night

Mindy Kaling's Late Night is not only really funny, it's a timely skewering of the notoriously white male bastion of the comedy writer's room. Emma Thompson is pitch perfect as a 20-year veteran award winning late night comedy show host who is whip smart and with impeccable standards, but who is also jaded, has lost her edge, and has been coasting a bit on her reputation. When cancellation threatens, an endearingly over-earnest and forthright Mindy Kaling enters to set the late night world right by turning it upside-down. Like a great late night show, there's great comedy here, underpinned by some raw honesty and insight into current affairs. Who knew a writer's room could be so dramatic and so funny?

FILM: Booksmart

Booksmart was nothing profound, but it had some hearty laughs and we enjoyed the coming-of-age story, a well-worn and well-loved genre made fresh from a post-millenial perspective, and with some inventive twists. It was a bit like The Hangover but in high school and with female leads, and with the mildly raunchy farce tempered with a touch of John Hughes sensibility getting under the surface of teenage emotions. It was kind of a cool statement that the two main characters were a heavy-set girl and a lesbian, and neither of those things were the slightest bit of an issue for them, nor for anyone else. It was very iGen. Not to mention acing the Bechdel test. (Speaking of tests: I had to look up one esoteric detail which may confuse millenials or parents of millenials, but apparently the SAT has recently ended their 11-year experiment with 2400 top scores and has gone back to 1600.)