30 Movies Featuring the Workplace, In Honor of Labor Day Weekend

Movie #19: We Interrupt This List… – Broadcast News

Year – 1987

Written and directed by James L. Brooks, Broadcast News is a prime example of not-a-bad-part-in-the-movie movie. Offering a glimpse behind the scenes of broadcast journalism in the ’80s – though I hesitate to think it’s changed that much, save for technologically – William Hurt, Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter manage to play to their characteristic strengths, yet never feel like caricatures. – DG

Movie #20: Professional Poultry – Chicken Run

Year – 2000

As workplaces go, working on a chicken farm is probably pretty low on people’s list of “dream jobs”. It’s even lower if you’re a chicken. And it’s even lower if your farm is about to switch from selling eggs to selling pot-pies…chicken pot-pies.

From the creators of Wallace & Gromit came this delightful kids film lovingly rendered in painstaking stop-motion animation. Mel Gibson (back when we were still allowed to like him) is the voice of Rocky, the chicken who will lead their escape. The film is a brilliant cartoon full of slapstick for the kids and sly reference for their parents. And it is, to date, the highest grossing stop-motion film of all time. – TOK

Movie #21: You Know…For the Kids – Hudsucker Proxy

Year – 1994

This is what happens when you take mega-producer, Joel Silver, though uncredited, then still indie-quirky Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi, put them in a box, and shake vigorously. Though initially rejected by the collective critical consciousness, this throwback screwball comedy of a naive nebbish, played by Tim Robbins, questionably promoted to president of a company is absurd, dark and overblown in the best of ways. As a bonus, you get Paul Newman as an unsavory manipulator behind the scenes, clearly savoring the offbeat material. – DG