Early Runner for Movie of the Year

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2017)

When I saw the trailer for this movie I thought, "That's interesting. They're doing a fictional movie about Black American women that worked for NASA in the 60's." I figured that it had to be a fiction because I'd never heard of these women at all. Not a peep. This may be an indictment on myself more than anything but I don't consider myself that uninformed or inattentive that these ladies existence would completely escape me.
Having saw the movie this evening I left there blown away. Regardless of the women or their race and regardless of it being real or fake it was a brilliant production. But once you add to the mix that they were Black (which for obvious reasons was significant at that time period), they were women (see last comment), and it was a true story... the movie is elevated exponentially.
No disrespect to Muhammad Ali, James Brown, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Ray Charles, Tina Turner and others like them with biopics, but I was overjoyed to see a movie detailing accomplishments of Black Americans that didn't involve sports or entertainment. It was warming to know that we could do other things than run and sing.
But as I mentioned; this was an excellent movie in any case and it had A-listers to further solidify it. I thought Kevin Kostner (Al Harrison), Jim Parsons (Paul Strafford) and Kirsten Dunst (Vivian Mitchell) were terrific. Kirsten Dunst pulled her role off too well as a woman you'd want to physically send into orbit with no rocket. And as good as they were I think Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan), Janelle Monae (Mary Jackson) and Taraji P. Henson (Katherine Johnson) were that much better. I think this was an incredible story that needed to be told and told well. This movie did not disappoint and it was justly done.