See these HIDDEN FIGURES

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2017)

There are times when you see a movie "based on a true story", that you roll your eyes and realize that this is a VERY sensationalized account of what happens. And then there are times, such as what happened with the new film HIDDEN FIGURES, that all I wanted to do was to go home, find out more about it and wonder "why didn't I know more about this."
HIDDEN FIGURES is a very good film about a very interesting part of our recent history that deserves to have more light shed on it.
This film tells the tale of the...ahem...HIDDEN FIGURES behind the "Space Race" in the 1960's - most intriguingly - the contributions of African-American women.
As told by Director Theodore Melfi (the underrated ST. VINCENT - if you haven't seen this, then your'e in for a treat) from a screenplay by Melfi and Allison Schroeder based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, HIDDEN FIGURES focuses on the efforts of African-American women, embodied by 3 of them - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson - as they navigate racism and sexism to "just do our jobs" and help put the Gemini 7 Astronauts in space, and the Apollo Astronauts on the moon.
This easily could have been an indictment of how America treated women and minority races in the sixties - but it is much more than that. This film shows the heart and courage of strong Americans in the face of adversity and overcoming those adversities with strength and dignity.
Much of this strength and dignity can be traced to the 3 actresses in the lead roles - Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae - who incorporate these women with nobility, but avoid the trap of making them "Saints", they are real women working towards some basic goals in their everyday lives. Spencer is nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Vaughan, but I thought Monae's work as Jackson was just as strong, and maybe a little stronger. This might be surprising as Monae is fairly new to acting, but if anyone caught her work in the Oscar nominated MOONLIGHT, you can see this performance is no fluke. I wonder if her nomination was hindered by votes for her split between those two performances.
The real hero of this film, however, is the lead performance given by Henson as Katherine Johnson, "The Computer". Her portrayal of Johnson showed her as charming and frustrated and strong and impotent and smart and unsure - most of it at the same time. Henson has been overlooked for her performance during this awards season, and that is too bad, she is TERRIFIC.
Ably assisting these 3 are Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons as 2 co- workers who are "not sure" of these ladies and the always dependable Kevin Costner as the boss of all of these people. Joining in are Oscar Nominee (for Moonlight) Mahershala Ali and Aldis Hodge as spouses of Johnson and Jackson. These two are on too little to make a difference, but you can see something more simmering under there.
And that is where this film suffers, a bit. It glosses over the racial and sexual tensions of the time to focus on "a disparate group of people coming together for the common good." This film ended up pulling it's punches and it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had it not.
But, in the end, Director Melfi ends up with a film that can be called "feel good" and that is good enough, indeed, to bring these HIDDEN FIGURES into the light.
Letter Grade: A-/B+
8 (out of 10) stars and you can take that to the Bank (OfMarquis)