I Highly Recommend This Movie

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2017)

A friend who is a part of the entertainment industry once told me that when the audience applauds after a movie is over, that's a really good sign that a movie is good. And that's what happened when "Hidden Figures" ended--the audience applauded.
"Hidden Figures" is based on the true story of, principally, three African-American women (in the 1960s, when the story takes place, they were known as Negroes or coloreds) who worked for NASA, just at the beginning of the space race.
Taraji P. Henson, of "Empire" fame, plays the leading character, Katherine G. Johnson, a math genius; Octavia Spencer (nominated for a supporting actress in any motion picture Golden Globe for her role in this movie) portrays Dorothy Vaughn, who ends up becoming proficient in computer coding languages such as FORTRAN; and Mary Jackson, NASA's first black female engineer, is portrayed by Janelle Monae.
All the main characters and all the supporting cast of characters face discrimination (the movie does take place in the 1960s), but they plod on with their lives and their mission to prove themselves and the worthiness of their race. White co-workers. of course, look down on them--not only are they women, they're also Negroes. It might be hard for some to accept that this was the "normal" back in the '60s, and it grates on us that this was allowed to happen, but it was and did.
Kevin Costner, who plays Al Harrison, a fictional composite of NACA (the precursor to NASA) and NASA directors, is intended to be the reasonable and unprejudiced head honcho, and I would like to think that he truthfully portrays how these men thought and behaved, but I'm doubtful because that's just not the way things were back then.
There is lots of good dialogue in this movie, which provided many a giggle, but the story is not intended to be a comedy, nor is it. And the archival footage reminds those, who lived during this time and experienced first hand the space race, what a magical and marvelous time it was.
It is a movie I highly recommend seeing.