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Plot Summary: Based on a true story! A team of African-American women provide NASA with important mathematical data needed to launch the program's first successful space missions.

Director: Theodore Melfi

Writers: Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi

Runtime: 127 min

Main Cast:

• Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson
• Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan
• Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson
• Kevin Costner as Al Harrison
• Kirsten Dunst as Vivian Mitchell
• Jim Parsons as Paul Stafford
• Mahershala Ali as Colonel Jim Johnson

Review: by Anthony

A true story about three black women scientist working at NASA and their "hidden" contributions being told on the big screen? Oh yeah, you can count me in for this #BlackGirlMagic.

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Hidden Figures tells the true story of the contributions made by Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson for NASA’s Project Mercury.  Around this main story of the manned space flight mission in the race for space against the Russians are personal stories of a single mother assuming the roles of mother and father and the increased workload and burdens that bring, a story of obtaining recognition for hard work while seeing the future and preparing for it, and lastly a story striving to be the first in a new field bucking both racism and sexism blockades.

What I Liked:

“How can someone so smart be so ignorant.”  That’s a quote from a gentleman that sat behind me at my viewing of Hidden Figures. Racism, sexism, and other -isms and ignorance based bigotries do not hold up to any sort of logical thought process, and that’s something Hidden Figures portrays well.  While ignorance of any kind is dumb and useless, it’s especially frustrating in the workplace.  So when that social sickness is viewed at NASA of all places, where the best and brightest minds are supposed to shine for the betterment and advancement of the United States of America, it’s down right un-American.

The strength of Hidden Figures is in the cast. There’s Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globes winners and nominees that really do the heavy lifting here and it’s those strong performances that draw you into the subplots while the main story develops.

Each character has a really good scene or two to flex their acting chops.  Henson and Costner have a great scene when Costner inquires as to why Katherine Johnson (Henson) is always missing for 40 mins at a time throughout the work day only to learn everything Katherine has to endure on a daily basis not just as a woman working at NASA but as a black woman as well.

Olivia Spencer’s scenes with her Supervisor Vivian Mitchell (Dunst) are great.  Dunst is completely condescending and throws racist passive aggressive insults toward Spencer while Spencer masterfully counters and parries.

Even Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson had her time to shine in a courtroom scene, fighting to chase and cross the every sliding goal post that she’s facing.

Something I couldn’t help but ponder while sitting in the theater, I wonder if there’s a quantifiable statistic of how far America has been set back due to sexism and racism.  There are countless movies that document real life stories in various fields from the scientific world, athletics, and music where the best product and achievements are always met when all peoples are invited to the conversation.  So just imagine if those communities weren’t handcuffed by segregation and sexism, how high could we have reached.

What I Didn’t Like:

This was a solid movie all the way around with few area for criticism.

Some of the secondary plot stories involving the main characters and their “home lives”  were a little underdeveloped and rushed.

Images Courtesy of IMDB