Friday, January 6, 2017

Hidden Figures (2016): Review

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This movie was absolutely fantastic and I recommend it to everyone who enjoys a quality film. It had a good script, was well cast and acted, and had some tension and excitement to it. Even thought I knew what was going to happen as it is based on true life events, I was still interested and riveted about what would happen next. It has been a while since I saw a family friend movie that was so well done and that I enjoyed as much as this one and the fact that it is based on real life events just makes it even better. I was hoping that this movie would be good but it definitely exceeded my hopes.

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Hidden Figures is a movies based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. The movie follows three of the amazing women in the book Katherine G. Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson; Dorothy Vaughn, played by Viola Davis; and Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, who were amazing mathematical minds that worked for NASA during the space race of the early 1960s. During this time women, especially African-American women were fighting for their rightful place among the men in the mathematical, engineering, and early computer fields. Also staring; Kevin Costner as Al Harrison; Jim Parsons as Paul Stafford; Kirstin Dunst as Vivian Mitchell; and Glen Powell as John Glenn.

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This movie was based on all three of the women's stories but it seemed to focus mainly on Katherine and then Dorothy's journey, with Mary thrown in for a little extra. The other characters where there to show some of what these women were facing as working mothers and community members.  Although the movie was great and I look forward to watching it gain there was no real development of the characters, especially the supporting characters to the main three. There was some of how these women were pushing for rights and to be treated for the intelligent people that they were but it did so in a family friendly way and the focus was more on the space race and what happened then the emotional struggles. That being said it did show the discrimination and segregation but again in family friendly film kinda way.

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Overall, I really enjoyed the film and even some of the not the best but okay CGI didn't bother me. It was not big on the CGI but I did not find any of it distracting or really obvious. The outer space could have been done much more big budget but the fact that most of the shots were tighter into camera worked.

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The casting was spot on for me and I do not think I would have enjoyed the movie or felt invested in the story if the cast didn't pull me in. There were a few that were not suburb, like Dunst, but she was alright. It would have been nice to have more connection to the families of these women and I feel like it would have worked better to cut out more of the non work scenes as there wasn't enough time to really develop these relationships as the main focus was on these women as intelligent NASA employees and not mothers (which is perfectly fine for me).

As I said, I look forward to watching this movie again and will probably read the book as I want to learn about the fourth women featured in it that didn't make it into the movie. If you have read it let me know if it is worth a look.

My Rating = 3+

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