Tareau Barron

Movie Review 10: Hidden Figures 

Ok First of all, I would like to commend myself for maintaining my composure and staying focused on this films great story. I say that because I was looking at Taraji Henson’s curvy booty all movie long. In those nice, form fitting dresses. Yea I said it. What?? Yea she’s on my greasy list but she is still fine. Anyways Tareau! Hahahaha.

Well I snuck in my usual Mike & Ikes and went to the 955am showing of this film. If you know me, I dont watch movies on premier week because I hate the annoying crowds. But at 955am, only folks were in the theater were the elderly and most was black. 👏. Does it matter? Well if you know my me, I feel we as black people do a terrible job supporting ALL facets of black culture.

Anyways this film starts off in 1926 in Virginia. A young mathematical genius by the name of Katherine Johnson (neé Hobard) is the talk of her rural town. Her family learns that she can decipher quadratic equations at a very young age. After going to the states only colored school for gifted individuals, the film fast forward to the early 1960’s where a grown Katherine Hobard (Taraji Henson) who is a widowed mother of 3, is with her 2 companions stranded on the side of the road on their way to their jobs at NASA in Langley Virginia. Katherine’s two companions are Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae). Dorothy is a brilliant mechanic, extraordinary organizer, and the proverbial leader of the colored women who work at NASA. Mary is a sassy, sexy, aspiring engineer who hopes to become one, but due to the segregation laws in Virginia, she cannot attend school.

While at NASA, NASA’S director of the space task unit Al Harrison  (Kevin Costner) is calling for the greatest math geniuses to work for their team. NASA is in direct competition with the USSR to see who can get a man to the moon first. Or for a lack of a better words WHO will control the skies. (Read between what I am saying 😉🤔) NASA is not only feeling the pressure from the USSR, but also from their own government, who are extremely pessimistic on NASA due to the USSR’S accelerated success.

Katherine is hired by Vivian Mitchell  (Kirsten Dunst) who is very rude to the colored women throughout the film. Katherine’s new job is to be the human computer. A human computer handles all of the mathematical functions, theories, algorithms etc. Unfortunately for Katherine she is the only colored woman in a room full of White men, who takes extreme offense of her presence. Katherine has it very hard at her new position. Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) plays Al’s number one Mathematician but is threatened by Katherine’s presence. He constantly berates her while “hinting” she shouldn’t be there.  No one wants to help her, she finds out the math on the space trajectory last, she has to travel over a half a mile to use the restroom, hell she even has her own “colored coffee pot.” Nonetheless, Katherine continues to do her job the best that she can.

Meanwhile Dorothy has been adopted into being a supervisor without the actual title or pay. Their former supervisor has left so Dorothy has assumed the matriarchal role of the black ladies in the math department. Mary works for her and also in the engineering department and is struggling with the fact that she can not become an engineer due to her skin color.

Katherine meets an army Colonel by the name of Col. Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali) at a church picnic, and starts to take a liking to him. Even though he offends her by suggesting that women can’t compute complicated math equations, they eventually wed later in the film. (His proposal was one of the realist ways to do it. Like a G)

Without giving away the rest of the film, it was a great story and they actually used photos and themes from the real ladies whom the movie is based off of. (Once the end credits are rolling).Great soundtrack too. Even though there is that controversy going on with Kim Burrell’s comments, it doesn’t take anyway from the movie.
I give this movie an A+. 

I do have to add that of course this movie is going to do well but it is also going to reinforce what myself and Dr. Garland has been saying: movies like this will reinforce institutionalized racism. People of all colors will watch it and feel good about black people and then forget about everything. It will be the proverbial “I’m not a racist I have a black friend” mantra. And to know what we are talking about, you can view it here on my last movie review about Collateral Beauty. Here’s the link https://thecouchsports.com/2017/01/01/movie-review-9-collateral-beauty/#comments

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29 comments

  3. Great review, brother! I am looking forward to this film. So, Taraji’s on the ‘greasy’ list??? Hmmm… I’m hearing the real revelation is Jaenelle, with this being her first major acting role. We definitely need more films like this. I can’t help thinking one, this film will do some numbers at the box office- the ‘ingredients’ are all there, and two- the folks who need to see it will make a way even out of no way.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thank you for the love man. Janelle will also be in that film about the gay brotha coming out soon or I don’t know if it’s already out. She certainly played her role great. Yes it will do great

      Liked by 2 people

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  4. I still can’t get over the fact that I have never heard this story.
    I’m glad you gave it an A+.
    Even if everybody watches it and forgets at least they can’t say they didn’t know.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. Good review! Did this movie win an award the other night? I saw your girl Viola Davis got some recognition for her role in Fences. Did you peep the way they kept confusing the titles of the films “Hidden Fences” ? lol

    Liked by 2 people

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  6. Finally saw this on Friday! This movie was excellent! Out of all of the movies that starred black people this year, I’d say this was the best one. I do think Octavia Spencer needs to work on her range because she seems to come across the exact same in every role, but other than that…perfection.

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