Good Movie Plus Meryl Streep

If anybody is looking for a film to help break up the winter doldrums, buy a ticket for “Hidden Figures.”  It’s the story of three black women who made an important contribution to the space race, especially so when John Glenn made his famous three-orbit trip around the earth.  In the days before computers could spit out calculations and information, calculating was done by hand, something for which the ladies were very capable of doing.  The opening scene gave us a  scene where one of the ladies as a very early girl demonstrated her problem solving skills much to the surprise of the witnesses.

 Being black women proved to be problematic.  For instance, the one lady couldn’t use the restroom in the building she worked in because it was “white women only,” so she had to run across NASA campus to find relief.  Their racial identity, plus the fact of being women in a man’s world, caused them to be looked down on.  Only through their intellect and problem solving abilities were they finally accepted.  One wonders why this story hadn’t been publicized before.  Apparently much of the work was classified preventing people from talking or file drawers from being opened.

Kevin Costner, Taraji Hensen, Jim Parsons, Kirsten Dunst, Octavia Spencer, and other actors play their parts well.  We’re glad we went.

AND, finally, someone - Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes - voiced disgust at the way Trump ridiculed a disabled reporter.  At the time the incident pricked my hide deeply.  His tendency to denigrate anyone he finds annoying does not bode well for the country or the office of the president.