I saw ads for this on Disney Channel. I suggested to Grandma that we go see it, and she was okay with it but not ecstatic. We both walked out agreeing it was one of the best movies we had ever seen. It became a part of both of our top 10s. And you want to know the biggest twist? My Grandma is NOT a film buff like I am! The story is interesting, and makes you appreciate civil rights. Few movies in this age have moved me this much. That should be enough to make you want to see this-and you absolutely should!

Three brilliant people aim to have great careers at NASA. But this is 1961. And they are women. And black.Our three women - and I use the word "our" because this film is so effective at helping you to identify with them - are maths whiz Katherine (Taraji P Henson), trailblazing computer programmer Dorothy (Viola Davis), and engineer Mary (Janelle Monae). All three are gifted beyond even their contemporaries at NASA, but all three are held back by the double "handicaps" of sex and colour. This film tells their stories.There are several stories here - as well as the individual stories of the three women, there is also the story of fighting to get John Glenn into orbit and safely returned to Earth, and a variety of what would be called sub-plots if this were fiction.But it isn't fiction. Dramatised for the screen, yes, but the substance here is true, and it is sobering to realise that the colour bar in the USA was fully operational so recently.For all that we are presented with a dispiriting picture of how things were, we are never lectured to. This film is rich and heartwarming, helped by the portrayal of these three great women whose achievements and real-life pictures are shown with the end credits. These are strong characters, nicely drawn. We like them, and are pleased to see that their abilities and achievements are finally recognised. The performances here are all good - the principals hold the film, of course. but Kevin Costner as the Head of the Mission Control maths department is another sympathetic character, while Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons are effectively less so.The period detail is good. The film is paced well, subject only to a bit too much time given to Katherine's half-mile runs to the toilet. And there is quite a lot of humour. For a two-hour film, the time never drags. And, for a film which addresses a worthy, socially important subject, it never forgets to be entertaining.I enjoyed this rather more than some of the other Best Film contenders for this year's Oscars.

This movie starts out somewhat slow, but wait and get rewarded with a tremendous feel good end part. What 's the story? The americans want to be the first to put a man on the moon in the sixties. In those days when toilets and buses still had seperate places for people of color it was a big surprise for me to find out that a lot of very smart african-american ladies were the DECISIVE help for this succes to put the first man on the moon. 3 african-american ladies in particular were absolute whizkids who outsmarted any Nasa mathematician of that time. Incredible true story.Mind you racism against african americans in those days was really violent and widespread. Martin Luther King got shot late in the sixties, a year before the actual moonlanding. Amidst that chaos in american civil rights history, these african american ladies helped out with the mathematical calculations that were absolutely necessary to succesfully put the first man on the moon. Fascinating story, that is really well acted too, by relatively unknown actresses! The story describes the conflicts these ladies get into when they have to endure the racism of their fellow collegues at NASA. This may sound all very heavy, but on the contrary, this film achieves a definite feel good mood, while handling very serious race issues. Very safe and predictable feel good story, despite the serious issue of racism. Made with the intent to offend nobody. No violence is shown. Everybody becomes a winner in the end. An almost fairytale like telling of a history of racism. That's my only criticism: it is very sweet and rosey, the way that period was depicted. There is even some romance in it and also some good humor. But this sugarcoated movie has got the advantage that it can be seen by kids too. And that's important, because they have to learn about this part of american history. "Hidden Figures" is a fascinating TRUE story, that is an uplifting and inspiring tale, about conquering racism by working together.

On the way home from seeing Hidden Figures, I flipped my car radio on to WRKF, the Baton Rouge public radio station my wife and I have listened to and supported since we moved here in August 1982. It came on in the middle of Bob Dylan's Ring them bells, the program being Nick Spitzer's American Routes. Although that song was recorded in 1989 at the end of Bob's Christian period, long after I'd quit paying attention to him for all practical purposes, the music, words and message echo his protest songs of the early 1960s.. Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf Ring them bells for all of us who are left Ring them bells for the chosen few Who will judge the many when the game is through Ring them bells, for the time that flies For the child that cries When innocence diesI wouldn't have known or recognized the song had I not bought the Amnesty International Chimes of Freedom 2012 compilation of 72 Bob Dylan covers two years ago. For that collection, Natasha Beddington, a popular young British singer whom I'd never heard of prior to that, performed a lovely cover of Ring them bells in pop R&B style. I was in the process of reviewing all the songs and researching the artists when my Mom became ill and I never finished that project.Next was the Byrds' 1969 psychedelic folk rock cover of Dylan's This wheel's on fire, the version the Zambo Flirts modeled an arrangement on and often performed live back in the '70s ("Please notify my next of kin, this wheel shall explode"), followed by Dylan's completely hilarious after all these years Talking World War 3 Blues from 1961. By the magic of synchronicity, 1961 was the year Alan Shepard piloted the first US manned space launch, an event at the center of the action of Hidden Figures. The relevance of my long prelude: walking from the theater to my car I'd already been transported by the film back to the time of the Space Race, a signature geopolitical contest at the height of the Cold War, when it was the West against the East, the Free World against the Communist Bloc. The old friends I grew up with and other peers will remember seeing PSA's showing Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the podium at the UN and shouting (according to the subtitles) "We will bury you!" We remember John F. Kennedy challenging us to "Ask not what your country can do for you..." Back then (and long afterwards) anyone who publically questioned the Russians being our mortal enemies risked being the subject of a dossier in J. Edgar Hoover's desk, something that affects my thinking to this day. America was desperate not to be beaten in any venue by the Russians. When their Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space five weeks ahead of our Alan Shepherd, the nation and the much-heralded NASA space program were deeply humiliated.This is the context of Hidden Figures, the fact-based story of a group of highly intelligent, motivated and competent black women performing critically important work for NASA. I'm writing this review instead of my usual practice of doing background research on films based on history (a somewhat endangered discipline as I write this although I still believe it will outlive the current era of alt-facts). Thus, I have not fact-checked the film for accuracy. Be that as it may, Hidden Figures is a beautiful movie. It focuses on three real people, all black women employed at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA who worked on Project Mercury. The goal was to send astronauts into outer space and bring them home safely. Putting humans into space has always been a dicey proposition. The scientists and engineers at Langley had the heavy responsibility of designing, building, testing and approving the rockets, space vehicles and flight plans that had a significant chance of resulting in not just more national humiliation but the horrifying public deaths of our ultimate fly boys, the hand-picked guys who epitomized the Right Stuff. The task required bold mathematical, technological, and ergonomic innovation on a daily basis under intense pressure.The lead actresses, Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and the irrepressible Janelle Monae are uniformly brilliant and engaging, portraying three exemplary patriots and public servants. We follow the women as they maintain their dignity under duress in the classic tradition of the Civil Rights Movement, make essential contributions to the success of Project Mercury, and hold precious private lives together while enduring the unapologetic racism and sexism of this time and place. The indignities they routinely suffer at and away from work are painful to watch, no less so for a viewer who recognizes that the struggle for opportunity, justice and basic human rights they embody is unfinished business even today, some 56 years later. Fine supporting performances are turned in by Kevin Costner as project director Al Harrison, Kirsten Dunst as the chilly supervisor of female NASA's employees, and Glen Powell as rock star astronaut John Glenn, among quite a few others. Hidden Figures is ultimately an uplifting, inspiring, feel good movie. It made me laugh, cry, and feel that pride we all have deep down of being a citizen of the USA, the ongoing experiment in self-government of which each fellow American is a stakeholder. It reminded me of who I am, the path I've traveled to arrive where I am, and, above all, affirmed who our greatest President, at another time of national crisis, once declared we all are:"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." (Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861).Go see it.