Hidden Figures

Last night my parents took me and my sister to see the movie Hidden Figures (we are reinstating movie night in the new year).  I suggested this particular movie because Octavia Spencer is getting a lot of Oscar buzz for her performance and, even though my parents weren't very enthusiastic, they ended up loving it as did I.  It is a feel-good movie that will have you cheering.  It tells the true story of Katherine Johnson (Teraji P. Henson),  Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three brilliant African-American mathematicians working at NASA during the space race.  Johnson is asked to compute the trajectories for John Glenn's historic orbit around the earth and the crowd cheered out loud when Glenn (Glen Powell) rejects the numbers computed by the IBM and asks for the "girl" to check the figures before he will agree to the launch.  There is also an extremely powerful moment when the head of the Space Task Force (Kevin Costner) learns that Johnson has been walking to the colored bathroom, in another building quite a distance away, and then destroys the sign outside the colored bathroom declaring that everyone pees the same color at NASA.  Vaughan secretly learns how to program the new IBM (while the employees of IBM are unable to get it running) and eventually becomes the first African-American supervisor at NASA.  Another cheer-out-loud moment comes when Vaughan's supervisor (Kirsten Dunst) calls her Mrs. Vaughan rather than Dorothy.  Finally, Jackson is assigned to work with one of NASA's best engineers and, when he suggests that she become an engineer herself, she must fight to be allowed to attend an all-white school.  The crowd cheered again when she wins her court case.  All three women give very affecting performances (I actually had tears in my eyes several times) in an incredibly compelling story.  I loved it, my family loved it, and the audience, judging by the incredible applause at the end, loved it, too.  I highly recommend this inspiring movie!