Hidden Figures

On occasion, if you're asked to work longer hours for the same amount of money, the company you're working for is trying to ensure their profits increase every month/quarter/etc. and targeting your unpaid overproduction as a source of intangible revenue.

Red flag.

Make sure you're trying to find a new job if stuck in such a situation.

However, if you happen to be working for NASA (or have a stable professional position) and you're immersed in a reasonably wild competition with the Soviet Union to do all kinds of crazy space stuff, suppose that competition would be with China these days, and the Soviets are winning, as they are in Hidden Figures, I suppose spending some extra unpaid time at work wouldn't be that bad, if there are no available public funds to pay for the overtime, and you are capable of taking part in something vital.

In space.

Not necessarily in space, but Hidden Figures uses ye olde space race to cleverly promote congenial race relations as a matter of national integrity.

It's too bad a member from a minority group has to be Einstein-smart to break down racial barriers.

You would think common democratic decency would have done that centuries ago.

The film's solid, a feel good family friendly examination of three highly intelligent African American women that's neither too sentimental, nor too fluffy.

I love Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan).

The women boldly yet humbly challenge institutional bigotry through hard work and determination as opposed to violence to make changes in their stilted dismissive working environment.

Some cool features.

Rage and passive resistance are matrimonially engendered as Mary (Janelle Monáe) and Levi Jackson (Aldis Hodge) discuss inflammatory political subjects.

She loves expressing herself yet also loves Levi so she intelligently lets him know when her boiling point has been reached before passionately pontificating with resolute clarification.

He works with his hands but is impressed with her desire to become an engineer and buys her some new pencils out of respect for her mind and the difficulties associated with her approaching studies (she becomes the first African American woman to study at a white school in Virginia).

Dorothy creatively borrows a book from the white section of her local library which she uses to remain employed as computers show up on the scene.

She learns so much that she's able to save 30 odd jobs after teaching the people working for her how to adapt, thereby making their contributions operationally essential.

She doesn't just take the money and run.

She gives back to her community.

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), whose mathematical gifts intergalactically defy limitations, demonstrates why it's so important to never dismiss pieces of information that seem out of date (thereby promoting technical libraries), by using ancient knowledge to solve a contemporary puzzle, proving that sometimes inventing the new means discovering something that was contemplated thousands of years ago.

And Kevin Costner (Al Harrison) kicks ass throughout.

What a great role to play.

I'm going to watch Waterworld again.

I tried that with Alexander last winter (although I had never seen it before).

Double whoops!

I bet Waterworld's better.

Hidden Figures is a wonderful film.

St. Vincent

Concealed tender attachments, buried beneath a gruff miserable parched exterior, foul to the uninitiated, frozen finicky finesse, a babysitter, Bukowski shorn and shackled, providing advice, caring for the next generation, a single mother's compensation, working as duty requires, loving and trusting yet unsuspecting, situation confronted, solution, agreed upon, he will care for my child, I will work and have faith in benevolent common decency, the grip and the gristle, asserted hardboiled exactitude.

Opportunity hasn't knocked for struggling Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray) for some time, then one day it bounds and pounces, his skills and acquired knowledge valuable once again, a sympathetic listener, there, to learn from his life's lessons.

Sleaze and pettiness have taken root over the years, but within their ornery sizzles, character and sacrifice still remain.

Bullies therefore are confronted.

Harrying fortunes assay.

I didn't think St. Vincent would be so well done, but it slowly and slyly reaps inversed inventive concessions, atlantic rapscallions, an impounded sense of goodwill and understanding, hanging on the edge, making ends meet, taking necessary risks, combusted communal curmudgeons.

It's not too cheesy, it's not too perverse.

Melissa McCarthy (Maggie Bronstein) takes a secondary role within and I thought an extended scene with her and Murray mutually fuming, both of them possibly throwing things, would have worked well.

They interact a number of times, but their encounters are too short and sweet, too openly one-sided.

Murray is fantastic though.

So's the kid (Jaeden Lieberher as Oliver).

Naomi Watts too.

Nice to see her showing up in films again.

Complex.