Hidden Figures (2016) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2025-02-12 17:15:01 +0000 UTCHi everyone! This is my watch for Black History Month. This movie was second place in last year's BHM poll that I had put on YouTube (the poll that Glory won). Please enjoy and I'm looking forward to your comments! [Direct link here.]
✦ KL
Comments
Thanks for the recommendations! Malcolm X is definitely on the list to get to At Some Point ™️.
kaiielle
2025-02-16 02:34:12 +0000 UTCTime flies, right! And completely agreed with you. Thanks for watching!
kaiielle
2025-02-15 16:18:36 +0000 UTCThis got my vote in the poll last year. I can’t believe that was a year ago! So glad you watched this. I absolutely loved your reaction. When Katherine found the labeled coffee pot, you verbalized what we were all thinking. Your reaction to the lows of racism and the highs of their relationships and accomplishments came across less like a reaction channel and more like a person experiencing everything along side the characters. We watch so we learn. We learn so we can remember. We remember so we don’t repeat our mistakes. Hopefully.
Bryan Dempsey
2025-02-15 14:20:04 +0000 UTCI like this movie okay, although even before I read about it, I could tell that this got the traditional Hollywood "polish." Sometimes the corny, crowd-pleasing stuff works for me, like the scene of Mary arguing her case for night school, and sometimes it feels so obvious and mechanical, like when she arrives to said class and the guy acts like he doesn't have women's curriculum, and then she sits, perfectly framed, at the front of the classroom. Both of these feel like they've been basically made up to play the audience like a fiddle, but the three leads are constantly making the material work in spite of itself, like Monae's courtroom speech, or Henson yelling "a coffee pot none of you will touch!." Anyway: the Jim Parsons and Kirsten Dunst characters are both invented (both a generic conglomeration of people who opposed the women for being women, for being Black, or both), and the bit with the bathroom sign is also made up. More than anything, while I find the film enjoyable, I definitely wonder about the decision to make a movie about three Black women and then hire a white guy to direct and co-write and a white woman as his co-writer. I suppose one could argue that more white people probably needed to learn about these people than Black people, and so a movie about them that was aimed at a white audience was more essential, and I suppose it does seem to have helped increase awareness about them and their accomplishments, so I have to give it some credit. In any case, a great pair of movies involving historical figures for a future Black History Month, one a true story dramatization and the other speculative fiction, which also sort of go together, would be Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), and Regina King's One Night in Miami... (2020). Both actually involve Malcolm, with the first one being a biopic, and the latter being an adaptation of a stage play about a real night in which Malcolm, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke hung out together after one of Ali's fights.
Tyler Foster
2025-02-13 06:24:45 +0000 UTCTotally agreed!
kaiielle
2025-02-12 18:17:27 +0000 UTCreally like this one! I think the performances and chemistry between the 3 female leads was great!
codenamewitch xx
2025-02-12 17:30:08 +0000 UTCI had kept it in mind to watch at some point because of how many votes it had received on that poll - I had wanted to watch it sooner but when making Feb's schedule, I decided now is the time!
kaiielle
2025-02-12 17:20:18 +0000 UTCEnjoy! Thank you!
kaiielle
2025-02-12 17:19:53 +0000 UTCYay!! This is on my re-watch list for this month, one of 8+ movies I’ve put on my goals. I’ve seen it several times before, so watching along with you will be a delight!
Ann Bostic
2025-02-12 17:19:06 +0000 UTCCool! Glad to see this one made it. 🚀
William
2025-02-12 17:17:29 +0000 UTC
