Tag: Jim Parsons

Biographies are weird. They should generally be saved for people who have changed the world or done great things in their life. But what about those great people who people don’t know about? Those are the really important biographies that we are missing and we don’t know we are missing. We don’t need another Biographical film about Steve Jobs now, for instance. And we didn’t know we needed a biographical musical on Alexander Hamilton.

And that is where Hidden Figures comes in. Celebrating the lives of a few individuals who you didn’t know you should know.

And with this regular introduction basically done, I will note this is the second year in a row with a very Pro-NASA movie, along with last years The Martian.

They wouldn’t be legally allowed to watch The Martian on a TV that small. It just wouldn’t be right.

Hidden Figures is about three women, all working for NASA at the Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson) is our lead, a brilliant mathematician since she was a kid but held back by her gender and skin color. There is also Mary Johnson (Janelle Monáe), another brilliant mind. Both of them are Computers, people who check the math and solve longer problems for the “Real engineers” and workers at NASA, basically a bunch of white men.

There is also Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), a computer herself, but basically running the entire colored department without getting the job title of supervisor. Three women, all hoping to do something better.

Katherine gets a temporary assignment to be a computer for the Space Task Group, a big room full of white male engineers trying to figure out how to predict where their capsules will land AND how to get their rocket out of orbit to get their astronaut at a predicted landing. It is led by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) who barely has time for the head engineer (Jim Parsons), let alone a colored women. Spoiler, she ends up doing the most important math.

Mary faces trying to apply to become a real engineer, but requiring to take classes offered only at an all male school, so she has to go to courts to fight for the right to take the classes. And she has a husband (Aldis Hodge) who doesn’t always agree with the fights she chooses.

And Dorothy, she really wants to be a supervisor, but her actual boss (Kirsten Dunst) continues to seemingly thwart her on every turn. Dorothy is also worried about their whole division being canned when the IBM comes online and does the computing for them. So she sets out to learn Fortran and become an IBM operator.

Also featuring Mahershala Ali as a love interest to Katherine and Glen Powell is John Glenn. Don’t get confused.

I couldn’t handle Chad Radwell from Scream Queens playing a serious role.

Hidden Figures could be renamed “That’s Just The Way Things Are: The Movie” and really drive the same point home. I lost track of how many times a white OR black character uttered something similar but it was definitely more than five times. They wanted to make sure you know these women were facing struggles, there were many opportunities against them, and it took a long, long time in the movie before they started to get any wins.

It could be coming from a state of modern day feelings, but it really dragged down the film in my mind. Making a few quick references would have been fine. But it just felt like it was piling on without letting you escape, which may have been the point, to give that experience. It just made for a less enjoyable film.

Focusing on more than just Katherine was a good idea, or else the film would have felt very repetitive. The other two plot lines gave a nice break to that, giving us something different to focus on to keep the movie from staying stagnant. Henson truly does change during in her role, playing something completely off character for her. She does a great job, but at the same time, she does a few stereotypical nerd things too many times. Including pressing her glasses back up her nose after doing something particularly impressive math wise, this happens again, at least three times.

Hidden Figures tells an important story. It highlights three women that should be known. But it gets bogged down in other messes without truly ever reaching any full potential.

I have written many times about how disappointing DreamWorks has been in the animation department. The TL;DR is that all of their movies are terrible, bad, or average, unless they involve Training Dragons or Fighting Pandas. They have two good series right now, but everything else has been pretty bunt or miss. I liked Shrek too, sure, but not really anything post Shrek in that series.

Going in to see Home, I was already biased. Mostly because DreamWorks made a short called Almost Home that wasn’t too exciting. It premiered last year, and was kind of shitty. They showed it before at least two of their movies too, so I had to see it a second time and go “Yep, still don’t like it.” So when I found out it was a tiny prologue to a movie coming out this year, I of course was not excited.

I definitely wasn’t excited when I found out about the voice casting. Well, one person was exciting. The rest seemed to be the now standard big names for big names sake in order to make money.

Seriously. This movie has almost nothing going for it ahead of time.

Can’t even give me a full mustache to be excited about.

The Boovs are known for only a few things: Their color changing based on mood, their tentacles, and their ability to run away. They are great runners. They run from any threat and go based on probability. If something has less than a 50% chance of a success, the run. Captain Smeck (Steve Martin) is their leader because he is the smartest and best at running away. He was even able to get them to run away from the Grok (Grog? I really don’t remember) alien race. But now they are running from this big bad enemy, and they think they have finally found a place to hide.

Earth!

So they put all the Humans in one big colony in Australia, leaving the rest of the planet for themselves! Unlikeable Oh (Jim Parsons) isn’t the same as all the Boov. He likes other things so he is weird and makes many mistakes. Including inviting the entire galaxy to his new apartment warming party. Including the evil alien race by accident. Whoops. So he is now on the run, having a big bad mistake.

And while on the run, he runs into Tip (Rihanna), short for Gratuity. Yeah. Apparently they were able to get every human except for one little (old? hard to tell) girl. She says middle school, but her voice screams 20 year old. She wants to find her mom (Jennifer Lopez), he just wants to escape and make things better.

So they work together! Traveling with a slushie based car hover craft and running away from everyone else, who also wants to run away. Especially when the big baddies come along too.

Jeez. What a mess they have made. Also there is Kyle (Matt Jones). Fuck you, Kyle.

Tip was named as such after her friends gave her a helpful hint on living life to the fullest.

Yeesh. So Rihanna didn’t fit that character at all. DreamWorks tends to have that issue though. The Croods was 100% awkward because of Voice Choices. So Rihanna made her girl sound way too old. Jim Parsons worked as our main character. It was pretty great. Jennifer Lopez was pointless as crap. She had very few lines, overall maybe three scenes technically. No reason to have a big name in such a pointless role. (Or, maybe that is the best place for a big role?). Martin did pretty good at his Captain, reminding me a bit of Sgt. Bilko, but more shitty of a character. And I am actually happy for Matt Jones, getting to be top listed as the only other character with any significant lines.

It is quite obvious why they brought in Rihanna though. She made a whole damn CD for this movie. Half the songs were song by her, J-Lo threw in one as well. And they all sounded kind of the same as a result. It became accidentally funny by the end, hearing the same different song, one after another.

And finally, I got really annoyed by some minor inconsistencies. They had some poor plot decisions to make the movie move forward, their reason for Tip not getting taken was silly, and then other small things like, taking all the pointless toilets away from the area, and then still having houses with toilets. Just minor, rookie movies at the end.

But guess what. This movie was actually still entertaining. It was funny on numerous occasions, and you really do grow to like Oh and Tip by the end. Odd voices aside, Tip is great in that she is a strong independent black woman who don’t need no Boov in her life, for the most part.

The animation was also spectacular at times. Dreamworks has always tended to make some pretty movies, and this one is no exception.

I am able to see through all the poor choices that this movie made in production and with the plot. The movie itself, as an experience, visually and character wise, is much better than the cover would make you seem. Yay for a movie changing my mind! Well done DreamWorks. Now I don’t feel so bad about having to wait so long to see Inside Out.

I have wrote before about the secret feud that must exist between Zach Braff and Josh Radnor. They both were the stars of long running comedy sitcoms that were ingrained in pop culture. They also both directed movies, Braff had Garden State and Radnor had HappyThankYouMorePlease. Both, very indie drama/comedies.

But then Mr. Radnor changed the rules. No longer willing to just copy Mr. Braff, he went and directed a second movie called Liberal Arts. Not only that, but the very indie movie dealt with sex. That is a huge game changer.

So Braff looked at Radnor, knowing he had to direct another movie to get back at Radnor’s arrogance by jumping the line. He decided to direct and write a film called Wish I Was Here, trying to out indie the latest indie movie of Radnor. Braff just had to use the power of Kickstarter to do it. On plot alone, he might have done it too. Braff was attempting the very rare, and usually very good, indie family road trip movie.

With at least one Turkleton by his side.

Now, this is a story all about how Aidan Bloom’s (Zach Braff) life got flipped-turned upside down. Hmm, not entirely true. One could argue it happened after his mom died and left a sizable sum of money to his brother (Josh Gad) who seems to be wasting it all. One could say it has been bad for the last couple years, as he is a struggling actor, unable to find work in LA, living in a shitty home. His wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), is working at a shitty job with annoying coworkers and is taking out her frustrations on her husband who isn’t providing income.

But at least his kids (Joey King, Pierce Gagnon) are going to a good school. They are in a private Jewish school, thanks to funding from his father (Mandy Patinkin). But even that is about to change. Looks like his cancer is back, and he wants to use the rest of his savings for a risky procedure to maybe get rid of the cancer for good. Maybe.

Well, Aidan didn’t have a good life in public school, so agrees to home school his kids. But does he know how to teach them? They are quite different, and he wasn’t the smartest in school either. But with so much in his life going sour, Aidan really doesn’t even know what to do. According to the Rabbis he is failing, that is for sure.

Also featuring Braff’s friends. You already knew Donald Faison was in here, but what about his Garden State buddies, Jim Parsons and Michael Weston? Natalie Portman was presumably busy.

Braff literally carried around his Kickstarter money until the film was finished. Every last scene.

I know a lot of people were disappointed with this film, calling it “Not Garden State” but this film wasn’t going for Garden State at all. Garden State was about depression, this film just has depressing subject matter. I was completely wrong with the genre though, the trailers made it seem like a road trip movie, and there is some traveling, but most of it takes place around LA.

It is about a man trying to cope with his existence, with what his family expects of him, with what others expect of him, and whether or not he truly is the reason that everything in his life is falling apart.

The film also has a strong indie feel, especially when Braff gets caught up in his imagination (not like JD). But it doesn’t feel so indie that I am pissed off by the end, wondering what the entire movie was about. That’s an indie stereotype. This film sort of celebrates the bizarre of every day ordinary life and of raising a family. And it does a decent job at the story it wants to convey.

Funny and serious, Wish I Was Here was better than I thought it would be, and certainly better than Liberal Arts, which I have to compare it to. Just arguably both of these gents had better first films than their second films.