There is a moment between the previews and the opening credits of Top Gun: Maverick where Tom Cruise appears as himself, seated in a director’s chair, and welcomes the audience to the film. This is not the first time a film’s lead actor has welcomed an audience and thanked them for coming since the Coronavirus Pandemic began in March 2020. John Krasinski famously did this in the spring of 2021 before the much-delayed A Quiet Place Part II, arguably the biggest and most anticipated movie (with all due respect to Tenet) that made its return to a wide-release audience.
Category Archives: Glen Powell
Hidden Figures (2016)
I get knocked a little bit when I talk to my friends about Hidden Figures. The Ted Melfi (St. Vincent) directed movie based on the untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson – Hustle & Flow, Four Brothers), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer – The Help, Snowpierecer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe – Moonlight, Made in America) as brilliant African-American women who were hired by NASA and who served as the brains behind the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race and galvanized the world. When I rip on the movie a little bit, it is not because I think it is not good, but rather because it’s just a little too predictable and too PG for me. While I really do enjoy and recognize a movie based on a true story, I appreciate a darker, edgier movie that much more. When I say a movie is too Disney for me, it doesn’t have anything to do with Disney at all. It has to do with a movie being too toned down for my jaded self to be able to appreciate it. And, unfortunately, that’s my feeling on Hidden Figures. Based on the preview alone, I had no intention of seeing it unless it got nominated for best picture. When it did, I reluctantly dragged myself to the theater and even paid the extra three dollars because it was playing in my theater’s featured auditorium. With all of that said, Hidden Figures is by no means a bad movie. It just felt like a “been there, done that” type of movie for me. I feel like I’ve seen movies about overcoming adversity, fighting segregation, achieving a goal in the eleventh hour, and much more of what this movie does. In fact, I’m often drawn to this type of movie. But, as someone who sees movies a lot, I just feel like I’ve seen this exact movie a lot recently, and it just lacked the intensity and edge that I appreciate at this point in my life.
Continue reading Hidden Figures (2016)