Molly's Game (2017)

Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut is very Aaron Sorkin. It runs 140 minutes, and that's with Sorkin-speed speech. Acting in a Sorkin film requires skill. You must memorize your lines by heart so you can spit them back at rapid speed without thinking. That's acting. And it's never easy dialogue. It's brainy. There are unfamiliar words. You gotta become familiar with poker terms and American law. Even for a generally educated person, it can be a little difficult to follow at that pace. But that's what's so great about Aaron Sorkin. He doesn't talk down to you. He pulls you up. He's a smart guy that makes the audience keep up with him. The narrative structure in this movie is a little weird, with Chastain narrating her story in her book being read by her lawyer preparing for court. But it works. Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba are both great Sorkin-actors. Everything comes around full circle. Nothing is forgotten, everything is deliberate. I appreciate that Elba is cast as her lawyer, an smart and articulate and influential black man--the only black man in a story almost exclusively populated by powerful white men. It's tight writing about a strong female lead that doesn't require sex to tell an interesting and intense story. I have a feeling Sorkin will be doing more directing in the future.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Hidden Figures is an excellent, straightforward crowd pleaser. It highlights three African American women at West Area Computers division at NASA who faced challenges at every turn. It is an important story for our generation, hopefully inspiring girls and African Americans and other POCs to enter STEM fields. The story draws attention to the fact that minorities need to be so much more brilliant to achieve the same level as less brilliant white men.  Octavia Spencer's character has the foresight to see that her division is about to become obsolete and being so self-reliant, she teaches herself Fortran. Not only that, she teaches her co-workers Fortran to keep them relevant and indispensable. They need to be that much better to keep their jobs. Also, I think it's hilarious that computer was a human job. From the perspective of 2017, it's funny to think about doing all that math by hand. It sounds like a nightmare.

I thought Pharrell and Hans Zimmer's music was very fitting for the era. The acting is all phenomenal.  Octavia Spencer is the Oscar-nominee, but i think Taraji P. Henson steals the show in her pivotal outburst. And Janelle Monae has had some amazing year.