He’s a Bottle-Rocket Scientist. He’s the…
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Week of April 14, 2017
Space would be more populated if it had
free WiFi. First up…
Hidden Figures
The real reason NASA never employed female
astronauts was because there were no kitchens on-board.
Furthermore, as this drama documents, the
1960s space program was also racist.
When Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), NASA head
engineer, is perplexed by a geometry problem, he brings African-American
mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) up from Langley to
help solve it.
Unfortunately, the segregation and sexism
of the Sixties keeps her from fitting in with her white, middle-aged male
contemporaries.
Meanwhile, Katherine’s equally brilliant
friends (Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe) experience their own discrimination at
the hands of their bigoted superior (Kirsten Dunst).
A well-acted and aptly written account of
the unpublicized contributions that African-American women made to the space
race, this biography is inspiring on a number of fronts, specifically the
social inequalities that continue to plague society.
Incidentally, NASA also made the first
black astronaut sit in the back of the shuttle. Green Light
The Bye Bye Man
Being haunted in the 1960s wasn’t as scary
as today because their SPFX make-up sucked.
Luckily, the majority of this horror movie
occurs in present-day.
Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend
(Cressida Bonas) and their friend (Lucien Laviscount) rent out an old house
where a homicidal rampage played out in 1969.
During a home séance an enigmatic entity,
The Bye Bye Man (Doug Jones), emerges from limbo and begins driving the friends
insane with hallucinations of infidelity, all because they said his name. With
help from the only survivor of the massacre (Faye Dunaway), Elliot sets out to
stop Bye Bye.
Badly acted in both eras by actors who
don’t deserve the title, this inept adaptation of an obscure work of
crypto-fiction is amateurish at best - the villain is derivative and the scares
are nonexistent.
Besides, monsters wouldn’t be so sensitive
about their names if they weren’t so dumb sounding. Red Light
***Knick Names***
Candyman
Before 1992, the only black male that would
appear when you said Candyman was Sammy Davis Jr.
But thanks to this horror movie, this
hook-handed fella started showing up as well.
A student studying urban legends, Helen
(Virginia Madsen), stumbles across a character from inner-city folklore that
emerges from mirrors and guts you with his hook if you say his name five times.
Helen later learns that Candyman (Tony
Todd) was a cultured African-American lynched in 1890 for loving a white woman
- who looks like her. His ashes were scattered over the housing project he now
haunts.
Horror novelist Clive Barker’s urban take
on the Bloody Mary myth, this seminal slasher movie has a solid backstory of
social importance. And while the scares are dated and the script stale, the
villain is still iconic.
However, the worst part of living inside of
a mirror is getting covered in pus.
He’s a
Mirror Image Consultant. He’s the…
Vidiot
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