Dogs Bark

The Envelope Pleased - - Moonlight (2016, USA, Color, 111 min) - - 25 February 2017

Strongly recommended. Moonlight is the first queer story to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and it’s fascinating that the snafu happened during the presentation. The grace of both movie production teams mixed the joy and pain of both movies. The strength of the trio of actors playing the lead character blend these rival emotions with wisdom and subtlety. As Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Straight Outta Compton and Trevante Rhodes, Westworld) hesitatingly occupies his sexuality, it seems clear that being gay only further complicates coming of age amongst poverty and drug abuse. Mahershala Ali (Hidden Figures) richly deserves his Oscar. His performance - - again - - gives a deeper understanding of the ambiguity of humanity in moral distress. Great performances by Janelle Monáe (Hidden Figures) and Naomie Harris (28 Days Later...) lend texture, light and color to a beautiful composition constructed from Barry Jenkins’s (Medicine for Melancholy) script and directing.

Leaning In To Orbit - - Hidden Figures (2016, USA, Color, 127 min) - - 4 February 2017

Strongly Recommended. Really! When's the last time that Euler’s Method provide the plot hinge of a Best Picture-nominated movie? And who could imagine Cookie from 'Empire' as a computer of elliptical orbits? It happens in the delightful Hidden Figures and in real life during the Mercury space program. The luminous Taraji Henson (Hustle And Flow) plays NASA mathematician Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Katherine Johnson whose brilliance brought John Glenn back to Earth alive. I’d put up with 50 #OscarsSoWhite ceremonies for this celebration of the life of Johnson and her African-American colleagues, Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). The beauty of the movie is the way science, mathematics and Black culture are intertwined seamlessly in the lives of these beautiful ladies with no sugar-coating but no bitterness. Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) and Kevin Costner (Wyatt Earp) back them up.