THERE are some movies that serve that exact purpose of providing entertainment on a lazy day. There are others that keep you glued to the screen with all the action-packed craziness and gunfights that are often imitated by the youngsters in the neighbourhood every so often.
For some reason Fast & Furious just popped into my head, right up there with London Has Fallen. It reminded me of a recent outing with the partner who spotted some toy guns and quipped that they were perfect for a “gunfight” with our preschool nephews Savea and Nonu. Yes, there’s still a kid in all of us.
But on any given day, movies such as rom-coms or romantic comedies and Hallmark productions often prove to be a great way to keep family time in check minus the four and five-year-olds who would take one look at the rom-com on the screen then scurry off to find the next best thing of interest anywhere in or outside the house. But if they’re like my three-year-old niece, then surely family time would be watching her favourite Barbie adventure or anything cartoony other than what the rest of the family prefers. She gets her way 99.9 per cent of the time.
When this happens, most of the rentals we get on DVD have to be watched later on and without distraction. That quiet time allows us to really get into the plot of the production.
So over the past few days, we finally had some time to catch up on the movies we wanted to watch without cartoons in the way. By the way, if you’re stuck choosing a great feature film, try watching past shows for the Academy Awards. Some great films are usually brought to the forefront.
Anyway, there were two films I picked up — one while watching a past year’s Academy Awards and the other from a coming attraction on one of the DVDs. The films were Spotlight and Hidden Figures, great biopics when you think about real life issues and the messages portrayed in each film respectively.
The first, Spotlight, is based on the true story of how The Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese.
It was directed by Tom McCarthy and starred Mark Ruffalo as American journalist Mike Rezendes who is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, Michael Keaton as investigative reporter Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson and Rachel McAdams who played another investigative reporter, Sacha Pfeiffer. Keep an eye out for Liev Schreiber and his role as Martin Baron, the editor at the time who launched the investigation.
According to media reports, Spotlight is a 2015 American biographical crime drama film that follows The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the US and its investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests.
It is based on a series of stories by the “Spotlight” team that earned The Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
Now, some may find this film distasteful or what Catholic News Service’ John Mulderig described as a “movie no Catholic will want to see. But whether it’s a film many mature Catholics ought to see is a different question entirely”.
While the film features mature themes and references to some sexual acts which means parental guidance is required if your young ones are watching too, it ultimately dwells on a very pressing issue that continues to make headlines the world over — child sex abuse — and the role communities play in addressing it.
You really have to watch it with an open mind without bias against any religious group or institution to fully understand the issue and messages, as well as the impact on child victims, some of them, who even in their adult lives, still cannot fathom or come to terms with the abuse they endured at the hands of someone so trusting and in a position of authority.
It dwells on societal values and what some people are willing to do to cover up the issue for the sake of the church they belong to or their reputation in the community.
One of the most powerful lines in the film came from attorney Mitchell Garabedian (played by Stanley Tucci), who said, “if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them” — a quote that really hit home when we look at how widespread the crime is, even in our tiny Pacific Island.
The film generated a lot of interest even from the Roman Catholic Church, with the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano also publishing a column assuring that the compelling movie was “not an anti-Catholic film”.
Spotlight won best picture and best original screenplay at the 2016 Academy Awards among other notable awards.
Another fantastic biopic to keep an eye out for is Hidden Figures, based on a true story about a team of African-American women who provide National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with important mathematical data needed to launch the program’s first successful space missions.
If you’re a keen follower of the TV series Empire then you’ll know “Cookie” played by Taraji P. Henson will not disappoint as NASA physicist and mathematician Katherine Johnson, who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
The star-studded cast in Hidden Figures also includes Octavia Spencer who won an Academy Award in 2012 for best supporting actress in the film The Help, two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst and four-time Primetime Emmy Awards winner, Jim Parsons, best known for his role as Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory.
The film focuses mainly on Johnson’s technical work at NASA, calculating trajectories, launch windows and emergency back-up return paths for many flights from Project Mercury.
This included NASA’s early missions of John Glenn ad Alan Shepard, the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon, through the space shuttle program, and plans for a mission to Mars.
It also shed light on two other women, Dorothy Vaughan (played by Spencer) and Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monae) and the challenges they faced to succeed in a specialised field that seemed to be male-dominated and of course, doing all that at a time when racism and discrimination were still rife in the US.
Vaughan, also an American mathematician, was the first African-American woman to head the personnel department at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor agency for NASA while Jackson was a mathematician and engineer at NASA, who was also recognised for her work in helping women advance their careers in science, engineering, and mathematics.
The women, in their fight for respect and equality, brought feminism issues to light and overcame many obstacles while on the ladder to success in their professional careers. You really have to commend them for their perseverance and determination.
These are just two of many notable biopics that have brought real-life experiences to the big screen.
Other than the films being inspirational in their respective genres, they are also very thought-provoking and will definitely give viewers something to really think about when we look at society, our values and relationships with one another.
