DVD Recommendations for the Holiday Weekend
Hidden Figures, a critical and commercial success, features engaging performances from its lead actors Taraji P.Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae. Set in the early 1960s, the three 
African-American mathemeticians play key roles in the nascent space program. Henson’s character Katherine Johnson is instrumental in calculating the Mercury 7’s flight trajectory, and the film manages to make scenes of rapid mathematical calculation riveting.
Toni Erdmann (Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film) centers around Winfried and Ines, a father and daughter. Winfried, who has affinity for pranks involving fake personas, is trying to reconnect with his serious daughter who’s left for a business consulting job. His attempts to build a bridge involve creating an alter ego, Toni Erdmann, an eccentric life coach who keeps showing up at Ines’ various work functions. The movie is a funny but touching character study.
The Expanse is a science fiction series with a compelling political narrative centering around a police detective, an officer on an interplanetary ice freighter and a United Nations executive. Set two hundred years in the future, people have colonized the solar system but over the course of the show the characters uncover a conspiracy which threatens human survival.
Tags: DVDs