How often, lately, as you've lived your life, have you wondered if the freedoms you're exercising now will persist through to the 2020 election? Hidden Figures, directed by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent), is a canny and necessary crowd-pleaser in which not one moment feels like life itself. But, together, in their superb Hollywood falseness, they accrete into a portrait of our best idea of our national character while still exposing bitter truths about who was allowed to be what back in that age of presumed “greatness.” It's big and broad, subtle as Sunday School felt-board parables, each moment sweated over by the filmmakers to ensure it communicates clearly to 10-year-olds and hard-of-hearing grandparents. But few of those moments insult the intelligence of the rest of us — and I expect that anyone can find inspiration in the script's (by Melfi and Allison Schroeder) attention to the small, concrete steps real people make to create change.