ARRIVAL

When aliens show up on Earth, Amy Adams, for the second time, gets to make contact with them.

After entering a Kryptonian vessel as Lois Lane in Man Of Steel (2013), here she is going into some strange, intimidating UFO that looks like a humongous rugby ball dubbed "the Shell".

Adams, along with fellow-egghead Jeremy Renner, is needed by the army because she is the only super-genius linguistics expert who can hopefully communicate with the aliens' squishy-circles language, which seems weirder and harder to understand than even the southern drawl heard in the television show Duck Dynasty.

"Language is messy and sometimes one can be both," says Adams, explaining the importance of differentiating between weapons and tools urgently before misunderstanding triggers an accidental inter-planetary war.

HIDDEN FIGURES

This movie looks like Apollo 13 meets The Help meets every Oprah Winfrey empowering moment.

Taraji P. Henson heads a feisty trio of brainy but overlooked women who come up against racial and gender prejudice in Nasa's white, male- dominated scientific enclave of the 1960s.

"There is no protocol for women attending," Henson, the smartest mathematician around, is told as she is shut out of a meeting.

"There's no protocol for Man circling the Earth either, sir," she retorts.

At that point, I went: "You go, girl."

Tay Yek Keak