Lessons in Chemistry

PART JULIA CHILD, part Marie Curie, with the movie-star glow of a Kim Novak, brilliant chemist Elizabeth Zott (the luminous Brie Larson) is ahead of her 1950s times.

- MATT ROUSH

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She channels her analytic genius into the kitchen when toxic sexism within a California college’s lab subjects her to humiliation from her patronizing colleagues: “You are just not smart enough,” says her smarmy boss.

She’ll show him, and everyone else. When circumstances thrust her before a TV camera, where she demonstrates her culinary prowess as host of the bare-bones Supper at Six, her clinical approach—“Cooking is not fun. It is vital work”—is an unexpected hit. Housewives take notes when Zott speaks. Her producer (