Ask HN: Movies that motivate you?

Lord of War.<p>An extremely cool and informative movie, and utterly underrated IMO. One of my all-time favorite movies, I watch it once or twice a year.<p>From IMDB:<p><i>"In the 1980s in Little Odessa, the Ukrainian immigrant Yuri Orlov decides to change his economical life and becomes an arm dealer with his brother Vitaly Orlov. His business of gunrunner supplying illegal weapons in disturbed areas of the planet increases with the end of the Cold War, and Yuri bribes a Russian general to sell most of his arsenal. Meanwhile, he becomes a millionaire and uses his money to seduce the beautiful Ava Fontaine and they get married, having a son. The detective Jack Valentine chases Yuri trying to put him in jail, but in the end he understands that Yuri is a necessary evil for the interest of his nation."</i><p>The movie portrays Yuri (Nick Cage, whom I normally dislike intensely) in shades of grey rather than a black or white stereotypical Hollywood character. He drags his mixed up brother (Jared Leto) into his arms smuggling business as his business partner. Valentine (Ethan Hawke) is the straight-up Interpol agent on his case that won't break the rules under any circumstances, even if he can get away with it.<p>The movie deals with themes like family, love, politics, and business extremely well. The ending isn't the typical sunshine and puppy dogs either, but reflects what is most likely to happen in real life.<p>It has some great quotes also:<p>Without spoiling too much, there's one point where Yuri tries to get out of the arms trade (diversifying away from core strengths) and into honest import-export but it doesn't work out too well - "The margins are too thin".<p>When asked why do you continue to deal arms, even when wealthy - "Because I'm good at it".<p>"I've sold guns to nearly ever army except the Salvation Army".<p>Movie Poster Quote: "There's a firearm for every 12th man, woman and child on earth. The only question is...." (big puff on cigar) "...how do we arm the other 11?"<p>Trivia: in one scene, Yuri is running guns into Africa on a cargo plane. Literally <i>one week</i> earlier, the exact same plane was running guns into the Congo.<p>Great movie, can't recommend highly enough.

Apollo 13 - Great story on the following<p>1) Overcome obstacles - So many times people get discouraged after a setback and never get back on their feet. When the astronauts knew that they could not reach the moon, did they throw their hands up in the air in despair?<p>2) Communication - The team in Houston had to work together and communicate amongst themselves to resolve the problems faced by the astronauts. The ultimate demonstration of great communication was when Houston and Apollo 13 communicated well with each other to deliver the products. So many offshore projects fail despite being on planet Earth shows how important good communication is.<p>3) Ingenuity - Making do with what the astronauts brought to fix the carbon dioxide poisoning shows ingenuity. So many times, people lament about not being able to deliver because of lack of resources, lack of manpower etc etc.<p>4) Teamwork - The team in Houston brought together the finest mind to bring solutions to the table. Not forgetting that they needed a great team on Apollo 13 to deliver it. How many companies fail because of a lack of good team<p>5) Working well under stress - What could be more stressful than working under a tight deadline, where you know that when the deadline is over, people will literally be dead<p>6) Inspiring leader - Someone was commenting something to the effect that this is a tragedy for NASA, when the leader commented "On the contrary, this has been our finest hour". How many companies have leaders who cannot inspire their followers and failed?<p>7) Faith that it will ultimately work out - Ultimately, there is only so much we can do and rely on faith. Most notably, the re-entry of the rocket<p>Faith in yourself and your team - To achieve the common objective, they have to have faith in everyone in the team. This really helped them through the periods when they kept having setbacks<p>8) Perseverance - They faced problems after problems, yet everyone peservered on. How many people have that kind of perserverance?<p>9) Working towards a common goal - They all worked as a team towards the common goal of bringing the astronauts back alive. How many projects fail because people were more interested in their own agendas and have different goals from the companies<p>10) Ability to change their "business plan" - Though the original plan was to get to the moon, ultimately their business plan had to change to "saving the lives of the astronauts". Though this wasn't really a choice for them, but to businesses, it does demonstrate that you might need to change your business plan if it is necessary for your survival.<p>11) No finger pointing - Not once during the crisis did anyone said "It wasn't my fault, it was his". This is something which is common in corporate world.<p>12) It is based on real life. Nuff said

Primer.<p>It's about some engineers who burn the midnight oil on their side-project, a start-up, and sort of accidentally discover something amazing.<p>"If you ditch work this afternoon, and promise to do the few small things I ask you; I will in return show you the most important thing that any living organism has ever witnessed."

Office Space.<p>Motivates me never to work at that kind of company again. I've had good luck with companies in general, but a couple had strong resonances with Initech.

Apollo 13, mainly because of scenes like this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTGiLVj9r2g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTGiLVj9r2g</a>

La vita è bella (or in English: Life is beautiful). The main character and his son are taken to a concentration camp and still manage to have fun. It shows how we can use our mind to make even the worst situations a little less worse, very inspiring.

In what way does Boiler Room motivate you? It seems to me like it say make money the only thing in your life, destroy all your relationships and screw over those who have loved and cared for you, do everything to get money. Is that it?

A friend of mine gave up drugs completely after watching "Requiem for a Dream"

Wondering why some peoples choice of movie is being downvoted. Someone asked a question, other people answered it. Just because you don't like the choice of movie, doesn't mean you should bury their opinion.

Shawshank Redemption. Never give up.

Pirates of Silicon Valley, Iron Man, and I, Robot (I'm a robotocist).

Fight Club : A bit over the top, but works for me.<p>Cidade de Deus (City of God) : Overcoming adversity, based on real life story.<p>Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (Amelie) : Beautiful movie about seeing the world in a different way. Love is worth fighting for. Don't be afraid to be eccentric.<p>Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) : Even the harshest repressive regimes cannot re-educate and brainwash all the humanity out of people.<p>Das Boot : How I feel when I need to finish a project while the management throws "depth charges" (feature requests ;-) ) at me.<p>Hotel Rwanda : People are capable of both extreme violence and extreme kindness.<p>Zerkalo (The Mirror) by Tarkovksy : Nostalgia. Reminds me to keep connected to my parents and family. Eventually they'll be gone, with only dreams and memory fragments of them left.

The 13th Warrior.it is all about being strong and having a will that is stronger than steel. "hurry up and meet dead before your place is taken"

The West Wing. It's not a movie but it has the same motivational impact on me now that Star Trek had on me when I was a kid.

Is it wrong to say Blow? Makes me want to be a big time drug dealer.

300 - just something so aggressive about that movie. It's like cinematic Sun Tzu or something...

Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/</a>

Glory <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097441/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097441/</a>

Touching the Void - I love this legendary true story of two mountaineers' first ascent of a peak in the Andes for the survival aspect of it. Grit, determination, and patience are three qualities I truly admire. It is a must watch even if mountaineering/climbing doesn't interest you.<p>Apollo 13 - for how ingenuity, teamwork, and a calm head can help you overcome the most challenging of problems. I wish I was born in that era and had the opportunity of working among <i>that</i> group of people. The pursuit of a cause greater than oneself.<p>Shawshank Redemption - much has been said about this movie.<p>Forrest Gump - odd choice I know, but it's a remarkable story of serendipity. We often fail to realize just how much of life is purely a matter of chance.

The Thomas Crown Affair<p>Spy Game

A Beautiful Mind

Hackers every time. It just makes me want to go code something

"Sen no Rikyu" ( <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098287/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098287/</a> )

Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Contact. Do unto others, start something BIG, persevere no matter what life throws at you, and never, ever give up.

The Pursuit of Happyness Trailer: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ</a>

Glengarry Glen Ross - the original template for Boiler Room.

Smokey and the bandit

Real Genius

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Gattaca.

rudy and august rush.

π

Hostel part 2. Because the heroine of that movie is incredibly goal-oriented. By the end of the movie she becomes the shrewd, decisive, powerful woman she was meant to be.<p>Oh and also that movie about the clash, Rudeboy. But that's mainly because we do a drinking game, and take a shot every time Ray Ganges acts like a victim, or slurs his speech. This helps with downtime. Or maybe it helps create downtime?

Metropolitan. I can't really say why, but it gives me a feeling of hope in it's quiet way. Also Ghost Dog and Garden State.