Ask HN: Movies that motivate you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1349566

by luminary • 16 years ago

26 50 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

The title says it all. I finally watched Boiler Room and it motivated me in a weird way; specially the group interview scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvICN8DNMpY

braindead_in• 16 years ago

Shawshank Redemption. Never give up.

Ascendancy• 16 years ago

Agreed. Either get busy livin', or get busy dyin

mhartl• 16 years ago

That's goddamn right.

wherespaul• 16 years ago

The Pursuit of Happyness Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ

Artifex• 16 years ago

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

kksm19820117• 16 years ago

The Thomas Crown Affair

Spy Game

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

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?

kenshi2• 16 years ago

If anything Boiler Room is a morality tale saying you shouldn't let the pursuit of material wealth destroy your relationships and that their are no shortcuts to success. That's what I got out of it anyway.

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

The idea is not bad, but the film itself should have been executed better. For me, in order to deem a movie inspirational it would first have to be a good movie (good cinematography, acting, and story). I feel that Boiler Room was missing on all those criteria.

pavelludiq• 16 years ago

Apollo 13, mainly because of scenes like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTGiLVj9r2g

scorchin• 16 years ago

Glory http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097441/

wazoox• 16 years ago

"Sen no Rikyu" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098287/ )

ig1• 16 years ago

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.

FreeRadical• 16 years ago

Smokey and the bandit

enterneo• 16 years ago

A Beautiful Mind

rabidgnat• 16 years ago

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

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

That was one of the saddest movies I have seen. A great film, very well shot, good sound track, good actors. However, I don't have a desire to see it very often, because it just depresses the hell out of me.

Darren Aronofsky's other movie -- Pi is also great. Highly recommended.

speek• 16 years ago

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

rradu• 16 years ago

Ditto on Pirates

kschua2• 16 years ago

Apollo 13 - Great story on the following

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

8) Perseverance - They faced problems after problems, yet everyone peservered on. How many people have that kind of perserverance?

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

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.

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.

12) It is based on real life. Nuff said

trafficlight• 16 years ago

What was your 13th bullet point?

kschua2• 16 years ago

Actually this part "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" was to be a bullet point in itself, making it the 13th :)

HN, we have a problem

kenshi2• 16 years ago

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.

SingAlong• 16 years ago

Well, I upvoted them back to normal :)

Anyway here's my list:

Even if you don't watch this movie called Any Given Sunday, you can find Al Pacino's 5-min inch-by-inch speech. That's the best I've seen. You can look it up on youtube. Worthy 5min :) It sort of dopes you with inspiration.

My favourites (may mostly include lesser known movies):

"The World's Fastest Indian" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/) It's based on the real story of Burt Munro, an old hobby biker, from New Zealand who sets the world's fastest land speed record on his Indian motorcycle beating all odds like an unfit, aging body (with prostrate and a ticking heart) and very little money to spare. It's not known that much. But Anthony Hopkins is good in that movie.

This movie is a bit different, there are no bad guys and it's really awesome to watch. Gives you a very different perspective of the world ("everybody is good" sorta thing). It left me in tears after he breaks the world record in the end.

Others: Dead Poet's Society ("Carpe Diem - seize the day"), Walk The Line and a 1990 movie called Chaplin (for which Robert Downey won an Oscar for playing Charlie Chaplin) and ofcourse Forrest Gump ("life is like a box of chocolates you'll never know what you get")

Also Mongol (Story of the rise of Gengiz Khan told from a different perspective). Some other language. But you'll get sub-titles.

And if you like Bollywood (Hindi) movies, try "Lagaan" and "3 Idiots" (this is a must watch).

After reading a lot abt Chariots of Fire, I'm going to watch it this weekend.

EDIT: if you like watching action cartoons, you should try watching Transformers - Cybertron series. Although gets a bit repetitive after a few episodes (loop: "beat villian. he returns again"), the "we are a team" quote echoes thru-out.

P.S: If you notice closely in Forrest Gump, when Tom Hanks is narrating that his friend put his money in a fruit company and it seems like he's looking at a letter for shareholders, you'll notice that the letter contains Apple's old 'colorful apple' logo :D

wvl• 16 years ago

I think it's a rule in Hollywood that sports movies must be inspirational. In addition to Any Given Sunday, you've got:

  * Invictus
  * The Blind Side
  * Rudy
  * Remember the Titans
  * Miracle
  * Rocky
  * Karate Kid

And that's just a few of the genre.

eljufr• 16 years ago

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

He's referring to the movie Pi, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/ The HN crowd would certainly find it to be interesting.

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

I also recommend it. I love that movie.

okiejonwilliams• 16 years ago

Primer.

It's about some engineers who burn the midnight oil on their side-project, a start-up, and sort of accidentally discover something amazing.

"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."

jokermatt999• 16 years ago

That movie is also motivating for how it was made. It had a budget of 7000, and they managed to make a great film out of such a tiny allowance.

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

Good point. It shows you have a good sci-fi movie without astronomical special effects budgets. That's a lesson for lean startups.

chriseidhof• 16 years ago

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.

plinkplonk• 16 years ago

Office Space.

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.

patrickk2• 16 years ago

Mmmmmmm, yeeeeeaaaaah

themullet• 16 years ago

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

cjbprime• 16 years ago

Real Genius

smallhands• 16 years ago

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"

J3L2404• 16 years ago

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.

patrickk2• 16 years ago

Lord of War.

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.

From IMDB:

"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."

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.

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.

It has some great quotes also:

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".

When asked why do you continue to deal arms, even when wealthy - "Because I'm good at it".

"I've sold guns to nearly ever army except the Salvation Army".

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?"

Trivia: in one scene, Yuri is running guns into Africa on a cargo plane. Literally one week earlier, the exact same plane was running guns into the Congo.

Great movie, can't recommend highly enough.

car• 16 years ago

Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

Upvote, I like the movie.

I am wondering though, how does it inspire you?

Mankhool• 16 years ago

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.

rdtsc6• 16 years ago

Fight Club : A bit over the top, but works for me.

Cidade de Deus (City of God) : Overcoming adversity, based on real life story.

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.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others) : Even the harshest repressive regimes cannot re-educate and brainwash all the humanity out of people.

Das Boot : How I feel when I need to finish a project while the management throws "depth charges" (feature requests ;-) ) at me.

Hotel Rwanda : People are capable of both extreme violence and extreme kindness.

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.

awk• 16 years ago

Gattaca.

coryl• 16 years ago

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

kimfuh• 16 years ago

rudy and august rush.

matth• 16 years ago

Pirates of Silicon Valley

ivenkys• 16 years ago

Glengarry Glen Ross - the original template for Boiler Room.

dnsworks• 16 years ago

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.

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?

blizkreeg• 16 years ago

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.

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 that group of people. The pursuit of a cause greater than oneself.

Shawshank Redemption - much has been said about this movie.

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.

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