Movies every physics lover should watch (2020)

https://www.wondersofphysics.com/2020/04/best-physics-movies.html

by vedangsati • 5 years ago

332 366 5 years ago

s_dev3• 5 years ago

I wish we could do the same for Computer Science/Software. Movies like "Travelling Salesman" or "Pirates of Silicon Valley" or "Imitation Game" would be great suggestions but typically things like the Matrix or Ghost in the Shell are recommended which for me are great movies but poor examples of the discipline.

gnull• 5 years ago

Surprized you didn't mention Mr. Robot.

s_dev3• 5 years ago

I would say "Anything that offers insight in to the world way software is" -- since Mr. Robot is entirely fictional so wouldn't qualify for me but I would add that it at least tries to be faithful to what software is. Terminology seems appropriately used it forgoes many cheap Hollywood software tropes.

beermonster• 5 years ago

Oh, I don't know about Matrix. You get to see[1] Trinity determine a vulnerable SSH is running, using nmap, only to then exploit it to get #.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U

mcphage• 5 years ago

* Wargames

* Hackers — it doesn’t get the software too right, but it nails the feeling

* Sneakers — a great introduction to social engineering

ludocode2• 5 years ago

Wargames is a great hacking movie. The ending is a little meh, but the old-school tech is fantastic. It inspired the video game DEFCON.

Sneakers is another great movie. It seems a lot more faithful to how hacking works in real life: as you said it's mostly about social engineering, not how fast you can type. And the device in the movie is at least somewhat plausible. A mathematician could in theory discover a critical vulnerability in cryptography and build it into a standalone electronic device.

Hackers is awful. I don't get the appeal at all. I'll never understand why this movie is so popular. I'd put it right up there with Swordfish in terms of nonsensical computer voodoo.

larrydag7• 5 years ago

The Matrix

nickpp4• 5 years ago

Add "General Magic" and "Halt and Catch Fire".

vidanay2• 5 years ago

Halt and Catch Fire is the best movie ever at capturing the cyclical dream-strive-success-crash nature of technology.

(With an appropriate amount of evil, mental illness, and family drama thrown in too)

TuringNYC• 5 years ago

"Halt and Catch Fire" seems more like something every tech-startup worker should watch, but totally agree on the recommendation -- it is literally the most real, most reflective TV series on the industry, focusing on the average/typical experience through the industry and life.

cm21872• 5 years ago

Office Space is probably the most representative of this discipline!

Eyght• 5 years ago

Hello cm2187 what's happening. I'm gonna need you to go ahead and not recommend movies while at work. So if you could go ahead and get back to it.. that'd be great.

geocrasher4• 5 years ago

My guilty pleasures for this genre are "Hackers" (Hack the planet!! WOOO!) and "Office Space".

One also cannot mention these without adding the excellent "Sneakers" with Robert Redford.

smusamashah2• 5 years ago

Mr Robot is a TV series about hacking where hacker simply uses social tricks and can't get past 2FA. It has lots of tech jargon.

dale_glass3• 5 years ago

I re-watched Hackers recently and it isn't that bad. They clearly did the research, and then spiced things up for more enjoyable viewing. It's not accurate, but it wasn't trying to be, and I think they got the main points across perfectly well.

Eg, there's a lot of social engineering, and taking sensible precautions like not using your own connection. The villain's plot of hijacking a control system and extorting money is perfectly modern.

Sure, there's a bunch of colorful graphics they put on top of that, but it's arguably a visual representation of "being in the zone", and something that's done in virtually every other piece of media ever. Any real job includes lots of boring work that never ends up on the screen, and you just get the highlights.

at_a_remove2• 5 years ago

Sneakers is about perfect for those kinds of movies. The major hacking facets are all represented by various specialists and it is all just barely plausible.

muststopmyths• 5 years ago

I'm probably a minority in this but I always thought "The Net" with Sandra Bullock was prescient about technology and its dangers, even if the wrapping was hokey.

CRConrad• 5 years ago

We may be in a minority, but at least you're not totally alone.

chasd002• 5 years ago

Short Circuit (mostly a kids movie) has some interesting aspects to it from a software engineer / hardware engineer perpsective.

Also some very very funny lines:

Newton Crosby: Where are you from, anyway?

Ben Jabituya: Bakersfield, originally.

Newton Crosby: No, I mean your ancestors.

Ben Jabituya: Oh, them. Pittsburgh.

----

No. 5: Stephanie, change color. Attractive. Nice software. Hmmmm.

Stephanie Speck: Boy, you sure don't talk like a robot.

----

edit: how do you add newlines?

scrumper4• 5 years ago

My 6 & 8yr old kids adored that when I showed it to them recently. Ben's character more than a little out of place these days: he's used entirely as an object of comedy (and that as a target rather than a source), does nothing for the story, and his casting would definitely not be acceptable in 2021. The rest of the movie is fun and warm though, and the robot is endlessly quotable by little voices.

mikestew3• 5 years ago

edit: how do you add newlines?

Two presses of the Enter key. If you just do one press, like this (I swear I pressed it), it will annoying stay on the same line. But

two

presses gives that sweet, sweet paragraph separation you seek.

larrydag7• 5 years ago

Not a movie but I would suggest Halt and Catch Fire

dgritsko• 5 years ago

The Social Network would be on the list for me. I remember grinning from ear to ear in the theater seeing Perl and wget on the big screen during the Harvard scenes. Great movie.

s_dev3• 5 years ago

I would count the Social Network as well. Still lots of suggestions I wouldn't agree with below my comment. The problem is many are conflating great movies that involve software/computer concepts rather than movies based on software/computer concepts.

nickpp4• 5 years ago

“Code Rush” was a fun documentary about the (end of the) Netscape era.

camjohnson26• 5 years ago

Silicon Valley on HBO is easily the most realistic tech/software story.

latenightcoding• 5 years ago

I mean things start making no sense after RussFest

ffhhj• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_computers

Favorites about real and fictional creators:

Micro Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Halt and Catch Fire

... and some documentaries like "Mother of all Demos", the history of Internet Explorer vs. Netscape, and the creators of the spreadsheet

aglavine• 5 years ago

Blackhat was pretty good

dkarl2• 5 years ago

I think as a programmer I'm way more easy going about realism when it comes to computers in movies. I get way more picky about physics, biology, sports, and other topics where I'm just a gee-whiz dilettante.

mdoms• 5 years ago

The first season of Mr Robot is excellent for computer folks.

BrandoElFollito• 5 years ago

Trinity used an actual exploit (ssh IIRC). This sets it apart some movies like Jurassic Park with the girl looking at some UI made of 3D shapes and says "unix, I know it).

Or NCIS - of which I copied for an awareness training the part where the two geeks "go though the firewall" both on the same keyboard.

devenblake• 5 years ago

Didn't know this but yup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U - scene from The Matrix Reloaded where Trinity uses nmap and sshnuke. Looks like there's a re-creation of the on-screen display here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J2IdllfHh8 but the typing is faster than in the movie.

Also, the Jurassic Park scene to which you're referring was a real picture of SGI IRIX's 3D file manager. It was visual fluff, but functional visual fluff.

salgernon• 5 years ago

Jurassic Park: That was the Button Fly Demo UI from SGI IRIX. So at least it wasn't a complete mockup. (But nor is it the same as "knowing unix". If she knew unix, she would've been complaining more.)

cycomanic• 5 years ago

Not a movie, but the IT crowd is definitely a series in that spirit and a must see!

huhtenberg2• 5 years ago

It gets boring really fast.

rado• 5 years ago

Not sure if “Mr Nobody” qualifies, but it's great. Also “Arrival”.

henearkr• 5 years ago

+1 for Arrival.

Also, Tenet was quite good. Antiparticles being time-reversed particles, jinn particles... with humans.

pqdbr• 5 years ago

+ 1 for Tenet. And the score is amazing.

doctor_eval2• 5 years ago

I found out from a colleague today that I’m not the only person who has no idea what happened in Tenet... and loved it anyway. Seen it a few times now.

skytreader2• 5 years ago

Love "Arrival" but I won't nominate it for this list. It's for "physics lovers" and "Arrival" is more for linguistics nerds; the central plot of the film hinges on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, after all.

In the same note of "sci-fi but not exclusively physics", I want to recommend "Another Earth"---very indie production, for better and for worse. Also, if you are a physics nerd, a certain plot point might irritate you. But, on behalf of the film, I ask you to grant it a bit more patience and suspension of disbelief. For me it hits the same dramatic notes as "Interstellar". Good quality intellectual entertainment.

ludocode2• 5 years ago

Another Earth is what I would call "fake sci-fi". The other Earth in the movie has almost no impact whatsoever on the story. It doesn't affect anything, the characters don't really react to it in any way, and the movie ends before anything actually happens.

It's actually a pretty decent movie, but it's a drama, not sci-fi. It uses "science" purely as an aesthetic device without actually exploring any scientific effects. If the film didn't have the other Earth in the sky the script would be identical. It would just be forgettable indie drama instead of on people's great sci-fi lists.

nebulous1• 5 years ago

Love "Arrival" but I won't nominate it for this list. It's for "physics lovers" and "Arrival" is more for linguistics nerds

Honestly I wouldn't hesitate to put it on the list (if you liked it of course). Both physics and linguistics play a part.

agbell• 5 years ago

Arrival: The short story its based on it amazing and explains things not just using linguistics but also physics. I love the movie, but it's sadly not as good, especially how it ends.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

Gravity is not for physics lovers. Its physics make no sense. And contact is more fantasy than anything else. A pretty poor list.

JimBlackwood• 5 years ago

Agreed. Glad to see Particle Fever in there though.

hnlmorg5• 5 years ago

I don't get the love for Interstellar either. Their black hole rendering was about the only interesting thing about that movie. The rest of it was predictable and generic right up until the end at which point is felt like a jumping the shark movement with its ridiculousness.

PopePompus2• 5 years ago

And even the black hole rendering was defective, because although they did GR ray tracing, they suppressed the doppler beaming effect which makes the side of the black hole moving towards the observer much brighter than the side moving away. So the image they produced was not very realistic.

iainmerrick3• 5 years ago

I mostly agree about Interstellar, but I think it was the first time a lot of people encountered the idea of time dilation.

It’s old hat in written SF, of course, but hadn’t come up much in major movies before (or at least that’s the impression I get from reactions and reviews by people who don’t read SF).

chickenmonkey• 5 years ago

I liked the picturisation of the different planets and of course, the time dilation effects. I think they're great for a general audience, who may not be exposed to the latest developments in astronomy.

fsh• 5 years ago

People love making fun of the bad orbital mechanics in Gravity, but Interstellar is no better. In the beginning they need a Saturn V-size rocket to leave earth orbit. Later they simply decide to leave the laws of physics behind and start zipping around earth-size planets in a tiny scifi-shuttle. Not to speak of the impossibility of kilometer-tall waves in knee-deep water and the ridiculous spinning spaceship scene.

jiggawatts• 5 years ago

It's one of the few realistic scifi movies out there. No aliens eating your face. No sound in space. No unobtanium. No gravity plating. Etc...

It was made by someone with attention to detail. When Cooper looks out the window, it looks exactly like the real footage of Apollo astronauts looking out the CM window.

The music is great. That can't be understated. The organ music lends a gravitas that's missing in other scifi movies.

But most importantly, it goes to the core of what I want from science fiction: it changed my world view, permanently.

Remember Doctor Mann, and his desperation to return to Earth? No other piece of fiction has made me feel that way. That utter, unspeakable, unbearable isolation of being the only human on this side of the universe. To be so far from everything that it's hard to wrap your brain around it. And if you do... you experience a Lovecraftian horror that drives you mad.

That's why I like Interstaller. It's proper, classic science fiction!

HideousKojima• 5 years ago

I loved Interstellar, but not for the physics. I thought it was a great story about the human spirit, the power of love across time and space, etc. and the sci-fi elements were there to help make it more interesting and to provide explanations for a lot of the events like how Cooper got the messages that lead to the events of the movie in the first place.

gavinmckenzie• 5 years ago

I love Interstellar despite some of the liberties it takes. For me the number one thing Interstellar did so well was communicate clearly that the universe does not care about us.

We are infinitesimally small and insignificant. I felt the scale of space and the unforgiving progress of time, as characters dealt with the emotional impact of time dilation on them, their colleagues, and family. And we, as viewers, get to experience it as we see minutes pass from our POV only to return to Endurance and realize Romilly has aged over 20 years in orbit, all alone; and Cooper’s kids have suddenly grown up without us noticing.

And as others have noted about the film before, it also relates to the phenomena we experience as we age and our perception of time accelerates. If you’re a parent, you feel yourself slipping farther and faster away from your children with each passing year. Chances are if you watched Interstellar as a parent, you felt the film deeply on another level.

pessimizer• 5 years ago

It's also the 9 millionth sf movie/series about exploring an unknown frontier and finding your father there. I have a feeling these are just wish-fulfilment portraits of the mental state of a certain type of high-achieving dude i.e. succeeding in something that no other humans have yet, and finally seeing daddy's approval for the first time.

beloch• 5 years ago

Actual physicist here. Don't get me started on Interstellar. There is so much needlessly dumb crap in this movie that I don't even know where to start, and the fact that people think it's realistic is just a kick in the pants.

Just for one example...

The crew being sent to save the Earth blasts off in a big ol' chemical rocket with stages. Yeah, fine. I guess rocket tech hasn't advanced all that much in this future. Then they land a ship on a planet in a gravity well so intense that it causes big relative time differences (Note: the gravity alone should have killed them). Then they blast off with the same ship and no big clunky chemical rocket stages. Why didn't this ship just blast off of Earth as is? The energy to get off Earth is nothing compared to getting out of a gravity well that deep! I guess Nolan thought an oldschool staged rocket looked cool.

The SFX people did some actual science to figure out the black hole visuals but, other than that, this is a far worse movie than Gravity as far as science is concerned. The new age emotions resolution was just a big ol' F U to the crowd. Lazy, sloppy writing.

There are plenty of unrealistic movies on this list, and that's fine. Some are just damned fun movies (e.g. Back to the Future). Interstellar sticks out from the pack for it's pretensions and underlying ridiculousness.

geophile• 5 years ago

That is quite charitable. Emotionally hollow and manipulative, and jaw-droppingly turgid and stupid dialog. Just a terrible movie.

the_af2• 5 years ago

I don't get the love for Interstellar either

I enjoyed some of Interstellar, but disliked the anti-scientificism. When they need to pick planet, probably humanity's last hope, you know there will be two options -- the scientifically sensible option and the "go with your heart" one -- and of course the latter is the right one. When scientists follow the scientific method they end up making a mistake, because science is cold and uncaring but nothing can stop the power of the heart, I guess.

I would really like a scifi movie that showed instances where intuition, common sense and "love" mislead you, and sometimes you just have to follow the more methodical procedure and check your blindspots.

spodek• 5 years ago

Agreed. Plus ". . . in their lifetime" is a pointless affectation.

cm21872• 5 years ago

Perhaps "Chernobyl" and "Fat Man and Little Boy" (on the Manhattan project).

Vaslo• 5 years ago

Came here to recommend Fat Man - a little overacting in it but still a really good movie without overwhelming the non scientific folks

js8• 5 years ago

There is also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_One_(1989_film), which I like better. I also really enjoyed Einstein & Eddington (from the list) for some reason.

amelius2• 5 years ago

What's wrong with the physics of Gravity?

larrydag7• 5 years ago

Travelling between orbital spacecraft is not as easy at it sounds.

troyvit• 5 years ago

Tears that float away from your face as a perfect lil' sphere ... that's what encapsulates it all for me.

mikewarot2• 5 years ago

Space is far, FAR less crowded, and you won't ever see something big coming at closing rates of 50,000 mph unless it's huge.

The cascade effects take months or years to play out, not minutes.

zwily• 5 years ago

The part where he was hanging on to the tether and then let go and flew away seemed pretty bad to me.

aitchnyu• 5 years ago

Watching this after Planates anime (2002) was so underwhelming. Its about an underequipped team tasked with retrieving space debris. It featured a kid born on moon with accelerated ageing, risk of cancer, inequitable fight for resources, token compliance of environment cleanup. Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igmZSI3kILY OP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeBPzoilfQk

miltondts• 5 years ago

The first episodes (5-6 I think?) aren't spectacular. I hate the type of humor they use (which is actually quite common for anime of the same era). But when the main story gets going, it really is one of the best hard sci-fi shows I've seen. The trailer you linked is quite good and representative of what to expect.

isatty• 5 years ago

+1 for planates

Though yes like the other comment says be aware that not all anime kicks off well, a few bad episodes at the start are pretty much expected at this point.

saagarjha2• 5 years ago

Planetes is great, although I felt the ending cheapened the themes a bit. But the reintroduction of seemingly one-off characters to tie up loose ends and advance the plot, coupled with the fairly hard science fiction, was excellent.

question11• 5 years ago

Contact was written by Carl Sagan... I believe the science holds together.

jerf• 5 years ago

There isn't much "science" in it to hold together. Obviously the entire wormhole machine, the wormhole trip, what was on the other side, etc. was fantasy, and what's left is just receiving signals.

arnejenssen• 5 years ago

"Contact" could be seen as interpretation of General Relativity. On earth, to the outside observer, it appears like the space travel took no time. On board the spaceship the time lasted much longer. I guess the space ship curved the the space-time.

ModernMech• 5 years ago

This is a list of movies that would be interesting to people who like physics, not movies that accurately depict physical phenomena. As someone with a physics degree, I've enjoyed almost every movie on this list, so I would say it has something going for it.

People watch movies for the fantasy element, including physics lovers. Some of us watch gravitational simulations all day long as part of our work. We don't go to the movies to watch them in cinematic form when we're off the clock. It's fine if they get the physics wrong imo, and again, I say that as someone who invested a lot of time and money in understanding physics.

twirlip• 5 years ago

While true, Gravity was an incredible spectacle when viewed in IMAX 3D. I would argue seeing it in a normal theatre or at home would be such a lesser experience, it would be as if you were watching a different movie.

The IMAX 3D movie conveyed the black emptiness of space, the splendor of Earth from orbit, the velocity of moving objects, and the inertia of a human body in a way that dazzled the viewer. It was astonishing.

True, the physics was wrong. By not as wrong as other films.

rcpt3• 5 years ago

"oh shit looks like we're going to miss our connecting flight? Alright let me just jump out the door and land on the next airplane"

mikestew3• 5 years ago

Gravity is not for physics lovers.

Not all physics lovers, no. Just the physics lovers who love to throw things at screens.

forgotpwd16• 5 years ago

Contact is the film every single one of my astronomy professors have recommended at some point. It may be fantasy but seems to really resonate with scientists.

rvba• 5 years ago

Jackass can lack merit in many ways, but to a high degree it is applied physics.

I often wonder if it wouldnt be benefitial to show young people how gravity can screw them.

nickpp4• 5 years ago

Apollo 11, Apollo 13, The Expanse, For All Mankind.

ajmurmann2• 5 years ago

+1 for Apollo 11. I took a day off to watch it on IMAX when it came out and it couldn't have been more worth it. I was very surprised how much the movie moved me. Just one minute in when you see Armstrong get into his space suit almost had me start crying. No idea where that came from. I guess seeing humanity do something incredible like that for once is something I really needed

EvanAnderson2• 5 years ago

Yes! Definitely see it in IMAX or Omnimax if you can. I didn't get to see the full film in IMAX, but I've seen the museum cut on OmniMax 5 or 6 times. (My 5 y/o daughter wanted to see it every time we went to our local science museum and who was I to argue? >smile<)

The film was (and is) immensely moving to me.

For me, the big moment was the footage from the command module looking down at the moon as the LEM ascends. At first the LEM is invisible. Then it's a nearly imperceptible dot amd you're unsure you're really seeing it. Finally it resolves into a definite object. Those moments moved me to tears. I pointed up at the screen and said to my daughter "That's them! That's Neil and Buzz and they're coming home!"

I knew the outcome, obviously, but I felt I could at least imagine the feelings Michael Collins was having, watching his two companions' spacecraft drawing closer-- not yet "out of the woods" but definitely moving in the right direction.

operatorius2• 5 years ago

Pi (1998) directed by Darren Aronofsky

weeeeelp• 5 years ago

That's probably more for mathematicians, but nevertheless a fantastic movie with great black-and-white cinematography.

doctor_eval2• 5 years ago

Came here to say that. He’s a great director.

hansor2• 5 years ago

It is my favorite movie of all time. Hacking hardware + hacking software + stock market + GO game + GOD

All without sex scenes, silly jokes or some out of order music...

I highly recommend this movie to everyone - I have never seen anything like it for past 20 years...

My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well. Right in front of me. Hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

operatorius2• 5 years ago

I have never seen anything like it for past 20 years...

If you like this movie's stylistics, I'd recommend you to give Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) a chance!

Both are filmed black and white, both have amazing soundtracks and have industrial and cyberpunk culture influences. The camera work and the cinematography on the tetsuo is beyond epic

larrydag7• 5 years ago

a mathematician film noir. A pretty good movie

GuB-42• 5 years ago

Pi is a good psycho-thriller, but the maths aspect is weak and physics is nonexistent. If anything, it is more religious (namely, Jewish) than scientific.

Math here is used more as a way of showcasing the main character's madness than actual mathematical thinking.

It you like maths, you may want to watch Futurama, especially the "The Prisoner of Benda" episode, where they made an actual theorem just for the episode, and the formal proof can be seen on screen for a short time.

martyvis• 5 years ago

The Man Who Knew Infinity on the life of the mathematician Ramanujan is a fantastic movie.

larrydag7• 5 years ago

That's a great mathematician movie. I would add A Beautiful Mind.

silicon24013• 5 years ago

As a fan since childhood of Ramanujan, that's one of the movies I'm most grateful for. For a mainstream movie, it provides a great amount of information, while surprisingly evoking the same reverence and awe that I've always held for Ramanujan. I would've preferred more of a deep dive into his actual mathematics to get a feel for why he is ranked so highly among mathematicians, but I accept that it would've lost the interest of a lot of viewers who watch movies for the human story without really gaining much in exchange.

Imitation Game was another great movie IMO. What are some other movies that focus on the life and works of a genius?

magicalhippo2• 5 years ago

While not a perfect film by any means, and more aimed at a younger audience I suspect, I found Time Trap[1] to be fairly interesting overall.

Similar in theme, I also enjoyed The Endless[2].

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4815122/

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3986820/

smusamashah2• 5 years ago

It was a great movie. Too few mistakes. For example voice didn't get past the time barrier/wall. People should not have been to cross the barrier either but then this film was not possible

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

Both very enjoyable movies. I do like weird sci-fi and they are both pretty mind bending.

geocrasher4• 5 years ago

I was okay with this list until I saw "Gravity" on it. It's preposterous and silly.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Reviews Space Movies, from 'Gravity' to 'Interstellar': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RkhZgRNC1k

Wowfunhappy• 5 years ago

> “If you want to know what a Spacewalk actually looks like, there is no better film than Gravity.”

Sure he had a lot of issues with it but it didn’t sound all bad.

mousepilot2• 5 years ago

I loved Gravity, obviously some of the science was bad but man what an experience, saw it in 3d, I haven't watched a 3d movie since some "wax museum" thing some time ago.

geocrasher4• 5 years ago

The visuals are stunning to be sure, and there is good reason to watch the movie. The physics, which was the focus of this list, was not one of them.

mrjin• 5 years ago

Cannot agree more. If I remembered correctly, there was such an obvious bug in 'Gravity' that in the orbit, if you want to catch up with another object in front of you, you cannot simply accelerate, or you will result in getting further from it. In stead you will have to decelerate first and then accelerate again. The result is counter intuitive, I remember that simply because I did not believe it at first and as a result we did such calculation on the blackboard while I was in high school.

silicon24013• 5 years ago

Is that because you need to decelerate relative to the planet's core to get on an orbit with a smaller radius, so that you can then increase your revolutions per minute at your existing momentum, then accelerate to get back to the orbit the other object's on? I'm trying to visualize the scenario you're describing

teraflop2• 5 years ago

Well, it depends. Over short distances and timescales, relative motion behaves pretty much as you would expect for objects in free-fall. It's only over significant fractions of an orbital period that counterintuitive things start happening, with orbital speed and height influencing each other. (You can think of this as a tidal or Coriolis-esque pseudoforce that appears to increase in magnitude as objects get farther from each other.)

In general, there are many possible paths you can take to achieve an orbital rendezvous, varying widely in how long they take and how much fuel they consume.

larrydag7• 5 years ago

Interesting. Gravity is admittedly sci-fi but so is Interstellar and Contact. The list lost me at Back To The Future.

ConceptJunkie3• 5 years ago

"Gravity" had comic book physics in a lot of places, but it was still a really good movie that opens with an amazing single shot that goes on for something like 13 minutes. I can cut it a lot of slack on the physics.

geenew• 5 years ago

Can't forget Decay, the independent zombie movie shot by CERN employees at the LHC in their free time :)

https://www.decayfilm.com/

elijaht• 5 years ago

Man, Contact is excellent. It gives me a bit of a "Seinfeld" effect where in the modern day it feels like it leans heavily on tropes but the movie itself is likely one of the founders of those tropes, if that makes sense

iainmerrick3• 5 years ago

For the ultimate example of that effect, watch Casablanca if you haven’t already. The entire script feels like it’s made of movie quotes.

eplanit• 5 years ago

It's one of the most quoted movies in history.

parenthesis2• 5 years ago

Or read Shakespeare.

wainstead2• 5 years ago

Wizard of Oz as well, like every other line is a memorable quote.

rxm• 5 years ago

I also like Contact, which I think of as Sagan’s struggle with reconciling religion and science for himself. Also, I nlike what the article mentions, I recall the book being based on the script.

treis• 5 years ago

IMHO that was a fatal weakness to both the book and movie

Spoiler Alert

The book went further by accusing Arroway of engineering a fraud instead of the "you want us to have faith" bit from the movie. But that made no sense in the context of the story. The radio signal unequivocally came from Vega and the message contained instructions for technology completely unknown on Earth. It made no sense to dispute that contact was made and something happened.

ConceptJunkie3• 5 years ago

The book came out about 11 years before the movie. Are you sure that's correct?

dudul• 5 years ago

I have no clue why Back to the Future is on this list. Don't get me wrong, it is truly an amazing movie, and I dread the day it gets rebooted - but it has nothing to do with physics.

jeffwass4• 5 years ago

Back to the Future did introduce the general populace the proper way to pronounce the ‘Giga’ prefix :-)

Edit - Wikipedia has a whole section on pronunciation, and its not unambiguous, but the original German language proposal for ‘giga’ suggests a hard G, but in the USA in 1960’s the National Bureau of Standards settled on the soft G.

When I worked as an EE back in the 90’s I regularly heard older engineers quote frequencies as “Jiggahertz”. I think once consumer-level hard drives approached GB capacity, and the prefix came to public usage, the hard G became popular again.

scollet• 5 years ago

The GIF war continues

milesvp• 5 years ago

That’s interesting. I grew up with this movie and for years just thought jiggawatts was just an absurd high number. As I got older and made the connection to gigawatts I still just assumed it was a comedic choice to use hard G. It’s certainly within character for doc Brown to use a less common pronunciation. Never occurred to me that this prefix might have commonly been pronounced this way.

jeffwass4• 5 years ago

Glad to see Primer as the first movie mentioned.

Primer is perhaps the best time-travel movie I’ve seen.

dariusj182• 5 years ago

Haven't seen it, but

it makes Back To The Future look like a children's cartoon

Do people think Back to the Future is hard to follow?

jeffwass4• 5 years ago

I wondered about that comment too.

But regarding Primer and the plot timeline, yeah, I'll just let this xkcd speak for itself : https://xkcd.com/657/

onhn• 5 years ago

If you liked Primer, the film "Timecrimes" does an excellent job at the physical consistency of time travel.

andi999• 5 years ago

Timecrimes is worth a watch.

hipjiveguy2• 5 years ago

I love time travel movies, and that movie sucked. not worth the time, or the $$$ I spent on it

hodder• 5 years ago

I loved primer. If you like time travel movies (and if you are on hackernews the chances are high you do), definitely give this one a watch. It is definitely among my favorites. It is an awesome film which goes to show low budgets can go a long way with a great script.

nickpp4• 5 years ago

Check out “Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel” for a lighter take on the subject and “Predestination” for an even crazier one.

elsonrodriguez2• 5 years ago

Promoting Primer as anything but a movie about "A Startup company struggles to get off the ground" is a massive spoiler.

I went in uninitiated and it didn't fully click until the binoculars came out. It made the rest of the movie an absolutely insane ride.

It's a shame people have normalized talking about its premise in the first sentence.

elliottkember• 5 years ago

Ooh, wow, you were lucky!

jeffwass4• 5 years ago

I can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic.

Not sure if you’re seriously claiming that the “blurb” for any book or movie should never mention anything outside of the first fifteen minutes.

Eg, would you promote Harry Potter as nothing more than a story about “a bullied boy struggling with his adoptive family who make him sleep in a cupboard” because the revelation of magic is a major spoiler?

ajmurmann2• 5 years ago

If you enjoy time travel movies, Dark on Netflix is an incredible series. Easier to follow then Primer, but I still needed diagrams once the second season really got going

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

Fair warning about Dark: I personally found the first season to be... well, not as good as the next two. It is very slow paced and does that modern TV show thing where basically nothing seems to happen in any given episode.

rcpt3• 5 years ago

I don't know I thought it was kind of dumb. People discover an honest to God time travel cave but instead of getting world leaders and scientists involved they're all using it to get back at their exes and stuff.

jordz• 5 years ago

Ahh this has made my day. I haven't seen a number of these, they all look exactly like the kind of film I'd love to try.

Thank you for sharing!

eenell• 5 years ago

I'd add Hidden Figures to the list

dkarl2• 5 years ago

I remember enjoying Insignificance when I was twelve or thirteen. I haven't revisited it since then to get an adult appraisal of it, but for films "every physics lover should watch in their lifetime" you probably can't leave off a movie about Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy hanging out in a hotel suite.

christiansakai• 5 years ago

No Interstellar? Sorry I am not a Physicist.

reedf1• 5 years ago

The only one I can really back on this list as a physicist rather than a movie lover is The Martian. I watched it at quite a low point in my physics undergrad and it re-sparked my joy for physics. At least until I graduated! Hey-ho.

seanc• 5 years ago

IQ! It's a romantic comedy, but it's very sweet and features great performances from Walter Matthau as Einstein, Lou Jacobi as Godel and the rest of the IAS crew.

Boris Podolsky: James! How's the rat business?

James Moreland: Well, actually it's mostly students I'm experimenting on now.

Kurt Godel: My God, the mazes must be enormous.

leecarraher• 5 years ago

"A serious Man" is "fully based on the concept of Schrodinger's Cat" , what? It is a post-modern retelling of The Book of Job, not sure other than the main character being a physics professor. At one point a failing student states that he understands Schrodinger's Cat, to which he is immediately admonished, for the analogy being pop-physics, and without understanding the math it is useless.

goldenkey3• 5 years ago

Yeah, I didn't get that comment either and even tried to do a web search on it. I've seen A Serious Man numerous times. It's one of my favorite movies.

But it isn't about physics. It's overall theme is somewhat cryptic but it is making statements. It is less cryptic than Coen's other films like Barton Fink.

If you haven't seen the Coen Brother's filmography, start with A Serious Man. It's the kind of movie that gives you nostalgia for loneliness. It probably could have helped me in my teenage years. It's undoubtedly a cathartic movie for those who have had unfortunate luck or feel misunderstood.

bmitc5• 5 years ago

There is a pretty big theme throughout the movie of not knowing what's going on though. Although not really being about physics directly, there is also another theme of anecdotes and stories being (often comically) useless as ways of explanation.

leephillips4• 5 years ago

“not knowing what's going on”

In that case, it is about physics. More specifically, my experience as a graduate student sitting in QCD lectures.

elbasti• 5 years ago

The theme of the movie isn't so much "not knowing what's going on" as "not knowing why this is happening to _me_".

There's a phrase that's repeated again and again (in one way or another), which is "but I didn't _do_ anything".

varajelle• 5 years ago

I liked the scene in which a student complained to the teacher because he did not get a good grade. The student try to convince the teacher that he might get the math wrong but understands the story of the cat. The teacher reply that the physics is all about math and that he himself don't understand the cat.

tootie• 5 years ago

This list is fun movies that have some kind of physics theme.

Coherence was a really fun movie shot an absolute shoestring budget but it's about like a magic comet that unlocks parallel universes at a dinner party. It's high-concept sci-fi and not realistic at all.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

ring--ring, "Hello doctor!" Doctor, "I think you better come into the office to discuss your chest x-ray?"

akavel• 5 years ago

(Per HN guidelines:

If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

javier10e6• 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i76dfPNP0Rk

AlwaysRock• 5 years ago

I love Contact so much. It's my comfort movie. So much hope and optimism.

ISL3• 5 years ago

Small moves, ...

js2• 5 years ago

A list this arbitrary should have "The Manhattan Project" (1986) on it.

EvanAnderson2• 5 years ago

Definitely! I consider "The Manhattan Project" criminally underrated.

amatern• 5 years ago

A list of Physics movies, without mentioning the most accurate depiction of Graduate School? No list is complete without the glory that is Real Genius. "Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/?ref_=tt_ch

mmmBacon2• 5 years ago

Real Genius was great. Are there any other movies about graduate school? I can’t think of any.

JKCalhoun2• 5 years ago

"The Andromeda Strain" (1971) still holds up pretty well.

stared3• 5 years ago

I would add "The Arrival", which I enjoyed a lot (rare for a movie based on a story I love). Even though it dropped the crucial physics reference, which was the turning point in "The Story of Your Life".

Still, physicist or not, if you are interested what is time, I couldn't recommend a better writer than Ted Chiang.

mdorazio2• 5 years ago

Yeah, my #1 problem with Arrival was that it completely sidestepped basically the entire point of the short story - free will doesn't exist and how the characters come to grips with that (or don't) as they start thinking as the aliens do.

ghaff4• 5 years ago

It also threw in a bunch of predictable Hollywood action and military stuff. It's still a pretty good movie but the short story is better.

StavrosK3• 5 years ago

SPOILERS

The single most crucial part of it was the way her daughter died. In the story, she dies in a (very preventable) climbing accident, to make the point that her mother knew about it and could have just told her not to go (or go a bit later), whereas in the movie she died of cancer, which just completely invalidates the entire point.

stared3• 5 years ago

The presence of time vs free will is present in a few other stories by Ted Chiang. However, I read it somewhat differently. (Even though myself I am agnostic when it comes to free will.)

It is not that free will does not exist. It is that free will is a perspective (i.e. not something true or false), one mutually exclusive with knowledge of the future. It is like the rotation of an object, which one we can see only one of its facets. In "The story..." Louise learning the different perspective is gradual.

To some extent, it matches some other tropes like Lovecraftian that learning about the Great Old Ones brings insanity. Or maybe it's not that it fries one's mind, but rather - give a perspective incompatible with everyday human thinking.

Can_Not3• 5 years ago

The scene with the mountains and the cloud was really cool. After that, there was some build up but kind of just went nowhere. "Here's some circles, now you can hallucinate the future" was overall a pretty underwhelming drift into fantasy.

jra_samba2• 5 years ago

You're talking about "Arrival", not "The Arrival", which is a 1996 movie staring Charlie Sheen about an alien invasion.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115571/

Strangely enough the Charlie Sheen "The Arrival" is also a really good physics movie. I've yet to see a movie do the SETI/Astronomy/physics stuff better :-).

I love him building a radio telescope control in his attic, using local people's roof satellite dishes as the array !

barnaclejive• 5 years ago

Anyone else notice how all the comments at the bottom of the page are from bots posting links?

elil17• 5 years ago

My favorite physically-based sci-fi is “The Expanse” (TV show on Amazon). The physics and constraints of space travel are not only accurately depicted, but also used to drive the story forward in interesting ways.

bloopernova• 5 years ago

Seconding this recommendation.

You'll find out just how terrifying a bunch of loose screwdrivers, hammers, etc are during high-g maneuvers.

7sigma• 5 years ago

Totally agree, it's a great show that gets a lot of the physics right (not totally but that's ok), but also biology. For example, people living in the belt going to Ganymede to conceive because it has a magnetic field that protects them from harmful radiation is one of those small nice touches.

bostonvaulter2• 5 years ago

I'd definitely also highly recommend The Expanse. Although I highly doubt the space physics are accurate. Ships can't just turn and change direction like how they're often shown to do.

nkoren• 5 years ago

Actually, the Expanse portrays how ships can turn and change directions basically perfect. Where it takes liberties is that ships can't turn and change directions as much as they do. The engines and propellant in the Expanse is way way WAY efficient -- probably much more efficient than our physics allows. In the real world, you'd either be manoeuvring with 1,000 times less zest, or having to refuel about 1,000 times more frequently, or some combination of both.

But apart from that, its physics are pretty close to 100%.

goldenkey3• 5 years ago

I'd also recommend Genius, a mini-series focused on Einstein.

Let's do a mathematics movie list too. I'll start:

+ The Man Who Knew Infinity - Ramanujan and Hardy + A Beautiful Mind - John Nash + The Imitation Game - Turing

bmitc5• 5 years ago

I'm surprised Arrival didn't make the list.

the_arun• 5 years ago

I liked "A Beautiful Mind" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/ too, but it is not about Physics, but Mathematics.

Also "Tesla" - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5259822

29athrowaway• 5 years ago

Interstellar is a great film but I would not consider it a scientifically accurate film.

Traveling through black holes would at least crush you via gravity or kill you from radiation.

seanalltogether• 5 years ago

I've always had a love for Deep Impact, not sure how accurate the physics is in it.

holoduke• 5 years ago

I find some YouTube channels so much more interesting. For example https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCciQ8wFcVoIIMi-lfu8-cjQ Or https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCG9ShGbASoiwHwFcLcAh9EA These channels are made by individuals with practically no budget. Yet the information is much more in depth than any high production movie/documentary I have seen. Also no flashy bullcrap. Just to the point with real fanatics behind it.

cableclasper• 5 years ago

Physics teachers may enjoy Madame Hyde (2017) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Hyde

In it, there are long dialogues on Fermat's principle of least time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_principle) and Faraday cages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage).

I wished the movie dwelled longer on those subjects though.

anishjain2000• 5 years ago

What about prestige

crmrc114• 5 years ago

Primer!!! Still one of my all time favorite movies. Glad to see it at number one on the list.

rex_lupi• 5 years ago

A bunch of movies suggested in this list actually suck and not really scientifically accurate either, as many others have already pointed out.

On a side note, if you go through the comment section on the blog, it's quite evident that the author have used paid commenters to increase its rating/impact.

wholinator2• 5 years ago

Wow, I was unprepared for how incredibly obvious and embarrassingly fake that comments section is lol.

"Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more information? It is extremely helpful for me."

Complete with spam link I've removed for safety. What a farce. How does content like this make it onto Hacker News? Probably bought fake votes too. Posted by an account with no history, created today. hmmm....

The_Double• 5 years ago

Those kind of comments are not paid comments, but just a way to get spam links on a site. My personal website (which has comments hidden, but clearly the API still works) is completely filled with comments like that.

FredPret• 5 years ago

No Armageddon?!

divs12102• 5 years ago

Gravity is poor man's Apollo 13.

Interstellar is poor man's Contact.

Neither are particularly physics-y, but I enjoyed them as a lover of physics, so .

ISL3• 5 years ago

I'd add that if you loved Contact, there's a good chance that you'll love the book, too. It is written for everyone, but if you have advanced physics knowledge, there is another level of richness awaiting you.

divs12102• 5 years ago

Thanks! That sounds great!

seniorThrowaway• 5 years ago

not on this list but the Russian film Salyut-7 is pretty entertaining and has some great orbital shots.

trimbo2• 5 years ago

"Prince of Darkness": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093777/

I've always liked the movie because it attempts to examine religious lore with science, faith vs. logic. It touches on many explanations for things they're experiencing: multiple universes, tachyons, etc.

trimbo2• 5 years ago

Replying to myself: What about "Devs"? Not a movie but...

https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/devs

pomian• 5 years ago

Two more to the list. One for great fun: "Young Einstein", and one for interest: "Astronaut Farmer." (Engineering and the politics of control.) My kids to this day think Einstein is from Tazmania! You did know that Einstein invented Rock and Roll, don't you?

chezball• 5 years ago

Mindwalk (base on Fritjof Capras Turning Point, and I think it was made by his brother?) is one of the best physics “movies” I have seen. It is truly about systems thinking, and not offering answers, particularly to the social issues, but the conversation on atomic sizes is worth the ticket of admission alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindwalk

fsloth• 5 years ago

Never realized Daniel Craig had played Werner Heisenberg! Need to watch Copenhagen - the play itself is stupendously good. If there is a production near you go see it!

kemyke• 5 years ago

Has anybody seen The man from Earth? Its a really clever sci-fi, set in only one room and a couple of people are talking. Worth watch it.

rcpt3• 5 years ago

I was surprised how much I liked that film.

mikestew3• 5 years ago

Not a lot of physics in that one, as I recall.

imhoguy• 5 years ago

I would also add Chernobyl (2019 mini-series) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/

jader201• 5 years ago

Chernobyl was one of the best series I’ve seen, period. Regardless of whether you’re a physics lover, this is a well done series.

dpedu2• 5 years ago

This is more of a historical drama than a physics flick. It's chock full of dramatized versions of the actual events and physics.

kahrl• 5 years ago

The tips were indeed not made of graphite.

IgorPartola• 5 years ago

While they took some liberties, the gist of the story is very close to actual events. There is also a companion podcast that goes in depth on where they deviated from actual story.

StavrosK3• 5 years ago

Chernobyl is a fantastic show. They portray the disaster as having more far-reaching consequences than it did, which is a bit annoying, but it's extremely well-made and great to watch.

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

There have been a number of recent "mission to Mars" movie all with the same basic plot - a critical system breaks on the long voyage, and they're all gonna die. There's never a backup system for the critical one, no repair parts, either.

It's always either the air recycling system or the water one.

"Stowaway" is the latest in this genre. There, a suitcase size device breaks in this massive spaceship. No backup. Can't fix it. All gonna die.

It's crazy to design a long term deep space ship like that.

judge2020• 5 years ago

SNL parodied this in the most recent episode https://youtu.be/FuaDWyCnJxs

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

Haha, that was actually funny!

Looks like they got tmux installed, too! But it would have been funnier if the computer display had showed Apple II assembler code like the Terminator did.

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

One thing I'd do with a deep space mission design is to design as many interchangeable parts as possible, even among unrelated systems.

For example, use bolts that are all the same thread size. Use the same embedded system boards and chips. Use the same electric motors. The same fan blades.

Remember the Apollo 13 mission where they had two CO2 filtering systems, but the cartridges for them were unnecessarily incompatible.

parenthesis2• 5 years ago

Then the plot of the film would be that that one bolt or chip design used everywhere has a flaw that slowly starts to manifest in all of them …

dvh• 5 years ago

If you are playing some ball sport and you want to temporarily rewrite your brain, watch old Czech movie "Happy end". I played ping pong, watched that movie and afterwards for about an hour I was unable to functioning normally, let alone continue to play ping pong. It's a movie with a plot that progresses forward but the movie is played backwards. You may need a dubbed version, I'm not sure if it will have same effects with subtitles as you need to see what's happening on screen, not reading subtitles.

dpedu2• 5 years ago

Sunshine[1] should be on this list as well!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/

codeulike3• 5 years ago

Europa Report is pretty good, and done on a budget

racl101• 5 years ago

Hey, where's Fast and the Furious 8?

These movies are all true to the laws of physics.

codeulike3• 5 years ago

ok here's one you wont have heard of:

The Worlds Fastest Indian (2005) with Anthony Hopkins

(The Indian in the title refers to a 1920 Indian Scout motorbike)

Its a NZ film about a quiet guy from a small town trying to set a land speed record, and as such there's quite a lot of physics in it

codeulike3• 5 years ago

Clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoG4FUXVPuE

rdedev• 5 years ago

Gonna plug The Expanse here. It's not a movie but it's depiction of space fights is pretty good

nathias• 5 years ago

Contact & Interstellar are the most in line with the awe that people into physics should appreciate

rpmuller• 5 years ago

I'm surprised not to see "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" listed here. This is a movie about the late Hugh Everett, developer of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, by his son, Eels front man Mark Everett. I'm a physicist who normally can't stand physics movies because of the liberties they take, and I loved this movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Worlds,_Parallel_Live...

anonymousiam• 5 years ago

No mention of this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_(film)

gibolt• 5 years ago

Contact is a movie I loved as a kid, and found even better as an adult. The way it manages to semi-accurately represent politics and ideology across governments and private industries, especially with Alien contact at stake is wonderful. It does this without being boring.

mmmBacon2• 5 years ago

I would add The Right Stuff to this list; it inspired me to study physics.

Edit: Others have mentioned Real Genius which I thought was also cool as a kid.

artaak• 5 years ago

I’m surprised that list doesn’t include a movie UFO. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6290798/

Even though the plot is rather simplistic, it has a few interesting physical concepts embedded in a clever way.

Movies every physics lover should watch (2020)

Related Stories