Ask HN: Any movies that changed your life?

When I was a kid: Hackers (watched it around 30-40 times when I was a kid), War Games, Matrix, Sneakers pushed me into being developer, but the most impact on my current life had American Beauty as it made me thinking about working less. Another movie that I can think of is Social Network - It motivated me to on my side projects harder.

I have too many to list. Here are some of the highlights that come to mind.

2001: A Space Odyssey -- had a profound effect on me as a child. It both reinforced my interest in science and opened my mind to the sheer size and scale and mystery of the universe. The original Cosmos series did likewise, and I think it's far better than the remake with Tyson. Sagan just communicates the sense of awe and wonder a lot better.

Wargames -- definitely made an impression on my pre-teen self and helped get me into "hacking" (sense #2), which led here through a long and winding road.

Stand By Me -- a profound film about the end of childhood. (The Stephen King novella 'The Body' is good too, probably almost his best work.)

Primer -- the best sci-fi of the past decade. When you don't have a big budget to plaster FX all over the screen, it's got to be in the writing. Big budgets do sometimes ruin cinema.

Enter the Void -- this is a weird recent one that stuck with me. This is definitely a binary reaction film. I loved it, others hate it. It communicated the profound sense of loss that comes when you're forced to leave a thing unfinished and move on, followed by the sense of hope that comes with a new beginning. It was also just the visual aesthetic of that film. It haunts me. The artistic ethos of this film felt as if someone lifted dreams directly from my soul and rendered them on screen. Night flights over neon cities is probably what I'll dream about as I die.

Not a movie, but Star Trek: The Next Generation had a profound impact on my life.

Captain Picard's level of human ethics is something most of us can only strive for. I think everyone (including Earth politicians) should take note of his supreme leadership skills, and the will become a better place.

Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek was really that Enterprise was a metaphor for "starship earth", so even if you're not into sci-fi, it's still highly worth watching. It's not really about space per se, it's about people.

Jurassic Park, its not the movie in the literal sense, but the fact that it was my first move I ever saw with my family in a big theatre. So every frame of it "wow" experience for me at that time.

Also "Man from Earth", It was my first movie that made me realize sci-fi genre is lot more than fancy cgi.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. It showed me that our surroundings can be almost completely different from one another's with only a minimal subset of common characteristics.