Revolution OS and Pirates of Silicon Valley
Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
161–170 of 186 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#162My choice would be The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp....there is no hacking in it, but it's interesting to see him piece together the nine pictures from three books...
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#163The last season of 24 had really good hacking scenes. Also, Anitrust is a decent one.
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#164At the other end of the hacker spectrum (the cry-yourself-to-sleep reality end not the fantasy end), there's Office Space.
I also enjoyed Mike Judge's other film "Idiocracy". It's not explicitly a hacker film, but it's a sci-fi story about an average guy in a world of idiots, so it verges on hacker territory. It also has some examples of hilariously bad human/computer interface design.
(And if you're into cry-yourself-to-sleep-reality movies, there's also Outsourced, a recent comedy about a call center manager who must train his replacements in India. I found it surprisingly enjoyable. Its primary themes are culture clash and figuring out what's important in life, so it shares similarities with Office Space and Gung Ho.)
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#165Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just saw this recently, and the one problem I had with it is the actor playing Buckaroo (Peter Weller) is maybe the worst actor in the movie. Having John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Lloyd in secondary roles was amazing; they really go all out to push the intentional corniness over the top. (Lithgow's intentionally bad fake Italian accent is wonderful; Lloyd, as usual, really does seem like someone not o…
Having so much great acting around him made Peter Weller kind of painful to watch. See, I think that Peter Weller's take on the character is one of the movie's charms. The guy plays Buckaroo Banzai as a perpetually preoccupied, frighteningly odd physics professor with a slight amount of Asperger's. A person who is sometimes painful to watch. [1] In other words, he's the kind of character whom you normally meet only i…
Hey, I've got a dangling footnote that I can't fix! Ah, the mistakes you make at 2am.
Let's tie it up:
[1] This is the famous recursive footnote. [1]
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#167An excellent movie I enjoyed was: Dark City It was kind of like a precursor to The Matrix. http://www.scifimoviepage.com/darkcity.html
I haven't watched it yet but I'm told that the directors cut is much better and should be watched first.
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#168Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#169Okay, I'm insane, I know that. But I have this strange urge to nominate The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in this category. I'm not sure I can explain why. Perhaps it's just to be perverse. ;) There's just something about the character that rings true. He's a famous superhero, but he doesn't wear a costume or come from another planet. He's a mad scientist, but he doesn't cackle or plot or soliloquize. He's an odd guy…
I once walked past John Lithgow in Harvard Yard. I was so surprised I blurted out "Dr. Lazardo!" "Laugh while you can, monkey-boy," he replied, and kept walking.
This comment genuinely made my day.
Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, Hackers did take the time to name its characters after handles taken from 2600.
It also had Angelina Jolie. It... motivate me to be a hacker. And yet now that I am a hacker... I am no closer to Angelina, funny that.
When I was young, I thought mechanical engineering would be my ticket to the space race, but after seeing the movie hackers for the 1st time on the engineering floor in college, I thought hacking was COOOOL.
I know it sounds lame, but I have to think that that movie got me fantasizing about it.
So, later on when I was struggling with Statics and Dynamics my teacher recognized that I was really a hacker and not an engineer. He asked how I did all of that stuff on my calculator, I then showed him my serial cable mod for the TI-82, and the other software i had written to make his class easier, because S&D was so hard. He suggested I change majors.
I AM SO HAPPY I DID, and today I have a job where I get paid to design the OpenWeb, and work on side projects. Maybe one will break out.
I still think I owe the campy fantasy of hacking to the movie 'Hackers,' for letting me think i had a better chance of getting a girl via hacking. I guess today i am still hopeful.