There are a number of movies that are just 100 percent always “put this on” movies. Some of them are 80’s classics like Stripes and Ghostbusters and Uncle Buck, and some of them are darker, weirder pieces, but there’s a certain set of movies that I will tell people to watch because they’ll help you know me, or know my story, better.
It turns out there are two classes of movies: ones about real people, and ones that are not about real people. This article is about the fiction ones.
Hackers
Starring: Fisher Stevens (doing way less Brownface than he did in the Short Circuit Movies), Angelina Jolie before anyone knew who she was, Matthew Lillard before anyone knew who he was. (Good one, Shaggy!), and…Penn from Penn and Teller?
The Plotline: Some meddling kids do things with computers that they’re not supposed to, and expose a crime and are framed for it, and decide to get even, humliating an FBI agent in the process.
These kids are the awkward ones, the ones who are known for not fitting in with the normies, and they definitely cut their own grooves. They’ve got their own language, and they have a way of finding and recognizing, almost instantly, one of their own.
My personal connection:
I grew up in New York City, and attended at least one hacker meetup at Citicorp Center put on by 2600 Magazine. I’m pretty sure the actor who played Joey was at that meeting, studying for the part. (The publisher of 2600, pen-name Emmanuel Goldstein, was a consultant for the film).
My weird head-canons:
- We see some very weird visuals in this movie, about what’s going on. Most of the time, however, I think the visuals are in the hackers’ minds themselves. (For example, we see them hacking over payphones, which can’t support high bandwidth connections at all, but work perfectly well at 9600BPS, enough for a tty connection).
- The Phantom Phreak? Absolutely a furry.
- Here in 2025, genderfluidity, especially among the tech community is common, but Hackers nailed this vibe back in 1994. Even though none of the characters are directly outed as queer or transgender, there are definitely elements of alternative fashion and breaking norms.
Other notes:
- Sprinklers don’t work like that.
- Neither did NYC traffic lights at the time.
- Establishing shots show the Pan-Am building shown both with its old name *and* as the MetLife building, which is one of those weird anomalies that only people who live in NYC will notice.
- Joey’s computer looks to be an Apple IIGS: notoriously weak, even at the time, but nonetheless a classic nod to Woz. The IMDB page lists the various other machines used.
Wargames
Starring: Matthew Broderick before anyone knew who he was, John Wood, Dabney Coleman, heartthrob Ally Sheedy
The plotline:
A kid with a computer does something he shouldn’t, and wakes up a government AI that tries to end the world. Oh crap.
My personal connection:
This movie is why my parents wouldn’t buy me a modem. We lived in Levittown, New York, and there was definitely a large aerospace contractor in our backyard. When a Levittown teen was arrested in 1989 for breaking in, and I was coincidentally absent from school that day…several of my teachers were very concerned.
My personal theories:
- In the movie, in a film-within-a-film, our main character is researching his hero with a bunch of black and white video cassettes about computers playing poker (at about the 37 minute mark) This feels like found-footage, and I have no idea where it’s actually from.
- At about the 31 minute mark, our hero goes to some mentors/friends of his who work in a large computer center at a (college? think tank? we never are told). My theory is that these folks are where our main character got most of his equipment, either as dumpster dives, or donations, and most of his starter knowledge before there was an internet to read up on. When they realize he’s attempting to break into a government system, they do not try to stop him.
Other Notes:
- The thing he did to get a free call with the payphone absolutely *did* work back in the day, but it worked better with a paper clip.
- Whomever consulted on this film absolutely nailed what the interior of a missile silo looks like, and what the launch procedure is. Visit the Titan Missile Museum (in person, or online) if you want to know more.
- This movie made NORAD look way better than it actually was.
- You used to be able to tour Cheyenne Mountain…if you knew the right people. Not so much anymore. But then, the types of things that are being launched in a post cold-war world might not be survivable even there.
- This movie, The Matrix, and Terminator all warned us about the dangers of AI, and still some TechBros went and made ChatGPT. You’ve got to be kidding me.
- What’s the aftermath of this movie? What happens to Lightman afterward? Either he got hired, or he went to ADX Florence. Those are the only two ways this plays out.
9 to 5
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman
The plot: A womanizing boss causes his company to change for the better, by pissing off the women who work for him.
This movie has literally nothing to do with computers at all. It was on HBO all the time in my formative years. All the office work that happens involves typewriters, steno pads, and xerox machines. At one point, computers are mentioned but none of the main characters interact with them.
And yet, the film’s three main characters are absolutely the most solid figure-it-out, work-the-problem people I’ve seen in a long while.
You don’t have to use computers to be one of us.
Personal Theories:
- The movie goes out of its way to show women from three different walks of life: a happily married and faithful woman, known for her appearance (and so everyone assumes the boss is sleeping with her); a recent divorcee who is just attempting to re-enter the workforce (Jane Fonda), and a widow who is a single parent, but who we see being used to do things like fixing the home garage door [foreshadowing], and we’re shown that she can do her Boss’ job blindfolded, but has been passed over for promotion numerous times for the classic reason.
- The social changes the three leads bring about in the world, aside from exposing their boss’ embezzlement scheme include drug and alcohol counseling at their job, a daycare program, relaxed office decor, part-time and flexible hours versus a rigid 9–5 workday, and equal pay. This movie stands the test of time as a masterpiece of what’s wrong with corporate America.
Other Notes:
- At one point, our three main characters get incredibly high off of a single joint, to the point where they start talking about their theories to off their boss, one of which results in disney-style animation. I’ve never tried weed, but my friends seem to agree that the main character’s son (who gave her the joint) probably laced it with something, because he thinks his mom really needs to relax.
- The troublesome Xerox 9400 used in the movie was a real machine, but they modified it with some extra air lines to spit the papers out. Nowadays, the collation functions of that giant extra sidecar can be done by a basic laser printer. Technology marches on.
- At one point the three main characters go shopping for things to contain their boss in his home, and all I can think is that if their job with Consolidated falls through, there’s good work to be had in the Armory building in San Francisco, for people with that kind of ingenuity.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
The Plot: Whoopi Goldberg is a weirdo who works in a bank, talking to people at other banks over a satellite connection, until a british spy reaches out to her via her computer asking for help. She’s a nerd and works the problem because she doesn’t know how to not.
Starring: Everyone you loved from the 80’s. John Lovitz, Phil Hartman (gone too soon), Carol Kane, John Wood, Annie Potts, and Jim Belushi, with awesome cameos by Tracey Ullman and Michael McKean
Personal Theories/Why it’s Awesome
- Where everyone else’s desk is just a normal gray affair, Whoopi’s got the desk with the decorations, the toys, and it’s universally acknowledged, even by her begrudging jackass boss, that she’s the best person in her department.
- At one point, Terry’s computer terminal starts showing Russian Aerobics videos, and Phil Hartman’s character mentions that Russian TV uses the same satellite as the Capitalist Pig Bank. It’s a funny, throwaway line, but it also serves to explain (at least in a hand-wavey movie way) how Jack is talking to Whoopi, via a “clamshell terminal” in eastern Europe.
- Terry understands how things work in a way that nobody else does (several characters remark on this). She’s the person who fixes the office chair for the pregnant coworker, she knows how to get the russian TV to stop interfering with her terminal, and when she needs to question the motives of a fake repairman, she’s on a first name basis with the person on the other end. She notices shit. She actually takes the time to know the people at other banks that she’s working with (trading recipes and music and other advice), even though it gets her in trouble. That’s the whole hook: that’s why Jack reaches out to her: he sees a human who thinks outside the box. Takeaway: Whoopi’s character is absolutely one of us.
- The movie starts off with Terry reading a bunch of text off her screen, but then, after hearing his voice on an answering machine, we start hearing Jack’s own voice in voiceover. I love this device so much and it doesn’t feel forced at all.
- The movie seriously pokes hard at the fact that because Terry is a black woman, that she’s immediately seen as someone who does not belong where she is, at one point even causing a British Lord to become so agape that he drops his monocle.
- At some point, you almost start to feel sorry for Belushi, but at least he doesn’t get bitten in the crotch by Whoopi.
- Why is this movie not on Apple TV Movies? Please don’t tell me this is something stupid like the song rights from the Rolling Stones.
Sneakers
The Plot: A group of ethical hackers/Pen-testers get framed, and need to get even and/or clear their names.
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Robert Redford, River Phoenix, Dan Ackroyd, James Earl Jones, Sydney Poitier. Just a stunning ensemble cast.
My personal connection:
This movie takes place in the San Francisco bay area, and some of it is shot on location there, just blocks from where I worked.
Why it’s Awesome:
- Nowadays, we have phrases like “Penetration Testers” or “Red Teams” or “Ethical Hackers” but literally none of those terms existed in 1994. When this movie came out, people like this just called themselves “security consultants”. This film birthed an artform not only of this type of consulting, but also in teaching people like First Responders how to get into places as well.
- This movie focuses on so many things: learning about your targets by going through their trash, common weaknesses in physical security and untrained security staff, and social engineering.
- One of the key plot items in this movie is just a bunch of people doing what they’re good at: exploiting public records, listening to things rather than looking, going on deep-dives about their target, reaching out to contacts who are “in the know”, and just plain not giving up.
- But also….
- The Macguffin in this movie is a magic box built by a mathematician that can break all cryptography, everywhere, and that Box was sponsored by a certain US Agency.
- …and that hits a little too close to home.
- Because a throwaway line in this movie is that a Russian spy remarks that their codes are completely different than what the US uses.
- Which turns out to be true here in the real world. Russian codes aren’t based on the security of factoring prime numbers, which pretty much everything in the 1990’s was.
- Turns out one of the inventors of RSA Encryption (the “A” in RSA) was a consultant on this film.
- The mechanism for how this game set up the phone call to block the trace is the basis of the hacking game “Uplink”.
- Ever notice that nothing bad ever happens to the bad guys in this movie?
- Is that….a Cray-1 Supercomputer just casually sitting in Cosmo’s office, being used as a couch inside his little sound-proof room? (This one’s at the Computer History Museum).
The Martian
Starring: Matt Damon, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, and many others.
The Plot: Five people are on a mission to Mars. A storm happens and they need to make an emergency departure, and one of their crew is left behind after losing comms. Turns out he’s not dead, whoops.
Why it’s Awesome:
- In a situation where the easiest thing to do is give up, Mark Watney refuses to die. He sees a problem, and solves it, and then works the next one, then the next one, then the next one.
- Yes, in theory this is the kind of person NASA would pick for a manned mission. For example, we totally expect that he’s skilled in emergency medicine. Astronauts are trained in well-rounded skills, no surprise there, but the things our main character thinks up are so outside the range of anything that everyone else at NASA would have even thought possible as a contingency plan are just so bright and fun. Nowhere in the mission plan did it say “Grow Potatoes in your own poop” or “Go dig up a long-dead Mars probe” or “Use nuclear waste to keep yourself warm”, but when things are bad, you have to evaluate all your assets, even the unlikely ones.
- “I’m going to Science the Shit out of this”.
- Despite being a career botanist, Mark immediately decides to start sending his messages in hexadecimal, because of a technical communication limitation. As soon as he starts doing it, people on the other end start saying “Okay, I see what he’s doing, let’s make this happen”. It’s a gorgeous montage shot.
- In the behind the scenes bits at NASA, we get to see a whole bunch of other cool things, that would absolutely happen in the real world, and still do: When Watney start using the old Mars probe, they immediately get everyone who ever worked on it in a room together to share brain space. If you’ve watched the way the Computer History Museum repairs their old kit, you’ll find this incredibly relatable.
- Astrophysics nerd played by Donald Glover, who I will always think of as “Troy from Community” is just so socially awkward and fun, and yet, he comes up with the thing that nobody else does, and there’s a certain joy to me that he goes and plugs directly into the supercomputer, in the data center, to confirm it.
- Even in a world where we have the Aliens franchises and Blade Runner, this is Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, and if you think I’m a bad GenXer for saying it, fight me.
That’s it. If you want to know the kind of nerd I am, go watch those. And if you think you’ve seen them already, watch them again. At this point, I’ve seen them all so many times that they’ve reached the level of “non-distracting background noise”. They offer no real novelty, but they do almost function as a body-double: the person on the screen doing what they need to, so I can do what I need to.
Honorable Mentions
- Colossus: The Forbin Project: Another movie where we put an AI in charge of our nuclear arsenal. What could possibly go wrong?
- Three Days of the Condor: Another movie where the government is pursuing Robert Redford.
- Clue. My guilty pleasure. Just another great “work the problem” movie, with a bunch of slapstick in the middle. Infinitely quotable.
- Trading Places. I have so many weird theories about this, but lately, it’s hard to argue when “Old Privileged Rich White Guys” are the bad guys.
