150+ Hours of Great Movies for Entrepreneurs

Warning: don’t try to watch all these movies in one sitting, but if you must: make some popcorn, turn down the lights and put your business on hold, you’re going to be busy for awhile.

Did I forget one of your favorites? Tweet it to me at @danec.


American Gangster

American Gangster

In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


American Psycho

American Psycho

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Arbitrage

Arbitrage

A troubled hedge fund magnate desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire makes an error that forces him to turn to an unlikely person for help.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Big Night

Big Night

A failing Italian restaurant run by two brothers gambles on one special night to try to save the business.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Blow

Blow

The story of George Jung, the man who established the American cocaine market in the 1970s.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Boiler Room

Boiler Room

A college dropout gets a job as a broker for a suburban investment firm, which puts him on the fast track to success, but the job might not be as legitimate as it sounds.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities

After his mistress runs over a young teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight, and attracting the interest of a down and out reporter.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Brewster's Millions

Brewster’s Millions

A minor-league baseball player has to spend $30,000,000 in thirty days in order to inherit $300,000,000. However, he’s not allowed to tell anyone about the deal.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Can't Buy Me Love

Can’t Buy Me Love

A nerdy outcast secretly pays the most popular girl in school one thousand dollars to be his girlfriend.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Casino

Casino

Greed, deception, money, power, and murder occur between two mobster best friends and a trophy wife over a gambling empire.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can

A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr., who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars’ worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Clerks

Clerks

The continuing adventures of clerks Dante and Randal, who try to make the best of their menial labor, with no help from Jay and Silent Bob.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Crazy People

Crazy People

A bitter ad executive who has reached his breaking point, finds himself in a mental institution where his career actually begins to thrive with the help of the hospital’s patients.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Two con men try to settle their rivalry by betting on who can swindle a young American heiress out of $50.000 first.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Door to Door

Door to Door

A man with cerebral palsy is determined to become a salesman.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


E-Dreams

E-Dreams

An in-depth look at the highs and lows of a dot com. The movie follows the founders of Kozmo.com as they raise money and file for IPO. But no one has predicted the market crash in April 2000.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich

An unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Flash of Genius

Flash of Genius

Robert Kearns takes on the Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Goodfellas

Goodfellas

Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Guru

Guru

A villager, Gurukant Desai, arrives in Bombay 1958, and rises from its streets to become the GURU, the biggest tycoon in Indian history.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Indie Game: The Movie

Indie Game: The Movie

A documentary that follows the journeys of indie game developers as they create games and release those works, and themselves, to the world.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Inside Job

Inside Job

Takes a closer look at what brought about the financial meltdown.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


I.O.U.S.A.

I.O.U.S.A.

Few are aware that America may be on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. explores the country’s shocking current fiscal condition and ways to avoid a national economic disaster.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire

When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent with the only athlete who stays with him.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Jobs

Jobs

The story of Steve Jobs’ ascension from college dropout into one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Lemonade Stories

Lemonade Stories

“Lemonade Stories,” a film about extraordinary entrepreneurs and their mums, chronicles the impact mothers have had on igniting the entrepreneurial spirit. Featuring Richard Branson.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Lord of War

Lord of War

An arms dealer confronts the morality of his work as he is being chased by an Interpol agent.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Man on Wire

Man on Wire

A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City’s World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974, what some consider, “the artistic crime of the century.”

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Margin Call

Margin Call

Follows the key people at an investment bank, over a 24-hour period, during the early stages of the financial crisis.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton

A law firm brings in its “fixer” to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multi-billion dollar class action suit.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Modern Times

Modern Times

The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Moneyball

Moneyball

Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to assemble a baseball team on a lean budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Network

Network

A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor’s ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Norma Rae

Norma Rae

A young single mother and textile worker agrees to help unionize her mill despite the problems and dangers involved.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


October Sky

October Sky

The true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner’s son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father’s wishes.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Office Space

Office Space

Three company workers who hate their jobs and decide to rebel against their greedy boss.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Other People's Money

Other People’s Money

A corporate raider threatens a hostile take-over of a “mom and pop” company. The patriarch of the company enlists the help of his wife’s daughter, who is a lawyer, to try and protect the …

Watch the trailer on YouTube.



Revenge of the Electric Car

Revenge of the Electric Car

Director Chris Paine takes his film crew behind the closed doors of Nissan, GM, and the Silicon Valley start-up Tesla Motors to chronicle the story of the global resurgence of electric cars.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Rocky

Rocky

Rocky Balboa, a small-time boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight the heavy-weight champion, Apollo Creed, in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Something Ventured

Something Ventured

Apple. Intel. Genentech. Atari. Google. Cisco. Stratospheric successes with high stakes all around. Behind some of the world’s most revolutionary companies are a handful of men.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Startup.com

Startup.com

Traces the birth and failure of new media company govWorks.com.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Based on the hit Broadway musical.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Thank You for Smoking

Thank You for Smoking

Satirical comedy follows the machinations of Big Tobacco’s chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who spins on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Aviator

The Aviator

A biopic depicting the early years of legendary director and aviator Howard Hughes’ career, from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Call of the Entrepreneur

The Call of the Entrepreneur

A merchant banker. A failing dairy farmer. A refugee from Communist China. One risked his savings. One risked his farm. One risked his life.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Corporation

The Corporation

Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada

A naive young woman comes to New York and scores a job as the assistant to one of the city’s biggest magazine editors, the ruthless and cynical Miranda Priestly.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Game

The Game

Wealthy San Francisco financier Nicholas Van Orton gets a strange birthday present from wayward brother Conrad: a live-action game that consumes his life.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Godfather

The Godfather

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Hudsucker Proxy

The Hudsucker Proxy

A naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Insider

The Insider

A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a “60 Minutes” expose on Big Tobacco.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Man Who Would Be King

The Man Who Would Be King

Two British soldiers in India decide to resign from the Army and set themselves up as deities in Kafiristan–a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Method

The Method

During IMF & World Bank Summit and demonstrations which upset Madrid, like other capitals, major corporation Dekia holds interviews to recruit a top executive from seven applicants.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Pursuit of Happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness

Chris Gardner is a bright and talented, but marginally employed salesman. Struggling to make ends meet, Gardner finds himself and his five-year-old son evicted from their San Francisco apartment with nowhere to go. When Gardner lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm, he and his son endure many hardships, including living in shelters, in pursuit of his dream of a better life for the two of them.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Secret of My Succe$s

The Secret of My Succe$s

A talented young man can’t get an executive position without rising through the ranks, so he comes up with a shortcut, which also benefits his love life.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Shop Around the Corner

The Shop Around the Corner

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realizing that they’re falling in love through the post as each other’s anonymous pen pal.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Social Network

The Social Network

Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the cofounder who was later squeezed out of the business.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Startup Kids

The Startup Kids

The Startup Kids is a documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe. It contains interviews with founders of Vimeo, Dropbox, Soundcloud and more who talk about how they made it.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street

Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood

A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Tin Men

Tin Men

A minor car accident drives two rival aluminum-siding salesmen to the ridiculous extremes of man versus man in 1963 Baltimore.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Tommy Boy

Tommy Boy

An incompetent, immature, and dimwitted heir to an auto parts factory must save the business to keep it out of the hands of his new, con-artist relatives and big business.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail

Chronicles the financial meltdown of 2008 and centers on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Trading Places

Trading Places

A snobbish investor and a wily street con artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Tucker, The Man And His Dream

Tucker, The Man And His Dream

History tells us that would-be automobile mogul Preston Tucker was a silver-tongued con man, who misappropriated his investors’ money and played fast and loose with ethics and legalities in the pursuit of his dream. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola isn’t buying this: to hear Coppola tell it, Tucker was “Mr. Smith Goes to Detroit,” a sincere visionary who tried and failed to buck the Big Three auto manufacturers.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Up in the Air

Up in the Air

With a job traveling around the country firing people, Ryan Bingham enjoys his life living out of a suitcase, but finds that lifestyle threatened by the presence of a new hire and a potential love interest.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Wall Street

Wall Street

A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider who takes the youth under his wing.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Now out of prison but still disgraced by his peers, Gordon Gekko works his future son-in-law, an idealistic stock broker, when he sees an opportunity to take down a Wall Street enemy and rebuild his empire.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who Killed the Electric Car?

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Working Girl

Working Girl

When a secretary’s idea is stolen by her boss, she seizes an opportunity to steal it back by pretending she has her boss’s job.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.


Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *