I don't know about the movies, but if you only ever see one play, make sure it is "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. It is a brilliant investigation of the meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg during WWII as seen through the lens of the uncertainty principle. (Not directly engineering but something all engineers will have covered during their education.)
A great movie about smart college kids having fun with science/engineering. It presented science/engineering as cool and fun. Which, of course, it is! It was largely responsible for motivating me to go back to school to get my Bachelors degree...
Like PureGenius I also recommend Brainstorm. The prototype "hat" is HUGE with nitrogen pumped cooling. Then they have a breakthru in size when they perfect an ASIC and can shrink it down to the size of a headband. A revolutionary concept for a 1983 movie.
"Bridge over the River Kwai" is a great movie, made even better by the very good protrayal of the British approach to civil engineering under adverse conditions. Schedule constraints play a big role, just as they do in most real life engineering projects. Perhaps most importantly the single-mindedness of the Colonel in getting the bridge built on time while ignoring the bigger picture of winning the war is typical of the short sighted vision of many engineering managers.
I also liked "The Rocketeer" as it was not too much a stretch of reality, after all, rocket packs are real, and it did show the problems in development and using a prototype before it is ready for prime time. The inclusion of a Zepplin and the Griffith Observatory are science/engineering bonuses.
I like Independance Day, where an engineer creates a virus to defeat an alien army, then learns how to fly one of their ships, travels to the mother ship, connects and logs in to their newtork installs the virus and brings the whole alien army down.
An eccentric and dogmatic inventor sells his house and takes his family to Central America to build an ice factory in the middle of the jungle.
This is the only movie my wife has forbidden me to own. It might be because I said, that would fun to see if you could actually do that! I think I said it with to much enthusiasm.
It also might be due to the fact that I spent most of my misbegotten youth living for months at a time in the southern Utah deserts teaching survival skills to outward bound leaders.
She has given me the evil eye when my children have chosen a trip to Blanding Utah over a vacation at Disney Land.
I'd like to mention Brainstorm with Christopher Walken. It takes a device capable of recording the mind from prototype to production. It also looks at one of the great mysteries of life when a death is recorded so it can be experienced by the living. Even though technically it's pushing it a little this movie makes you really want this technology to be real.
I'll have to go along with the realism in Apollo 13 for best Sci Fi. I'll say the ORIGINAL classics and none of the remakes are good,from TDTESS and Forbidden Planet....Yes, we have finally created some of the devices and explored the unconcious ( NEVER CALL IT THE SUBCONCIOUS ) mind and it's powers...
For some backhanded realism, SPACE COWBOYS takes a look at the predjudices and mentality of many STUPIDVISORS and Government Lackey types that have infested the space programs...( who DID sell that computer design to those " peaceful " Russians )...
For the Eco-Freaks, " Silent Running " was the ultimate film for the ultimate greenie, the forest was saved and the ship was blown up...
And for the purely bad Sci Fi flick to blow your mind...
I nominate DARK STAR...
Where else do you get to see a parody of science fiction and social topics every few minutes? And you get to see someone psychoanalyzing a smart fusion bomb? ( they lose, BTW )...
I'll also give a special mention to all the Star Trek TNG fans who liked DATA...
The QUESTOR TAPES was a pilot movie to explore AI before it became a science and engineering study...and it was the close idea behind the creation of the DATA character.
That is the best robot based film made, IMNSHO (sorry, RUR and Metropolis ).
But my best film of all time is Dr. STRANGELOVE.....and we still deal with those same issues today.
Yes, I have all these movies in my ~2.5 Terabyte collection on the media servers...
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