Cinema allows us to dream, laugh, cry, travel but also learn, grow and expand our IQ. These 8 movies do it
If you search increase your intelligenceyou can always read a book, surround yourself with educated people, learn a new skill, and take care of your health by exercising, getting enough sleep, and eating “brain food.”
You can even increase your intelligence by watching TV and movies from time to time.
Of course, you have to discriminate which shows and movies to watch. Educational content such as documentaries and current affairs programs are your best options as they can improve your general knowledge and conversational repertoire.
Sometimes this type of content can even help you discover a new interest that you might want to turn into a hobby.
In addition to documentaries and shows like the news, you can watch occasional movies like the following eight movies. I have found that these films have not only piqued my interest in new topics, but have also provided some valuable life and business lessons.
Yeah. This is a movie Pixar. But, as Charlie Jane Adams, one of the founders of i09 and author of the best-selling book All The Birds in the Sky, explains, this story about a young girl named Riley struggling to adapt to moving to a new city “is an extended metaphor for the changes that occur in your heart and mind as you grow: grieving emotions show the emotional states of a child, being supplanted and reorganized as you learn maturity.”
The film also explores “the complexity of the ways in which different emotions interact with each other”.
During the course of the film, Riley’s emotions, Joy, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, and Anger, discover “how to handle more difficult situations and abandon your old assumptions about what kind of emotional state is best”. Additionally, “Inside Out” also explores “the ways memories are stored in the brain and how memories can change over time as you review them.”
Even though this is a children’s movie, those are invaluable lessons that entrepreneurs should learn over the course of their entrepreneurial journey.
This thriller starring Bradley Cooper follows Edward Morra, a struggling writer, who is introduced to a nootropic drug called NZT-48. This mysterious pill grants her the ability to fully utilize his brain, which in turn drastically improves his life.
While no such drug exists, at least not legally or at this level, “Unlimited” will prepare you to think smarter. The preparation, according to Psychology Today, “It is a non-conscious form of human memory related to the perceptual identification of words and objects”.
“It refers to activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.” For example, if you see the word “yellow,” it might be a little faster to recognize the word “banana.” This is “because yellow and banana are closely associated in memory.”
This film tells the story of mathematician Alan Turing, also known as the father of modern computing, as he assisted in a British code-breaking operation that helped shorten World War II.
In addition to learning the story of Turning and how he laid the foundation for computers and artificial intelligence by inventing a “universal machine,” “The Enigma Code” also celebrates human ingenuity, encourages you to think big, and inspires you to learn more. about Turing and the machine and test that bear his name, which would be useful if you are involved in the technology industry.
Christopher Nolan’s riveting detective story follows Leonard (Guy Pierce), a man unable to form new memories, as he attempts to find his wife’s killer.
The film starts in the middle and works from the beginning until the viewer experiences the same emotions as Leonard.
Juggling between these non-linear narratives can improve your attention and imagination by forcing you to draw your own conclusion. But, more importantly, “Memento” illustrates the importance of memory techniques.
This Academy Award-winning film follows a janitor with genius-level intellect working at MIT with a troubled past.
Good Will Hunting actually brought in an MIT professor for the complex mathematical equations, and there are also many great literary and philosophical discussions between Will and Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), the most valuable lessons of “Good Will Hunting” being the understanding that education can come from anywhere, there is no such thing as “perfect” and the importance of emotions and relationships.
Written, directed and starring Shane Carruth, who has a college degree in mathematics and previously worked as an engineer, “Primer” is a science fiction drama about two engineers who accidentally discover how to travel through time. The film, like Memento, has a non-linear structure, exploring the philosophical implications of time travel and discussing complex physical and scientific theories regarding the Meissner effect and Feynman diagrams.
This movie can also be compared to a Rubic’s Cube, as it requires multiple viewings to rearrange the plot until you solve this complicated puzzle.
Inspired by the biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr., this Academy Award-winning film focuses on the discovery of the Nash Equilibrium, which, as Investopedia explains, ““It is a game theory concept where the optimal outcome of a game is one in which no player has an incentive to deviate from his chosen strategy after considering the choice of an opponent.”
That may sound confusing, but economists have used this theory to “determine how competing companies set their prices, how governments should design auctions to squeeze the most out of bidders, and how to explain the sometimes self-destructive decisions groups make”. Furthermore, the “Nash equilibrium helps economists understand how decisions that are good for the individual can be terrible for the group.”
This surreal psychological thriller, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, follows an unemployed numbers theorist named Max who suffers from cluster headaches, paranoia, hallucinations, and social anxiety disorder.
The film is notable for covering topics ranging from religion, mysticism, and the universe’s relationship to mathematics. Max becomes obsessed with these topics to find the key to the chaos that surrounds us everywhere, which he can use to predict anything, like the stock market.
An introduction to these themes is extremely interesting, but I have found that the real takeaway from this film is the danger of constantly searching for something that may not be there. No matter how educated and informed you are, you can’t always predict what will come next.
