Joker

My #1. I grew up reading about these scientists in my textbooks, just names on a page with equations attached to them. Seeing them walk around as actual people, in the same rooms, alive at the same time and all connected to each other, was something else. That’s the thing that got me: not only Oppenheimer, but the whole crowd of them gathered at one moment in history. Nolan does the science and the dread justice, but for me it was personal: my textbook heroes brought to life.

The first movie I ever saw in a theater. I was 17, and when I walked out I genuinely felt like I was in the Matrix, looking at the street, the people, all of it, half-wondering whether any of it was real. It messed with my head in the best way and shifted how I looked at a lot of things. I was studying computer science at the time, and this is the movie that made programming feel like more than a way to get a job. Code as something that could build a whole world, bend what’s real. It pushed me to actually want to understand it, not just pass the class.

Watched it in the theater with friends, which was the perfect way to see it. As a wannabe startup founder and a programmer, I connected with the Zuckerberg character right away. Honestly, I felt like I was him. It pulled me straight back to all the hack projects I built in college, the all-nighters with friends, the rush of making something out of nothing. And that “Creep” cover, the slowed-down choral version playing over the rowing scene, gave me chills. One of my favorite needle-drops in any movie.