Here is the list of the Top 20 Inspirational Movies you must watch before you die, that inspired me and my friends in the last few years.
With so many amazing movies out there, it is hard to come up with just 20 that I think are the most inspirational. As I am a movie lover I have seen loads but I am pretty sure you will agree.
Well, I decided on the major components of inspirational movies: a likeable hero, the overcoming of obstacles, acts of selflessness, and (most importantly) whether or not you feel good after watching. I selected the movies from the past 10-15 years and which hopefully you can remember 
. Most of them have also the best inspirational soundtrack (Epic Songs) that makes the movie more authentic and inspiring. They are in no particular order as I love these movies which I have probable watched them more that 3 times (some of them) and left an impact on my life.
It’s also good to be inspired to do something with this newly acquired inspiration. Here’s the Top 20 Inspirational Movies you must watch before you die (click on the Movie name to watch the trailer)…
In the story, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is a salesman with an ample supply of bone density scanners collected during an ill-conceived investment plan that has yet to pay off. His girlfriend, Linda (Thandie Newton) was weak (as he tell her in her face) and left Gardner and their son struggling ending up homeless. It was Chris’s determination and willingness to change that took him from where he was (homeless and no job) to become a successful Broker after passing a tough test. Amazing Movie!
Forrest Gump has several messages, some of which are less obvious than others. The most frequently recurring theme is an admonition not to give up on life. Why surrender when you don’t know what lies ahead? By contrasting Forrest’s life with the lives of those around him, and by showing how the passage of time brings solace to even the most embittered hearts, the movie underlines this point. Ever find the grind of life getting you down? Is the day-to-day struggle threatening to drag you under? If so, there is a movie out there that can replenish your energy and refresh your outlook. Passionate and magical, Forrest Gump is a tonic for the weary of spirit. For those who feel that being set adrift in a season of action movies is like wandering into a desert, the oasis lies ahead.
With his separated mother Arlene (Helen Hunt) struggling with alcohol addiction, and working as a waitress in a Las Vegas strip club and a casino change girl, Trevor would have good justification to be hopeless himself. Contrary to his circumstance, he devises a plan called “pay it forward”–pick three people, do something good for them they can’t do themselves, and ask them to do the same for three others. Start Paying It Forward!
Mel Gibson brings alive the sacrifices of America’s founding fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. The Patriot also turns out to be a message movie, filled with issues regarding honor vs. survival, vengeance vs. forgiveness, negotiation vs. war, and glory vs. sacrifice. This isn’t just some ordinary war movie. It is Epic!
The film is the true-life tale of the rugged Depression era boxer Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe), something a little grimier is more in keeping. The film spends nearly two and half hours establishing Braddock’s credentials as a true American hero, a man with unyielding integrity, humility and courage who is devoted to his wife and family. Cinderella Man focuses on the period from 1928 to 1935, beginning with Braddock as a successful fighter living in a nice house and blissfully married to Mae (Renee Zellweger). After breaking his hand, his fortunes, like those of his country, spiral downhill rapidly. The good thing about hitting rock bottom is there’s only one place to go.
Mel Gibson as director, star and producer of “Braveheart,” he turns the unpromising story of a 13th-century kilted wonder into one of the most spectacular entertainments in years. Fighting for FREEDOM is the call for this epic movie that have inspired many and still does. One of the best around.
We really hate to be predictable, but it’s undeniable. Rocky is perhaps the biggest, feel-goodest inspirational movies of all time. Amazing theme song, underdog champion, Sylvester Stallone…you can’t get any better than that. He is likeable, even if he is unintelligible, and you are rooting for him…really rooting for him…even when he does the raw egg drink thing. You think “Man, that is dedication there”. And it is. Do you feel good when it’s over? You’re ready to go a few rounds with Apollo Creed yourself. Well? Aren’t you?
Based on the true story of Coach Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) and high school basketball team the Richmond Oilers, Coach Carter centers on a reluctant coach as he takes the job as the team’s skipper. Coach Carter, alongside his freshman, ex-prep school son (Robert Richard), slowly begins to turn the team from inner city losers into student athletes. Carter’s rigorous workout routine not only stretches the boundaries of the human body but also the mind. A great life lesson!
Remember the Titans is the story of a high school football team in the 70′s as the black schools and the white schools are integrated… they were tough times. But Remember the Titans is not a movie about football, though it does contain many epic games. Nor is Remember the Titans a story about Racism, though it does deal maturely and realistically with the racial issues students and adults were forced to face in the 70′s. Rather, Remember the Titans is about people doing the right thing. Remember the Titans is about heart. Remember the Titans is about the human spirit. And most of all Remember the Titans is about friendship.
In the months leading up to the 1980 Olympic Winter Games, the American hockey team was practically written off as a possible medal contender. They had to overcome the cloud of a 20-year losing streak in world hockey competition. They had to provide something great to stir up a country that was embroiled in domestic and international turmoil. And, they had to outplay the highly talented Easter Bloc teams, which had established themselves with increasing dominance. “Miracle” is a movie whose impact is aided by the fact that it is based on one of the greatest moments that will forever echo among the pantheon of sports contests.
“A losing coach with an underdog football team faces [his] giants of fear and failure on and off the field to surprising results”.The story focuses on coach Grant Taylor (Kendrick) who is having trouble at home and on the job: his house is falling apart, along with his aging car that not only looks bad, but won’t start half the time; his wife, Brook (played by Shannen Fields), can’t conceive a child after four years of trying, and guess what, it’s Coach Taylor’s “fault”; and his football team is losing game after game after game, much to Shiloh Christian Academy’s chagrin, leading the players’ fathers to meet secretly to push for his early retirement.
Men Of Honour is based on the true story of Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the first African American to become a diver in the U.S. Navy. Unprepared to accept the role of cook or valet traditionally occupied by African Americans Brashear requests a transfer to the navy’s diving school, a request finally granted on the understanding that as the first black to enter the all-white domain of diving school he has little if no chance of graduating. His instructor is the bigoted and ruthless Master Chief Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro) who makes Carl as welcome as a bride on a stag night. The abrasive and defiant Sunday was considered the navy’s top diver until an accident forced him to quit and become an instructor, a role he treats with the same contempt he shows his students. Men Of Honour is one of those big melodramas Hollywood excels at.
A story of hope is just about the last thing you’d expect to find in a prison movie. But in The Shawshank Redemption, that’s exactly what you get. Shawshank is the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a man convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and shipped to a maximum-security prison in Shawshank, Maine, for two consecutive life sentences. Over the next years (two hours, movie time), he finds his way to inner peace and self-reliance in the midst of the terror and inequity of the prison system. The Shawshank Redemption is a film with remarkable staying power. It sustains its suspense and tension throughout; its remarkably hopeful story is thoroughly engrossing. In the end of it all, Andy will escape Shawshank. You will escape Shawshank. But you will not escape The Shawshank Redemption.
“The Social Network” begins by positing that it was a very specific social resentment that got Zuckerberg started on his road to billions. The film opens at an undergraduate bar near the Harvard campus in the fall of 2003 with Zuckerberg getting dumped by his girlfriend Erica ( Rooney Mara, soon to be Lisbeth Salander in the Fincher-directed versions of the Stieg Larsson trilogy). Going out with him, she says tartly, is “like dating a Stairmaster.” Furious at this rejection, Zuckerberg stomps back to his dorm and, with the help of roommate and best friend Eduardo Saverin (the gifted shape-shifter Andrew Garfield), takes revenge by doing some adroit hacking and coming up with Facemash, a site that enables students to vote on which Harvard women are the hottest. It gets 22,000 hits in two hours and crashes the university’s system.
That stunt attracts the attention of two of the school’s elite, rowers and identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (played, with the help of computer wizardry, by two unrelated actors, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence). They and friend Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) hire him to work on a university dating service they have in mind called Harvard Connection. Almost simultaneously, Zuckerberg, funded by best friend Saverin, starts “thefacebook,” which eventually morphs into you know what.
Going in, all we know about Ben (Smith) is that something terrible has happened in his past, and that he feels responsible for it. That’s all. Everything else we gradually piece together, through a fractured narrative that jumbles the time sequence. Ben Thomas (Will Smith) is an IRS agent with a fateful secret who embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers. He tested them one by one to see if they are worth what he was giving them. Sometimes he was mean to them to see how far they can go.
John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington), a financially struggling factory worker who is met with every parent’s worst nightmare when his son Mike collapses during a baseball game. John and his wife rush him to the emergency room where they are told that Mike’s heart is too large, and that a new heart will have to take its place. However, a problem arises when the hospital’s leading physician and administrator (James Woods and Anne Heche, who are each about as comforting as the grim reaper) require a $75,000 down payment just to get Mike on the organ donor list. John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington) a man willing to do anything for his son, and the drama and intensity he brings to the screen almost always feels genuine.
This is the story of how a horse that some people thought should have been put down encouraged three men who, in turn with the horse, inspired the nation. is movie has so much to offer. First off, it can serve as an inspiration to anyone who wants to triumph over adversity. The three major characters, Red, Charles, and Tom, all have to go through this, with Red having to do it more than once. The horse is that source of inspiration for them all, but it’s Red who picks the horse up as well. They live a symbiotic relationship. This movie also serves as a great history lesson for kids about America from the turn of the century through 1940.
An inspirational tale about the remarkable power of the human spirit as the pages of Dan Millman’s best-selling autobiographical novel come to life onscreen in this life-affirming film starring Nick Nolte, Scott Mechlowicz, and Amy Smart. A talented college gymnast with serious Olympic aspirations, Dan Millman (Mechlowicz) leads a charmed life of first-place trophies, fast girls, and rowdy parties until a career-threatening injury and a chance meeting with a mysterious stranger named Socrates (Nolte) show him how little he truly knows about living. In the months that follow his tragic injury, both Socrates and elusive beauty Joy (Smart) impart to the growing young man the wisdom that he needs to leave the past behind and follow the path of destiny and fulfill his transformation into the peaceful warrior.
Attempting an unfortunate blend of Newcastle grit and Hollywood uplift, “Goal! The Dream Begins” is the improbable story of Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker), a young Mexican immigrant and amateur soccer star living in Los Angeles. Against the wishes of his conservative father (Tony Plana), who urges a secure future in the lawn-care business, Santiago follows the advice of a talent scout (Stephen Dillane) and heads to England for a tryout with Newcastle United. Battling asthma attacks, hostile players and the ghastly Tyneside weather, Santiago gains a one-month trial; and before you can yell “Foul!” he’s playing alongside the captain, Alan Shearer, and teaching his teammates the importance of clean living and hard work. One can only imagine their gratitude. “Goal! The Dream Begins” is the kickoff to a trilogy of movies
Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger (Sean Astin) doesn’t want to follow his father and brother to the local steel mill when he graduates. He wants what he’s wanted since he was a little boy, to play football for Notre Dame. Nothing — not weak grades, not his small size or lack of athletic ability, not even his relatives’ and teachers’ conviction that he’ll never make it — is going to deter him. The path to realizing his dream is littered with seemingly endless obstacles and naysayers. But a kindly priest at Notre Dame gets him into a neighboring junior college, a Notre Dame student named D-Bob helps him improve his grades, and a hard-edged groundskeeper (Charles Dutton) gives him a job (and a bed) in the football stadium. With their help, and his own uncrushable will, Rudy gets closer to achieving his dream.
BONUS – Get Rich or Die Tryin’
The Hip-hop star 50 Cent makes his movie Get Rich or Die Tryin’ debut in this hard-edged urban drama inspired by the rapper’s own life. Marcus (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, aka 50 Cent) grew up in a tough New York neighborhood and was left to fend for himself after the death of his mother when he was a kid. Marcus fell in with a powerful crime boss (Bill Duke) who gave him an opportunity to make a good living — by selling drugs. While Marcus has misgivings about his life of crime and has an interest in expressing himself as a rap artist, his success as a dealer makes it hard for him to get away from the life. However, when a heist goes wrong and Marcus is shot several times, he has a change of heart and decides to leave his old life behind. He begins pursuing his dream of making it in music, and with the support of his girlfriend (Joy Bryant) he begins recording a demo tape. Marcus’ new songs are inspired by the gritty realities of his old life on the street. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is inspiring for the young generation.
