Sometimes it takes motivation to… well, get motivated. Many people struggle to get up every morning to hit the gym. Others have a big job interview coming up or a chat with their boss regarding a promotion that’s making them nervous. There are also folks that just want the energy to clean their apartment. Maybe you’re one of these people and the only energy you have is to put on a movie.
But what if that movie helps you get out of the blahs? Many film fans have their favorite movie that helps them get motivated, whether it’s a high-action movie that gets adrenaline pumping or a quieter yet inspirational tale that reassures you that good things are possible, even in the face of adversity and when the odds are against you. The right movie could help you get into the mindset to fight, to work, and push for success.
Here are a few favorites to add to your watch list when you’re feeling deflated.
This film is on several people’s pump-up list just for the soundtrack alone. The tale of Rocky Balboa is a story of sports, struggle, love, and the working class. While many cite the other films in the Rocky franchise, this is the one that started it all. To quote famed film critic Roger Ebert, “It’s about heroism and realizing your potential, about taking your best shot and sticking by your girl. It sounds not only clichéd but corny — and yet it’s not, not a bit, because it really does work on those levels.”
Rocky didn't focus on a person winning but just feeling and being worthy. To be validated and seen by their peers as a person worthy of time, love, and opportunity. How much more relatable can a character be?
Let’s say you’re not in the mood for much talk and just want your brain shown images of bravery, badassery, and stuff blowing up to get endorphins flowing. Then Mad Max: Fury Road is there for you. Brilliant practical effects and adrenaline-bursting stunts thoroughly mixed with disgustingly beautiful creativity in a post-apocalyptic world. Make sure you’re not going into traffic after watching this movie or you’ll get a speeding ticket. Critic Jason Bailey of Flavorwire called the movie a “120-minute chase” which frankly is enough of a selling point.
Now, one might question how a documentary about a children’s TV show host is on a list of motivating, hype-up movies, but this one still checks those boxes but differently. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? shows a real-life example of a mild-mannered person who made a difference in many lives. Not for fame or for fortune, but just wanted to bring a semblance of good into the world. Mr. Rogers isn’t extraordinary of a person because of what he was but because of the impact of the small contributions he made. While the film is a “security blanket for our troubled times” as Entertainment Weekly put it, it can also stir up a person to stand up and be a “helper” like Fred Rogers was for their friends, family, and the community around them.
You may want to have a film that can motivate you but also is safe to watch with little kids around. If so, Mulan might be for you. Based on Chinese legend, Mulan is an inspirational story of a girl disguising herself as a male soldier in order to protect her older father from going to war. It’s not just a “girl power” tale but one that sees the title character grow as a person through strategy, hard work, and underestimated talent. There’s literally a song that starts with the lyrics “Let’s get down to business” and you’ll find yourself humming along with it as you do a push-up, wash your dishes, or do whatever needed task is in front of you. As a critic from Newsday stated, “Mulan is one of Disney's most daring animated features and, at the same time, it's the most child-friendly since The Lion King.”
If you want a rush of adrenaline through a story of friendship mixed with highly cartoonish action and brilliantly frantic dance numbers, then RRR is for you. The three “R’s” stand for “Rise, Roar, Revolt” so with that alone it can burn a certain fire within a viewer. It’s a lengthy three-hour movie but doesn’t feel long as it is packed with a visual feast of fight scenes, dancing, and over-the-top melodrama that just doesn’t stop. If you’re looking for a bromance that “contains more exciting action scenes than all the Marvel movies put together” as NPR puts it, then enjoy the show.
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File:"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), National Portrait ... 2025
“I go to the flea market because it is full of small, hidden histories,” artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres said in 1995, during an interview for BOMB Magazine with fellow artist Ross Bleckner. Revisiting Gonzalez-Torres’ work now, the statement is poignant. In its own way, his work is also filled with small, hidden histories.
The Cuban-American artist–who was openly gay in the 1980s and 1990s, when it would have been more rare–became known in his lifetime for his conceptual art that lived across mediums of sculpture, installation, photography, painting, and more. Among his most noteworthy series are his “Candy Works,” whose installation in any given space featured an “endless supply” of sweets, from fortune cookies to chocolates to hard candies. Audiences were–and are still now–invited to have a piece and eat it. The work will ebb and flow as it is filled and refilled. It’s in these works that hidden histories–or maybe not so hidden–have most recently been discussed.
Gonzalez-Torres created several candy works in memory of his love Ross Laycock, who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1991. They too feature never-ending supplies of candies in colored wrappers, to be taken and discarded as in his other work, though this time the echo of loss is so much louder. It can mirror the way AIDS ravaged Laycock’s body, scholars believe, while also living forever in his honor. Gonzalez-Torres and Laycock were together for eight years, the artist said in BOMB. “I never stopped loving Ross. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I stopped loving him,” he went on. He defined the years of 1990-1991 as some of the most difficult in his life, and often said his work was made “for an audience of one,” meaning Laycock. Gonzalez-Torres himself passed away from complications due to AIDS in 1996.
One of these works, “Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.),” below, faced controversy recently for the way it was displayed. An exhibition of Gonzalez-Torres’ work, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return,” is appearing now at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Archives of American Art. The art scholar Ignacio Darnaude chastised the museum in OUT Magazine for eliminating mentions of AIDS, Laycock, and queerness from the work's wall text:
“The irony is that, by not explaining what Portrait of Ross in L.A. truly means, the National Portrait Gallery has turned his work into an esoteric cypher, depriving visitors from experiencing Felix's revolutionary work in portraiture. Instead of inducing emotion and tears, I witnessed people blissfully taking pictures of pretty candy — empty calories on the floor robbed of their stirring spirit,” Darnaude wrote. Darnaude also cites that curator Jonathan D. Katz spoke of the work in a 2010 National Portrait Gallery show, directly relating Gonzalez-Torres’ work to AIDS, to understanding how it destroyed a person, and how so many participated in culture and policy that let people die.
File:"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), National Portrait ...commons.wikimedia.org
The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation has since spoken out against the article, instead saying that the curators “have done an extraordinary amount of research and have not only made a point of incorporating significant queer content throughout this exhibition (including direct references to Gonzalez-Torres’s queer identity, his partner Ross Laycock, and both of their deaths from complications from AIDS), but have provided a generous forum for a vast and diverse audience to engage with this content, other political content, and Gonzalez-Torres’s work.” Some refute the foundation’s claims, others agree.
Gonzalez-Torres’s work actively negotiated public space and private life–at the time “Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)” was created, as Darnaude cites Katz, the artist had to find other ways to talk about AIDS in his work because of increased censorship and homophobia in the government. Gonzalez-Torres found a way to bring his voice into systems that otherwise might have sought to oppress it. His work remains perpetually connected to AIDS, to the travesty it wrought on the LGBTQ+ community and the ways the community fought back. It’s a powerful moment to think back on now as the LGBTQ+ community once again faces challenges from the government, particularly in terms of healthcare.
For Gonzalez-Torres, his voice always mattered. “I think that art gives us a voice. Whatever it is, whatever we want to make out of this thing called art,” he said in 1994. “There are different institutions; in the same way that there are a lot of different artistic projects that we can use for our won ends. That's how I see art, as a possibility to have a voice. It's something vital.”
Less than a year before his death, Gonzalez-Torres was still making work and still believed in its capabilities for change. “That’s why I make work, because I still have some hope,” he said in BOMB. “But I’m also very realistic, and I see that . . .It’s about seeing, not just looking. Seeing what’s there."
Chris Hemsworth is the 35-year-old star of "Thor: Ragnarok," or you may know him as the brother of equally attractive actor Liam Hemsworth. But did you know he's also a father-of-three? Well, he is. And it turns out, he's pretty much the coolest dad ever.
In a clip from a 2015 interview on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Hemsworth shared an interesting conversation he had with his 4-year-old daughter India.
“My daughter's kind of envious of my boys," Hemsworth told Ellen. “She came to me the other day, and she's like 'You know, Papa, I want one of those things that Sasha and Tristan have.' And I'm like, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'You know the things in between their legs that you have.'"
Hemsworth said he tried to explain the differences between male and female bodies, but his daughter wasn't having it.
“She goes, 'I really want one!' Hemsworth said. “I'm like, 'A penis?' And she's like, 'I want a penis!'
And then, Hemsworth had the best possible response. He recalls:
She's four and I'm like, 'You know what, you can be whatever you want to be.' And she goes, 'Thanks, Dad.' Runs off into the playground and that was it.
And then, I cannot confirm, but I'm pretty sure the Ellen audience did this:
A Lawton, Oklahoma, student who goes by the Facebook user name Rose Lynn had the last laugh after being sent home from school for wearing an outfit deemed “distracting." Rose Lynn believes her outfit attracted the attention of school officials because of her figure.
She proved it by posting a photo on Facebook of her modest outfit, which consisted of black leggings, a t-shirt, long cardigan, and boots. In her post, she wrote that she was sent home “because I'm developed farther than the average girl my age," and because she's a “CURVY woman." Rose Lynn also thinks the appropriate response shouldn't have been to tell her to cover up, but to teach boys to “to respect the boundaries of young ladies."
British illustrator, John Holcroft's work is a fascinating mixture of retro-style illustrations combined with satirical commentary on modern-day society.
The focus of his pieces span a wide range, tackling everything from our obsession with social media and technology to media's role in the rise of obesity, the influence of banks, and, of course, politics.
Two years into her career, Taiwanese model Heidi Yeh was landing some big, high-paying gigs. Then she took a small job she had no idea would nearly ruin her life.
The ad was a funny, limited-run print ad for a South Korean plastic surgery company. The ad featured an attractive couple and their kids, and the three children had suspiciously different-looking eyelids from those of their parents. For the shoot, the children’s eyes were photo-edited and the copy read, “The only thing you’ll have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids.”
It’s common in Asian countries for affluent people and models to have double eyelid surgery, which creates a defined crease above the eye, giving them a Western look. Yeh, however, had never even gone under the knife.
A vintage post-card collector on Flickr who goes by the username Post Man has kindly allowed GOOD to share his wonderful collection of vintage postcards and erotica from the turn of the century.
This album is full of exquisite photographs of women from around the world dressed in beautiful clothing in exotic settings. In an era well before the internet, these photographs would be one of the only ways you could could see how people in other countries looked and dressed.