Ever since have known myself have always loved watching movies. Most people spend their leisure time going to the gym, hanging out and stuff. Mine is watching TV shows and Movies.
I remember when I was about 6 years old and had to crawl through the curtains to watch a movie behind the curtain on NBC 2 because it was past my bed time. Funny thing, I slept off behind the curtains till the next month.
From NBC 2 to Netflix, times have changed and the way we watch movies have followed suit.
I enjoy watching Finance, Legal and Business Movies & TV shows but I occasionally watch comedy and non-fiction movies as well. I particularly learned the most from Billions, Suits, House of Lies and the founder.
Billions
Set primarily in New York and Connecticut, the series depicts hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod as he accumulates wealth and power in the world of high finance. Axelrod’s aggressive tactics frequently garner the attention of United States Attorney Chuck Rhoades.
Billions taught me skill sets valuable in life and business. From team work to negotiations and most importantly finance related tactics and jargons.
Suits
Set at a fictional New York City corporate law firm, it follows Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), who uses his photographic memory to talk his way into a job as an associate working for successful “closer” attorney Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), despite being a college dropout who never attended law school (although he has achieved an extremely high score on the LSAT multiple times as an illegal proxy).
Suits focuses on Harvey and Mike winning lawsuits and closing cases, while at the same time hiding Mike’s secret. It also features Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt, a neurotic, manipulative and unscrupulous financial-law partner; Meghan Markle as the ambitious, talented paralegal Rachel Zane; Sarah Rafferty as Harvey’s legal secretary and confidante Donna Paulsen; and Gina Torres as the firm’s profit-above-all managing partner, Jessica Pearson.
I learnt a little about business law and how to study, learn and know your competitors before confronting them.
House of Lies
Charming, fast talking Marty Kaan and his crack team of management consultants know how to play the corporate game better than anyone, by using every dirty trick in the book to woo powerful CEOs and close huge deals. In the board rooms, barrooms and bedrooms of the power elite, corruption is business as usual and everyone’s out for themselves first. Nothing is sacred in this scathing, irreverent satire of corporate America today.
The show focuses on both the personal and business lives of Marty Kaan, a manipulative, immoral, driven and cold management consultant. Originally, Marty was a highly successful partner at consultancy firm Galweather Stearn, where he headed up a pod consisting of engagement manager Jeannie van der Hooven, and associates Clyde Oberholt and Doug Guggenheim. He later leaves this position to head up his own firm, Kaan & Associates. In addition to the questionable business practices of Marty and his team, the series also focuses on Marty’s personal life. He deals with his disagreeable management consultant ex-wife Monica, his retired-psychiatrist father Jeremiah and his confidently flamboyant son Roscoe.
I learnt how consultant think and skill sets required of them. From presentations to people skills to financial statement interpretations and analysis. Most importantly, problem solving.
The Founder
In 1954, Ray Kroc is an unsuccessful traveling salesman selling Prince Castle brand milkshake-mixers. While he has a supportive wife, Ethel, and has saved enough to live a simple and comfortable life in Arlington Heights, Illinois, he craves more. Ray also observes that many of the drive-in restaurants that he tries to sell to are inefficiently run, with a long waiting time for orders and carhops more concerned with avoiding the groping from greasers than getting the orders right. After learning that a drive-in in San Bernardino is ordering an unusually large number of milkshake mixers, Ray drives to California to see it. What he finds is McDonald’s: a highly popular walk-up restaurant with fast service, high-quality food, disposable packaging, and a family-friendly atmosphere.
Impressed by the revolutionary Speedee Service System of American brothers, Richard McDonald and Maurice McDonald, over-the-hill 52-year-old milkshake-machine salesman Ray Kroc, drives to their small drive-in restaurant in 1954 San Bernardino, California. After tasting a fresh, scrumptious, 15-cent hamburger from grill to counter in just 30 seconds and learning all about the ingenious brothers’ secret of success, Ray Kroc has an epiphany: what if the business of the innovative duo was franchised? As one thing leads to another and Ray manages to strike a business deal with the McDonald brothers, what follows next is a tale of hard work, persistence, and determination, peppered with equal amounts of manipulation, ruthlessness, and greed. In an increasingly competitive world, just how far is one willing to go to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
I learnt the power of persistence and seizing opportunities when you see one.
CRITICAL THINKING