Readers of this thread,
Thanks for contributions so far. I especially liked the suggestions to use "Life is Beautiful" (Himanshu) "Pygmalion" (Rajendra) and animal documentaries (Kusum). I am not familiar with some of the obviously classic Indian films.
For me the film has to capture something special to make a powerful learning metaphor. While Rocky, of course, taps into the universal mythology of the underdog prevailing against the odds (again and again again and soon to be again once more) it doesn't qualify (in my humble opinion) as a film that uniquely captures a powerful learning metaphor in the way that, say, Pymalion does. [The Pygmalion metaphor is so powerful that it has found its way into management-speak "the Pygmalion Effect".] For me to use up the participant's time the movie, or short clip, needs to do something more than ensure participants enjoy it. It needs to communicate a metaphor or exemplify something more powerfully or more succinctly than the alternatives available to the course designer.
Clarence Worley's (played by Christian Slater) speech to Alabama Whitman (played by Patricia Arquette) on the roof near the billboard in Quentin Tarantino's screenplay "True Romance" says something special about commitment, for example.
But I was really thinking about whole movies. A couple more I thought about since this thread began include:
The Flight of the Phoenix (the recent remake is no better than the original and, like the original, still lacks a decent effort at making the rebuilt aircraft look real) is a very good team dynamics case study and emphasises the imortant themes of planning, authorisation and hard won interdependence.
I have wondered about using Glengarry Glen Ross for sales training but ocncluded that it would be better for sales leadership training on the basis that it might depress sales staff. However, I did a google search using the search terms "Glengarry Glen Ross used for training (without the inverted commas) which yielded lots of ideas about the application of this film to training.
Sliding Doors is another film that invites the possiblity of alternative realities and self determination of one's life outcomes.
Thanks for the ideas.....let's keep them coming.
Bill