The 10 Best Business Films and Documentaries

The best business films aren't really about money. They're about nerve, ego, loyalty and the fine print: the moment a handshake turns into a contract, or a brilliant pitch meets the cold arithmetic of delivery. These ten are the ones we keep coming back to. Some are dramas, some are documentaries, and a couple are genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Each one earns its place, and most of them stay with you long after the credits.

Streaming rights change constantly, so rather than list services that may be gone next month, you can check what's streaming near you on JustWatch.

We're counting down, so number one comes last.

10. Chef (2014)

Director: Jon Favreau

Favreau writes, directs and stars as a chef who walks out of a well-known Los Angeles restaurant after clashing with its owner and a critic, then rebuilds his career from a Cuban food truck with his son and a loyal line cook. It's warm and light, but the kitchen detail is real: Favreau trained under Roy Choi, the chef behind LA's Kogi taco trucks, who became a co-producer on the film.

Why watch: it is the warmest film on this list, and the food looks good enough to make you hungry.

9. Margin Call (2011)

Director: J. C. Chandor

Set over roughly 24 hours at a Wall Street investment bank as the 2008 crisis begins, this follows what happens after a junior analyst realises the firm's mortgage-backed securities are far riskier than anyone admitted. It's talky, tense and morally murky.

Why watch: it is quiet, cold and tense, and it never tells you who to blame.

8. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Director: Alex Gibney

Based on the book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, Gibney's documentary traces how one of America's most admired companies collapsed under fraud and accounting that hid reality from investors and staff alike. It's gripping, and less about energy trading than about a culture that prized looking clever over being honest.

Why watch: it plays like a thriller, and every word of it happened.

7. Moneyball (2011)

Director: Bennett Miller

Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who builds a competitive baseball team on a fraction of his rivals' budget by using statistics to find undervalued players. You don't need to know a thing about baseball.

Why watch: it turns spreadsheets into drama, and Pitt's Beane is restless, funny and quietly desperate.

6. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Director: James Foley

David Mamet adapted his own play about four real-estate salesmen pushing dubious land deals, told that by the end of the week everyone but the top two will be fired. The cast, led by Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Alec Baldwin, is extraordinary. The sales culture is horrifying: lead-hoarding, lying and, eventually, theft.

Why watch: for Mamet's dialogue, and a cast at full stretch.

5. The Founder (2016)

Director: John Lee Hancock

Michael Keaton is Ray Kroc, a struggling milkshake-machine salesman who walks into the McDonald brothers' astonishingly efficient San Bernardino burger stand and sees an empire. He franchises it, outmanoeuvres the brothers and eventually forces them out. It's a film about a good system and a weak contract: the brothers built the process, and Kroc worked out where the money and the control really sat.

Why watch: for Keaton, who makes Kroc magnetic and alarming at once, and for the handshake scenes, which play very differently the second time.

4. The Big Short (2015)

Director: Adam McKay

Adapted from Michael Lewis's book, this follows a handful of outsiders who saw that the US housing market was built on bad mortgages, and bet against it before the 2008 crash. It's funny, furious and explains the jargon better than most textbooks.

Why watch: it makes a dry subject gripping, and its anger still feels fresh.

3. The Aviator (2004)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio is Howard Hughes in Scorsese's portrait of the twenty years from 1927 to 1947, when Hughes sank years and millions into his flying epic Hell's Angels, set air-speed records, took control of TWA and went to war with Pan Am's Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and Trippe's ally in the Senate, Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda). Cate Blanchett won an Oscar as Katharine Hepburn. It's a film about a man who kept staking everything on machines other people said couldn't be built, while his obsessive-compulsive disorder closed in around him.

Why watch: for the Beverly Hills crash, the Senate hearing where Hughes turns the tables on Brewster, and DiCaprio, who makes him dashing and fragile in the same scene. Few films have caught nerve this well.

2. The Social Network (2010)

Director: David Fincher

Aaron Sorkin adapted Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires into this account of Facebook's founding, with Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Justin Timberlake as Napster's Sean Parker. It's told through two lawsuits, one brought by Saverin and one by the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer), so you get competing versions of who built what and who was owed. Zuckerberg and others have said much of it is invented. As drama, it's ferocious.

Why watch: for Sorkin's dialogue, the Oscar-winning score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the moment Saverin finds out how far his stake has been diluted.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio is Jordan Belfort, the Long Island broker who started out in penny stocks and built Stratton Oakmont into an empire on "pump and dump" fraud. Terence Winter adapted Belfort's own memoir, and Scorsese films the boom years as a three-hour riot of money, Quaaludes and excess, with Jonah Hill as his partner Donnie Azoff, Margot Robbie as his second wife and Matthew McConaughey as his first mentor on Wall Street. Kyle Chandler plays the FBI agent who won't go away.

Why watch: for DiCaprio at full throttle and McConaughey's brief, unforgettable turn as the mentor. It's outrageous, very funny, and the bill does arrive.

That's our ten, and we've left out plenty. Tell us what's missing: reply with the film or documentary you'd add, and why it deserves a place.

Sources

• Jon Favreau's training with Roy Choi: Vulture, April 2014; Los Angeles Times, April 2014
• The Aviator: director, cast, period covered (1927 to 1947), TWA, Pan Am, Brewster, Hell's Angels and the Beverly Hills crash: The New York Times, 17 December 2004; Rolling Stone; RogerEbert.com; Oscars and OCD portrayal: Wikipedia
• The Social Network: director, writer, source book, cast, the two lawsuits, Saverin's dilution, disputes over accuracy and Oscars: The Guardian, 14 October 2010; The Guardian, 20 October 2010; Wikipedia
• The Wolf of Wall Street: director, writer, source memoir, cast, Stratton Oakmont and the pump-and-dump scheme: The Guardian, 15 January 2014; The Guardian, 17 December 2013; Variety; Wikipedia