Inspirational Movies on Peacock This Month (February 2024)

Watch inspirational movies like Glory (1989), funny movies like Along Came Polly (2004), and movies about homecoming like Inception (2010).

Watch Glory (1989) on Peacock and get the comic as a high quality print on Etsy

I subscribed to Peacock for the first time last month and was impressed enough to carry my subscription into February 2024. By browsing Peacock, I was introduced to some uplifting movies l would have otherwise missed including The Hurricane (1999), Little Pink House (2017), and Hearts Beat Loud (2018). 

While I continue exploring Peacock this month for movies I’ve not yet seen, I wanted to share some movies with you that I’ve already seen and can vouch for that were newly released on Peacock this month (full list here).

Glory (1989)

This movie was released the same year I was born and stars two of the most talented actors of my time, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington. It also features one of my favorite uplifting movie scenes — when Colonel Shaw volunteers his all-black volunteer regiment to lead an attack on Fort Wagner after listening to General Strong list off all the deathly artillery defending it.

“Wagner mounts a 10-inch columbiad, three smooth bore 32-pounders, a 42-pound carronade, a 10-inch coast mortar, and four 12-pound howitzers. Plus a garrison of about a thousand men… Needless to say, the casualties in the leading regiment may be extreme.”

The historical events of the civil war that Glory is based on are not uplifting at face value, but they present many opportunities for the men in the story to triumph over fear. Over and over again, Colonel Shaw and his troops choose courage and love in a hellish place. And the more hell they go through, the stronger they get. To the point where, at the end of the movie, survival is not so important. Following their friends and fellow troops is what matters most.

These little choices of unity among friends and fellow soldiers, over and over again, is what the essence of the United States is built on. You feel this in the movie Glory.

Along Came Polly (2004)

This movie was released the same year as other Ben Stiller movies such as Anchorman, Dodgeball, Meet the Fockers, and Starsky & Hutch so it had quite the competition in the Stiller-sphere.

It would have flown under my radar when it was released during my freshman year in high school if it wasn’t for the slow-motion shot of the sweaty, hairy belly of a middle-aged man grinding up against Ben Stiller’s face in the trailer.

Having enjoyed watching Stiller in Meet the Parents — and frequently citing his “Oh, your fingers hurt, well now your back’s gonna hurt cause you just pulled landscaping duty” line in Happy Gilmore — I was up to watch a rom-com with him even though I wasn’t particularly interested in the genre at the time.

As someone who can’t stand decorative pillows, I love the scene with Ben Stiller taking dozens of throw pillows off the bed he shared with his ex-wife and being called out by his rebound played by Jennifer Aniston.

“Oh, so you don’t sleep on these?”

“No, they’re decorative.”

“For who?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the only one who sees them, but you don’t sleep on them, and you take them off the bed every night, and put them in the box, take them out the box… I don’t understand the point.”

Good scene, good movie. And if you like this, there’s another fun movie streaming on Peacock this month with Ben Stiller called Dodgeball (2004).

Inception (2010)

I watched this movie toward the end of my senior year of college three times over the course of 24 hours. It completely floored me. It was the best sci-fi action movie I had seen since The Matrix (1999). It seemed like I had been waiting eleven years for this, like Saito waits an eternity for Cobb to rescue him from limbo in the movie.

What is limbo?

If you haven’t seen Inception yet, I’m excited for you to find out. It’s a word I had never used before watching this movie, but a concept we all know as humans. It has a specific meaning in the movie to explain the last of the dreamy states of consciousness the characters bounce between, but it also carries metaphorical weight. Put simply, when you’re in limbo, you’re lost. You’ve lost your sense of home. You’ve lost sight of truth. You’ve lost sight of what’s real.

What is real?

Well now, this is a question at the heart of The Matrix that’s also at the heart of Inception. If you can help people answer this question with a compelling plot and series of original action sequences, you’ve got yourself a classic. And that’s exactly what Inception is — a classic.

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