My favourite of all time though? The Right Stuff. Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) trying for one last record in the NF-104.
The real story of Yeager's big-headed incompetence with the NF-104 makes for rather less pleasant reading....
Chuck Yeager’s accident was strictly and fully pilot error, but the President of his Accident Board, Col. Guy Townsend, lacked the courage or integrity to call it that way and risk Chuck’s wrath and the potential for trouble from higher levels: Jackie Cochran and her husband acting through the A.F. Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay. Chuck’s Autobiography provides a lesson in how vindictive he was to those who refused to support him.
See
A personal history of the NF-104 AST by its main test pilot, Robert W. Smith