I love the 10 minute or so montage in wargames where David just goes to libraries to do basic honest research on falken, in order to figure out what his password is. Of course, he should have tried Joshua like a week before he actually did, but you can't have everything.

And that's not counting knowing where the school password post-it note is kept, and getting yourself sent to the principal on a regular basis so you can keep looking it up.

Or just letting your computer run for an entire day to determine which phone numbers in a given set of area codes have modems on the other end.

Wargames does take a few shortcuts for storytelling, and it is a bit silly in the best possible way, but the actual hacking is genuinely good, and not boring.

Wargames was brilliant. How does everyone feel about the remake: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865957/? I've decided not to let it ruin my memories of the original so far.

According to the reviews on IMDB you linked to, that was a good call. Stick to it.