Rating: Summary: Made for $60,000, which is all you really need Review: This film shows that Hollywood's scifi thrillers are all stupid and are wastes of money. Pi was made on a tight budget and you will find that it was one of then most interesting stories you'll ever find in a movie today. This truly puts the argument over whether Big Studios or Independent Studios are better to an end. Sean Gullete is Maxmillian Cohen, a renegade mathamatician with some strange qualities. When he sets off to find the numerical pattern in the stock market, and finds a mysterious 216 digit number, he finds that a sect of jews and many other people are willing to kill him for this number. A must see!!
Rating: Summary: An unbelievable movie, absolutely stunning. Review: Pi defies the imagination. "Eye candy" doesn't even begin to describe the visual masterpiece that this film is. It was out of control from start to finish. A movie that simply must be seen by every science fiction lover.
Rating: Summary: eXtraordinary film... a must see Review: IF you Liked Eraserhead, you will love Pi, From a Visual standpoint, unbelieveable, simple yet effective, from an Audio standpoint... the noises, the heart-pulsing soundtrack... it's all there... a fantastic film.
Rating: Summary: Great movie if you haven't been mainstreamed. Review: A great movie about a math theorist and his delaings with the number behind everything. He has dedicated himself to finding the number that links all mathematical systems and must deal with those that would use him for this information(anybody from Wall St. to a Jewish Kabbalah). My few words don't do it justice, but if you ever use your brain, you'd like this movie. Done in black and white
Rating: Summary: great movie Review: This is a great movie. they dont make it too unrealistic with big fancy special effects or big name actors. the acting is good and the black and white adds to the effect. a great thinking person's movie.
Rating: Summary: This movie is a must see for anyone who loves math. Review: Mathmatician, (Gullette) concludes that everything in the universe has a mathmatical pattern, and spends his days attempting to decode the pattern. Being chased by investment firms, eager to get the code to predict the stock market, Gullette attempts to finish his work. A thrilling movie that really makes you wonder.
Rating: Summary: Dark techno movie about a man obsessed with math Review: This great black & white movie by Darren Aronofsky is about a man, Max Cohen, who is obsessed with math. He finds out a 216-digit number which seems to be the key to the complex pattern in stock market and in the Torah. People from the stock market and Jewish people then want to get ahold of the number and even threaten Max's life for it. This is a very suspenseful movie completely centered on the presence of math everywhere in nature. Totally amazing! Darren Aronofsky won best director 1998 at the Sundance Film Festival for it, which he definitely deserved!
Rating: Summary: Stop giving away the ending Review: The two worst things you can do in a review are over-hype and give away the ending (especially for movies that build to the end) - here's looking at you 'The Aphasic Android' (other reviewers gave away the ending too). This movie is somewhat pretentious and suffers from some neo-classical art-house direction tricks; however these flaws fail to take much away from a truely intersting storyline. I guess this movie isn't for everyone - sort of the equivalent to listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain.
Rating: Summary: Dark. Grainy. Intense. Insane. Review: In other words, I dig the hell out of this one, kiddies.What's not to like? The director gave it a futuristic feel by using the hand held camera with B&W film. Sometimes it looked like a Super 8. There's that Mad Scientist Computer like something outta HR Giger's idea book in the hero's apartment--which, by the way, has at least 4 boltlocks on the door. The Computer gets attacked by real bugs leaving a mucously slime recalling what the Alien designed by HR Giger leaves behind. This is a wild one, my friends. The music utilized included the Massive Attack's now ubiquitous masterwork "Angel".(Note to Readers: Pick up Mezzanine by the Massive. It is a masterpiece.) It has a mathematician going into meltdown just like the Hollywood story "A Beautiful Mind" (Is it coincidence that the game Go is featured in each?). And it has the infamous quick sequence of our hero popping the pills ala "All That Jazz", ie,--"It's Show Time". Starting out intensively dark and creepy, the cinema spirals into a more hallucinogenic, paranoic thing as the protagonist searches for a way to predict what will happen in the stock market via math--Numbers Theory, Chaos Theory, Fractals, God knows what. (A real life mathematician long ago had determined that the stock market is more random as in random Browning Motion, by the by, using something closer to probability formulae--but, I digress) When he gets close to knowing that code--he's seen the number, he's printed the number and tossed it in the city park trash, he even has this 216 digit number in his subconscienceness--a group of Hassidic Jews who turn out to be a bit Mafia like and contrastly a group from an unnamed Corporation shows up. Further helping our hero to sink deeper into his mania, I might add. What happens? What?--me tell? See the film. I would tell you this, though. The hero of this movie does *not* end up with a Nobel Prize like John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind"....
Rating: Summary: Compelling Sci-Fi Review: First, this film scores because it is a quality script with that does not even try for "Hollywood" style production. Second, this film meets one of my personal criteria for a very good to great film in that it offers filmmakers / photographers good content to dig into, admire and learn from. Shot in black and white, the film has a certain 1960's-frenzied cheez-sci-fi style (maybe it was the weird, buzzing ambient score?) to it, but not to such a degree that it gets in the way. The cinematography actually reminded me of some segments from "Fight Club", believe it or not. Other reviewers either liked or were turned off by the pseudo-math that supports the plot - one man's search for underlying order in a chaotic, apparently random universe. Simply put, one cannot tell if this search is a schizophrenic episode or the result of a man's mind trying to comprehend something it was not designed to. They missed the simple fact that this ambiguity drives the whole plot. Sean Gullette never gives us a clue as to whether he's a genius or an annoying axe-grinder convinced that JFK was assassinated by the Moonies / "Blue Blockers" are a government mind-control device / there is an underlying, absolute, predictable order to the universe. Okay, just #3, but still... Gullette's performance, especially in "wing nut" mode, is great. By the end, he's shaved his head and recollects the best of Robert DeNiro in "Taxi Driver" in his intensity, although his character is not required to jump off a personal cliff quite so high as DeNiro's. Like all great films, this one leaves audiences with more questions than answers. As an added benefit, the math, while simple, is presented in such a way that anyone could see what might compel a person to spend their lives studying abstract number theory. The only thing that keeps me from giving 4-5 stars is that this film is work to watch - it is NOT "entertainment" per se, and people shopping for "entertainment" tend to focus on "# stars (x out of y)" as criteria. If that's you, forget it. For the adventurous film fan, it's a worthy film.
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