Pi

Rating:
Summary: If you like Math, don't watch it!!!
Review: I watched the movie after several people urged me to watch it. They must have thought that since I am into Math and even number theory myself I would enjoy it. The opposite is true. The bombardment of pseudo-mathematical lingo and random High-School-level math tidbits is agonizing if you have any knowledge of higher Mathematics. Paul Erdos (one of the greatest number theorists ever) is turning in his grave after this movie. So, if some people with negative reviews state that you shouldn't watch it unless you are a Math geek they are wrong. Don't watch it if you *do* like Math.
In addition, the movie feels agonizingly long, though it's just over 80 minutes long. The reason is that over long periods the movie is incredibly slow, interrupted by regular acute pain attacks of the main character Max. I was so bored, I was thinking to myself "Must be time for the next migraine attack."
I actually hope that the true interpretation of the movie is that everything was just pure imagination, a hallucination created by a tumor in Max' brain. A little bit like John Nash's futile search for patterns in chaotic systems in the movie "A beautiful mind" that was made a couple of years later. The parallels between the two movies are plentiful: John Nash and Max Cohen are both mathematicians and think they are being chased by powerful enemies (secret service vs. powerful Wall Street firm). When Max marks numbers with a pencil and connects the marks to find geometric patterns it looks exactly like John Nash trying to find patterns in newspaper articles.
Admittedly, this is contrary to the interpretation of a lot of other people who want to see a deeper meaning in this movie, but unfortunately it is the only way to reconcile this pseudo-scientific babble.

Rating:
Summary: Best movie ever
Review: This movie challenges religion and society in a way that would be appalling anywhere else. Somehow, in this movie, one hardly notices. It wraps the viewer into insanity, turns them into the protagonist in unprecedented ways. Its grainy and confusing filming style is perfect: this movie moves away from complexity and definition into the unwavering band of light at the core of life. The only thing comparable is E. Elias Merhige's Begotten.

Rating:
Summary: A disturbing portrait of . . . well, something or other
Review: Since I just recently reviewed director Darren Aronofsky's sophomore effort, I figured I might as well review this one too.

I like it a lot myself, but it won't be for all tastes (even for all who like _Requiem for a Dream_). It's bizarre in all the right ways, but if you don't like things a little surreal, you won't care for this film.

The setup is simple enough: Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is looking for 'patterns in pi' -- the famous transcendental number that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and that (like Euler's number e) keeps cropping up all over the place in mathematical investigations of pretty much everything. Max is convinced that if he could grok that pattern (and through it, the underlying pattern of all of nature), he'd be able e.g. to predict the ups and downs of stock prices.

Is he a 'mathematician'? Hardly. We do see some evidence that he's a lightning calculator, but -- despite some brief references to actual mathematics here and there -- Max's own 'investigations' look like the same sort of nonsense long perpetrated by pseudomathematical cranks. He's also subject to really nasty migraines that send him careening into hallucination. And yet -- his mentor Sol (Mark Margolis) suggests that at one time Max _was_ a promising and even brilliant mathematician, and at one point Max's stock market predictions appear to be uncannily accurate.

Overall, though, Sol is on the mark when he implies that Max has gone in for numerology. Somebody else thinks so too, and regards that as a good thing: Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman), a Hasidic Jew who is investigating number patterns in the Torah in order to discern the Name of God. He gloms onto Max and starts teaching him not only about Torah observance (there's a nice scene where the two of them put on tefillin and start to recite the Shema) but also about Kabbalah -- specifically Hebrew numerology, a.k.a. gematria, although the film doesn't use that word. (The gematria stuff is accurately presented but, again, the math is not; at one point Max suggests -- and a rabbi appears to agree -- that the Hasidim have actually tried intoning the phonetic equivalents of every single possible 216-digit number, a feat that, with a hundred people at a time each intoning one name per minute, would have taken them on the order of ten-to-the-208th-power years.)

There's also some corporate entity after Max's secrets as well. So Max, whose 'research' looks to be nothing more than sheer crankery, is nevertheless at the center of a whirlwind of conspiratorial activity for some reason. Is it because he's really onto something? Or is this all just -- a la _Foucault's Pendulum_ -- an echo of Eco?

You probably won't be sure of the answer to that question even _after_ watching the movie -- even after watching it repeatedly. At least, after nunerous viewing myself, _I_ still don't know exactly what's supposed to have transpired here. But some people (like me) enjoy that in a movie. (At any rate, the internal resolution of Max's distress works out about the same way on any interpretation of the external events.)

The film was produced on a budget of, I think, about a dollar and eighty-seven cents, so don't be looking for ILM-level special effects here. The whole megillah is brilliantly shot in grainy black and white and backed with a spare, disturbing score by Clint Mansell. Gullette pretty much carries the entire film, with the help of an excellent but very small additional cast.

This is, in short, the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing. It's pretty gonzo and probably not for everybody.

Rating:
Summary: "3.1415.............................................."
Review: This along with Requiem For A Dream are very good movies. Although I thought that Requiem for a Dream was better I still rate this movie with 5 stars. I have to give it to Darren for his style and plot. The first time i saw this movie i didnt like it one bit. Then after about a year i met this girl who like the same kinda movies that i like and she kept telling me that it was a great movie and all. So finally i said what the hell and i saw it in a for sale rack somewhere for like 5 dollars and i bought it i figured what the hell if i dont like it i can give it away to her. So i bought it and watched it that night and she was right it was a great movie. I like the whole idea of the world having a pattern. And i also love the techniques that Darren Aronofsky uses with the camera in front of the actors face. I love that! But overall this was a good movie.

Rating:
Summary: My mother told me not to stare at the sun...
Review: "Pi" is director Darren Aronofsky's first movie, shot in grainy black-and-white on a budget of about $60,000.

A rather disturbing vision of a paranoid mathematician named Max, specializing in number theory, trying to find a pattern in the stock market on his retro-looking home-made computer. He has intense headaches and is heavily self-medicated ("Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics - no results, no results"). After getting closer to an answer, his computer crashes in mid-printout, but the number is retained in Max's mind. Framed as sort of a mathematical thriller, Max is hounded by some Hassidic Jews who are searching for numerical meaning in the Torah, and some Wall Street types who try to bribe him with a new computer chip, for the number he now has in his head. After the suicide of his mathematical tutor, Max has more intense headaches, and Max destroys his computer.

The photography uses some innovative techniques, including the "Snorry cam", and the recurrent pill-popping scene is also used in Aronofsky's next film (in color), "Requiem For a Dream". The film has some beautiful imagery, and some disturbing images, such as an exposed brain, reminiscent of "Eraserhead".

The reasonably-priced DVD has a commentary by director Aronofsky, a commentary by actor Sean Gullette, deleted scenes, and other goodies. This is a good companion-piece to Aronofsky's subsequent bigger-budget film, "Requiem For a Dream", which is also powerful and recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Keep my piece of the pie
Review: I will be the first to admist I didn't really get Darren Aronofsky's "Pie" at first. If you do not know, Pie is a mathmaticle constant, roughly 3.14. That is about the best I know to explain it. In it, Max Cohen is an extramly paranoid mathmatician. He thinks that maybe he has descovered the secrets of the universe in a math formula. And he isn't the only one; because Wall Street bankers want him to brake the Stock Market for them, and Hisidic Jews want him to figure out the name if God. As he goes about his day, he (and us) discover the secret of the universe is not about math, it is that we humans are inherently evil creatures (not too big a leap, is it?). This movie is insainly intense. It is very unbarable at times. When the movie is over you will thank goodness that you can open a window and breathe again, it is that claustrophobic. Sean Gullette gives a unbeliveable performance. He is thoroughly immersed in the role, and is 100% convinceing, I have to wonder if maybe he left the movie woth some scaring. But it is just a little too hallucinatory at times; and way too dark, depressing, and heavy handed sometimes. The trippy vide really lost me for awhile too. It is certainly something a little (OK, a whole lot) different from your traditional Hollywwod thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Wildly Innovative Film from Up and Coming Director
Review: Darren Aronofsky was rewarded with a big budget (Requiem for a Dream) after making this incredibly innovative film. "Pi" is short on special effects and explosions - so if that is your sort of movie keep on walking. BUT if you like a movie about people who THINK, and are sometimes mentally tortured by what they're thinking about, "Pi" is a good way to spend an hour and a half, and a cheap DVD at that. It's filmed in a grainy kind of black and white, but that just adds to the atmosphere of the gradually deteriorating mental state of Mathematical Genius Sean Gullette. The important thing to my enjoying this film isn't in questioning "what is this film trying to SAY?" so much to me as just appreciating that it's trying to say anything at all. Some things that are unknowable should maybe stay that way.

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 Brownian 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: best movie ever no......NO
Review: I found this movie how shall I say it Lame! I am a very, very open minded guy but I didnt get into it, Maybe you will but Dont buy it rent it! I didnt even finsh watching it. I wanted the 30 mintues this movie took away from life..haaa. My advice rent it! Im sure there will be plenty at your viedo store..haaaa

Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies ever!
Review: Sure, it was shot in grainy, black and white, 8mm film. Sure, the only actor you'll recognise is Mark Margolis (from "Scarface"). Sure, some of the math is wrong. And, no, the 216 digit number doesn't really have 216 digits (I counted 4 or 5 times; there are only 214). All of these things aside, however, Darren Aronofsky takes a nominal amount of money (about $60000), adds a brilliantly written script (with help from actor and friend Sean Gullette) and an impressive soundtrack (which includes Orbital and Drippy), and lets all hell break loose. This movie is nearly perfect, and, despite the fact that we've all been spoiled by color and HDTV, THIS MOVIE WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED IN COLOR!! A large part of the ambience of the film (and much of its appeal) comes from the grainy, choppy cinematography (not to mention the fact that the Steady-Cam is righteous) and boiler-plate special effects (like that brain?). All in all, I'm looking forward to seeing more from this director.