Rating: 
Summary: TEXTURAL! PART SURREALIST, PART ABSTRACT! GREAT!
Review: This film is an exploration of textures featuring chiaroscuro bi-products of its black and white film technique. It also features some great computer filtering processes and editing. Aside form being completely UN-Hollywood (and all the better for it, regardless of what any other reviews say), it takes the viewer through a certain set of motions in a certain sequence to achieve a certain effect. That effect being an atmosphere of chaos, cathexis, frustration and paranoia. Disney, this ain't! Perhaps, the reason some reviewers didn't enjoy PI, has to do with exactly that. They called it amateurish and shallow, with a storyline that is more befitting of a poorly executed art film, but I beg to differ. There are a few things that in the case of PI, absolutely PRECEDE the content of the storyline. Those things are: Composition, Design, Texture, and Depth. These are elements that, as a viewer, affect your reaction to ABSTRACT pieces. These are elements that allow you to completely divorce the visuals from any linear coherence your mind may have been searching for. For me the storyline was inconsequential. If you watch the film with this in mind, you are certainly going to enjoy going for a ride into a black and white abyss of textures and shapes. Think of it as looking into a moving Kandinsky-Picasso-Dali-Klee-Itten-VanGoh-Munsch collage. It is absolutely insane. GREAT!
Rating: 
Summary: The Search for Knowledge
Review: A dark look at a conceptual genius who sinks beneath the waves of his own theorizing, this movie certainly succeeds at being different. The main character is controlled by the idea that the world as a whole, and also its component parts, can be summarized in a formula. This is not a far cry from the current search for the theory of everything and the supersting mania associated with this search. The main character sqauanders his life, pining away in his apartment, trying to dissect generalizations and abstractions, while the world goes merrily on. Some financiers and religious fundamentalists are after him, as they want his knowledge for their own purposes. Despite what some people say, the movie is not about chaos theory, or math in general, or Wall Street, or religon. It is about what is incorrigible about human search for knowledge, the cost at which it is obtained, and the apparent ultimate futility of trying to unriddle every riddle of the world and serve it up as some terse abstraction. And emotions, feelings, and sensations are at least as much a part of the world as what is set down in formulas as its explanation.
Rating: 
Summary: Do Not Waste Your Time
Review: It is with regret that I have even taken the time to warn you against this exercise in futility.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't get the hype.
Review: I wanted to like Pi. I'd heard hundreds of people, if not thousands, praise this movie to the high heavens. And, actually, everything they said was right. It's smart, it's fast-paced enough to leave the viewer breathless, it's witty in its own twisted way, and it never shies away from any of the gory details. It's a film that makes mathematics interesting. It's informed by the Cronenberg/Giger axis of biomechanics, which cannot in any way be a bad thing. So what was it about this film that left me cold? Two possibilities.
1. Many people also priased its originality-- wrongly. Pi came out not long after the whole Bible Code scam, and much of the underlying plot is patterned on the Bible Code. I can't recall whether it had been exposed as a scam by the time Pi was conceived (which would at least make it satire), which is throwing me off. I'm willing to give Aronofsky the benefit of the doubt here.
2. A simple problem translating from big screen to small. It just didn't absorb me the way I felt it would. I LIKE math. That's not to say there weren't elements of the film that worked, and worked very well; Sean Gullette is an actor from whom we should be hearing much more, the soundtrack is fantastic, and Aronofsky may have a bright career in front of him if he can come up with more original material. But this didn't live up to the hype... though it could have. (It also didn't help that I kept comparing it, probably subconsciously, to Eraserhead, a film I just can't stand.)
Rating:
Summary: psychotic psychological thriller
Review: Pi is a tense and thought-provoking (in a good way) movie about a man's obsessive quest to decipher pi and his subsequent discoveries of strange patterns (which he hopes to figure out) in everything from the stock market to the torah. Sean Gullette delivers a frenetic performance as Max Cohen, a brilliant, antisocial, and deeply paranoid mathematician. Max is a fascinating character and his story was absorbing. Shot in black and white with awesome camera work and some truly bizzare and disturbing scenes, this is a visually compelling movie as well. If you're looking for something weird and off-the-beaten-path, check Pi out.
Rating:
Summary: How this movie was overlooked is beyond me!
Review: When PI was released, the only theatre that carried it in Philliy was the Ritz, a small art film house. When it finally came around to home video, I rented it and was blown away! How could this film not get national attention? Was it because it was in b&w? Was it because the actors were basically unknowns? I don't think so, as so many famous movies have met the same criteria. I beleive that it was the general, cerebral plot that confused audiences and kept general theatres from playing this movie nationally. It is one of the most evocotive, intense stories I've seen in quite a long time. As the main character is drawn into this crazy mathematical world of trying to solve the equation of PI, he systematically withdraws from the world and descends into madness, much like Max Von Sydow as the tortured artist in Hour of the Wolf.His only tie to reality is his role model/mentor, an old mathematician who realizes in his twilight years that he has squandered most of his life away trying to solve the unsolvable problem of computing PI. He seems to want to save the main character from ruining his life in the same fruitless pursuit;or is that really the reason? The next stage in the story is why this film only gets 4 stars. It turns out that in trying to decipher PI, the man comes across a repeated pattern in the mathematical solution that could hold the real meaning of biblical scriptures! Thus he is caught up in a war between 2 factions; one that wants the solution and another that wants it supressed.It becomes a cool X-Files type story, but deviates from what I thought was going to be a movie strictly about the psychological breakdown of a man obsessed, which would have made for just an equally engaging film! Still, this flick is top notch! FYI- if you liked the film and the idea of the mathematical formula which deciphers scripture, then I recommend you buy or borrow from the library a book called The Bible Code.If I didn't know better, I would think that the producer of this movie had read it, and based his entire script on it!
Rating:
Summary: A POX ON ALL YOUR HOUSES...
Review: Ok ok, so this isn't a great film... but where else can you enjoy a story that satirizes both religion, the occult AND science all in one swell foop, not to mention the satire aimed at pop culture? Maybe, like the main character at the end of the film, we could all stand to stop watching our video machines and get outside for some sunshine...
Rating:
Summary: An interesting plot
Review: I say this was a worthwhile movie all in all. I did not enjoy the black and white, grainy filming, though. Good points: This movie makes you want more..."who are all these people, anyway?" It follows life from a different point...psychopathy. Semi-scary scenes...I'm still get freaked out by that brain-in-the-subway scene. Bad points: Actually, there's only one: the filming. It's hard to enjoy this film as it is in black and white. Very cool.
Rating:
Summary: a journey through genius and madness
Review: It is often said that with genius sometimes comes madness.... The main character of this tale is indeed representative of this. He is a secluded mathematical genius on the verge of a profound discovery. Obsessed with his work, he has isolated himself from the rest of the world, and he is becoming more insane with every passing minute. The idea that all of nature...everything in the physical world can be understood in terms of mathematics is an enticing one. This is how our main character attempts to understand the world; by unlocking an "ultimate" mathematical code with limitless applications....when he stumbles onto it, he is sought by a mafia-like stockmarket firm, and equally mafia-like Jewish organization which believes that he has unlocked the code that God put into the Bible. The style of the film is compelling and unique; it seems a window into the chaotic mind of our main character...and the world in which Aranofsky has created for us on screen is immersive. It is an amazing debut for this young director, and nothing short of a great film. A must-see.
Rating:
Summary: A sci fi film with a wink to Jerusalem's priestly class
Review: How many film do you know of that employ an "ant wrangler"? Darren Aronofsky, a Harvard and AFI grad, son of a Yeshiva of Flatbush (Brooklyn) science teacher created this story of a troubled, paranoid, lonely, self-absorbed, and obsessive mathematician, Maximillian Cohen, who uses his computer to decode the key to order in the universe. Alone in his darkened, multi-locked, Chinatown apartment (is this his holy of holies, is it any wonder that his last name is "Cohen"?), Max alternates between bouts of migraine headaches and computing. (Is he being punished like the sons of Aaron? How could god reveal the truth of pi to Max and not someone greater?) Max finds himself highly sought after and valued by both a greedy Wall Street firm and a sect of ambitious Hasidim who seek to jump-start a Messianic era. Filmed in black and white shot reversal filmstock (cheaper than color, and less gray than regular b/w) with a pulsing electronic score. I highly recommend this Sundance 98 Award for Dramatic Directing winner to anyone interested in computing, science fiction, Wall Street, the game "GO", or math. Mark Margolis in the role of Sol was perfect casting. Hidden item.. note the sequence of max's pill popping... it is a Fibonacci sequence. By the way, Aronofsky got "into" numerology very, very briefly when, at age 18, he volunteered to work on a, Israeli kibbutz, only to be placed into their plastics factory, and not the orchards. After two days, he escaped and high-tailed it to Jerusalem. At the Kotel, backpack in hand, he got snatched up for a few days by Aish ha Torah-like Discovery weekend in Jerusalem.
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