Pi

Rating:
Summary: Creative -- Makes you think. Great job!!
Review: Is there a pattern in PI? If we can find it we will understand the whole world.... I thought the movie was excellent. It made me think about the world differently, and had some fascinating new ideas. Wonderful job. I wish the directors and actors the best of luck. This is what movies should be. Unique, thought provoking and cheap (LOL).
Great job!!

Rating:
Summary: A Creepy Flick
Review: This movie gives me chills. It's creepy. There isn't much of a message to it, to say nothing of a serious plot... It's sort of a modern B movie. Like a PCP-induced Plan 9 from Outer Space, it's peculariarity makes it difficult to turn away from, and the electronic soundtrack and gritty black and white feel just add so much more to the viewer's perception of the characters and the flick as a whole. It's great.

Rating:
Summary: It can't go wrong with such enticing premises.
Review: You should definitely agree that it's one of those great movies at a very low price. And it's not all that featureless. There's a small 'behind-the-scenes' type segment, where you get to meet most of the crew behind the movie, production notes, and notes on pi itself (to give you a better perspective on concept). There's also two commentary tracks (Darren and Sean), which are namely what stand out most of the features. You can't go wrong with commentary tracks on low-budget movies. They're just so entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: A different twist on a search for a grand unifying theory
Review: Pi is unquestionably one of the most audacious feature-length films in recent memory, largely because the questions that it raises are not only theoretical but also, in the truest sense, larger than life. Director Darren Aronofsky's debut is a wild ride to both the frontier of intellectual inquiry as well as the physical consequences such inquiries can have on those who ask the "big questions", namely in this case Max Cohen, the brilliant mathematician played to perfection by Sean Gullette. This is a film that would appeal to every Einstein and Stephen Hawking in the world as well as those who have a layman's interest in theoretical mathematics. It has long been suspected that there is a direct relationship between the number pi (3.1415...) and the striking similarities we humans see in both the organic and inorganic in nature, in this case, the tormented Cohen sees a relationship between the golden spiral (based on studies by the ancient Greeks) and pi. However, the real question is: is his intense personality governed by the fact that such a relationship exists and his anxiousnees to prove it to the world or is he simply hellbent to find such a relationship, and in essence becoming the most brilliant mathematician of his time (maybe of all time)? Because the "mystery" of pi is not uncovered, the film leaves far more questions unanswered than answered, thus lending the film its profoundly stark, disturbing atmosphere of both intrique as well as terror.

At first, Max is only interested in finding a relationship between pi and the inner mechanics of the stock market, NOT in an effort to beat it to become fabulously wealthy but to further prove that the pattern(s) dictated by pi not only exist in nature, but that they also have a hand in everyday human activities. True, it may be a bit too much to swallow, but Aronofsky's script, direction and Gullette's lucid performance makes these ideas ever more tantalizing, even if they are "far out" (or are they?).

Though largely reclusive, Max does have one close friend: a mentor/former professor Sol (Mark Margolis) who he visits regularly to play the Japanesse board game "Go" (if the spelling is wrong, I stand corrected) which incidentally serves as Sol's basis for the idea that the universe is largely chaotic, rather than ordered and patterned, countering Max's efforts to connect pi with a dominating pattern (the golden spiral) that exists throughout the cosmos. Sol bases this on his own research into pi, which he says spans four decades and ended in no significant discoveries to back up Max's ideas. Sol seems to come from the side of Shakespeare's "Macbeth": that the search for patterns in pi is essentially "a 'tale' told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Though this film doesn't refer to anything else in Western literature other than the writings of Archimedes and da Vinci, there are clearly parallels between what Max's search entails and other literary works which concentrate on the many complexities of the human condition.

While on his "crusade", Max encounters a Jewish mystic (Lenny) in the coffee shop he frequents who also has a deep-seated interest in number theory. Rather than finding a relationship between patterns and the stock market like Max, Lenny is interested in finding a similar pattern in the Torah which would reveal "the true name of God". Along with this, Max is pursued by Wall Street tycoons interested in his research, one of which claims to have studied his papers on the subject (Marcy Dawson). Along with the pressures that Max places on himself to find a unifying theory for both the stock market as well as the universe at large, he is pressured to a greater extent by these two different forces with equally different objectives. This drives Max "over the edge", as Sol warned him, a breakdown so severe that he personally injures himself to the extent that it eliminates any and all possibility of future research on the one love of his life.

Coupled with an appropiately dark, atmospheric IDM soundtrack with contributions by Autechre, Orbital, Spacetime Continuum and the brilliant theme by Clint Mansell, Pi does fall rather nicely into the category of science-fiction/fantasy, but it is also a tragedy as well, showing the limits of human ambition, in this case on the part of Max. I felt it was one of the best films of the late 1990s, and one which should be required viewing for anyone even remotely interested in how number theory can (and may not) tie in with human concerns of everyday life, the universe, and in the minds of religious mystics, the great beyond.

Rating:
Summary: I'll explain...
Review: This movie is confusing and very good if understood fully. its about a mathematician with a goldfish named after a famous mathematician of the (i think) 20th century. this guy, max, suffers from paranoia, due to all his thinkings and accurate perception of everything around him. the movie is filmed in black and white, so it gives that gloomy feeling. he in the movie, is in search of the rest of numbers to the formula called PI in math, which start with the munbers 3.14...and it keeps going. i feel that this number is infinite, that is why the end of the movie is the way it is. THERE IS NO ANSWER. anyway, i gotta go. see the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Provocative, in the most important way
Review: This movie is powerfully and beautifully subversive. It doesn't just simply tackle the world of INNER space, merging the psychological with the scientific and mystical like its fraternal/spiritual twin THE MATRIX. Nor does it heavyhandedly demand you to make the kind of simple choices that are really nothing more than candy for a mind aching for the nutrients of provocative challenging thought or even, secretly, spiritual crises. (Questions that ignore the relevance of the movie's theme, like "is Max [the main character] really crazy or just a genius? or both?", the way the new Kevin Spacey vehicle K-PAX engenders [is he an E.T., or just a psychotic? Or both?"]. After a while that becomes like "do you think the people in this porno movie are falling in love, or no?").

This movie is powerfully, joyously, triumphantly unsettling and subversive, becuase it reveals the emperor that has no clothes in many of the philosphical questions we ask routinely of ourselves. We ask these powerful questions at parties and during some international crisis, but with a manufactured profundity to hide the degree to which we have exorcised pondering their actual implications from our everyday intellectual and emotional lives. Is there really a God? What is sanity, really? What is the relevance of religion in a post-Einstein/Freudian/Tech stock/Prozac world? What can ancient history teach us about the modern present... We don't really care to have a legitimate answer to these questions because they are now designed to have us continue sleeping before they are even asked, whether outright or cryptically; not to really wake us up. But logical, simple yet scientific questions about the innate structure of reality...the possible high order that defines it and the universe, above and beyond illusion of randomness, duality and chaos...the implications of a world that is really all just levels of energy and their unifying, "harmonic" relationships to human consciousness and being--right down to how we define and express the very concepts (like love, happiness, freedom, enlightenment, reality and yes, GOD) that form the basis of our everyday lives... These kind of questions still frighten us, because you can't ask them without receiving some information that will shock your world, whether the complete answer agrees with your preconceptions, doesn't, or never fully comes. We can argue the existence of God, but what can we say about the existence of the golden ratio, the Fibonacci Series, or Pi? And what do we do if it IS in the Bible and Torah and the architecture of the Pyramids as much as it is in nature?

The movie PI takes this fundamental theme/question of our modern world--*do you have the courage to question your existence, before it questions you?*--and riffs on it like Charlie Parker on the chords of the blues. "Forget the characters and their lives; I'll make them interesting only because bad character development would distract you even more" Aranofsky (the writer and director) seems to say to us. "Let's talk about order vs. chaos, and the proof of both that helps declare the other an illusion. Knowing that, perhaps, only one gives the illusion of the other the relevance and respect that it deserves: making IT the real *reality* by definition. And then let's deal with the implications of believeing in the supremacy or existence of either--or both--to the human mind, and the human heart, considering how virutally anything else we talk about in life is a metaphor for one or the other anyway.

PI is the kind of movie that doesn't just make philosophy fun (removing it from the spoiling hands of many a philosopher). It makes it relevant. The acting is done very well; the filming effect of gritty, harsh, and stark black and white color is very effective. And it is very, very weird. It gets into the mind of a man who is erasing that fine, ever-erased line spearating genius from insanity as enlightenment approaches. This is an important film, however, because of how deeply it moves you. It can even change your way of thinking by bringing up what it does.

If you can name your favorite Twilight Zone rerun in less than five seconds, this movie will become an imporant part of your discography. I put it on par with THE MATRIX as one of the most important science myth films (as opposed to science fiction films) to be made this past decade. It isn't a five star film...but it's close enough.

Rating:
Summary: ....press return
Review: A powerful movie. Gritty, high contrast b/w images, rundown locales, excellent, frenetic score sweeps you along in a dizzying madness.

The core of the movie is about Max, who looked into the sun too long as a child, causing him to have intense migraines for the rest of his life. As an implied side-effect, Max has immense capabilities to notice, process and understand numbers - from performing long multiplication for his neighbour, to patterns in leaves, and, just out of reach, the stockmarket...Just out of reach, but close enough for others to get interested.

The irony is, for someone who can handle so much compexity, Max is struggling to cope with the simple realities of day to day life, love and co-existence, with dramatic results.

Rating:
Summary: 216 ways to torture your mind
Review: Patterns exist everywhere, the world is illusive with an ordered infinity lurking behind every corner. The golden ratio divides us all, and we follow this organized section, but sometimes I guess it skips a generation or so, well this time we can take the example of the Screenwriter, and the Director of this film's mind.

In trying to search for the illusive Pi amongst the universe, and to find patterns within segments of thought, the pseudo intellectual mockery of the Screenplay has left it more random than ever, and given us what we may so delicately put it as "gas" and nothing more.

Max a neurotic on the loose trying to find the code of God through a 216 digit number is able to through his deranged thoughts derange our serious nature and shun us into a corner where we laugh ourselves to death.

This is what we call film making where we take a serious subject like the Pi and we mix it with some pseudo "gas" and then what do we get is a volatile output of nitrous oxide (laughing gas for the unfortunates).

But though I would have given this movie a 1 star I chose to give it 2 as the cinematography of the movie is superb, and the camera panning highly stylized.

So you are having a down day, and you do not have too many questions coming to your mind, do give this movie a thought, it is a guarantee that it would uplift your spirits, as we all know
"laughter is the best medicine."

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Movie
Review: This is truly an excellent movie. One of the best in my collection. I have seen it over 15 times and I still love to watch it.

Rating:
Summary: Indie is not always bad...
Review: Let's face it, folks. Indie movies are, for the most part, really, really bad, and the people who claim to like them are more often than not either film students or people with a desperate need to be "interesting." Well, thank goodness for films like "Pi" then, that proves to us that independent cinema can be really, really good.

The story revolves around an obsessed mathematician who tries to find a pattern in the stock market. He figures that since patterns can be found everywhere else in the world, there must be a pettern to the stock market as well. That's all I'm gonna tell you about the plot, since I don't want to spoil the movie for you.

Shot in b/w, the bleakness of it reminds me of "Eraserhead", but where "Eraserhead" got really boring after twenty or so minutes, this movie never gets boring. All in all a very interesting film.