Pi

Rating:
Summary: A really good debut from an important film-maker.
Review: I realyl didn't know much about "Pi" when I rented it. I had heard it was really good, and I had heard it was very cleverly done.
I watched it and I was amazed. The movie's grainy black and white, while a little annoying in the beginning ends up adding so much to the texture. Several chase scenes near the end would have seemed boring an monotonous hadn't it been for the black and white and shaky filming. On the commentary track for this DVD, Aronofsky reveals another thing that makes this film so cool. What he calls "hip-hop entandre's" add to the paranoid feelings on Max (the protagonist played by Sean Gullette, a mathmeticion exploring wall street and the number pi). These "hip-hop entandres" are combinations of fast sounds and fast camera shots.
The movie is awesome. Aronofsky and Libatique (the director of photography) have made a film that is almost flawless. After wathcing this movie you know that this team is going somehwere. Aronofsky wrote and directed it, proving he is a ture talent. A movie this good as a debut goes to show that a lot is expected of him.
He conquered "Pi" when he wrote and directed "Requiem for a Dream" with Hubert Selby, Jr. "Pi" is an important debut from an extremely talented and important director.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, but still four stars
Review: Pi was strongly recommended to me because it "deal(s) with kabbalah." There are references, but the film certainly doesn't deal with kabbalah. Pi is rated "R"; it is not at all clear to me why. Further, Pi has been referred to as a "cult film"; there isn't enough detail given about the number workings to slake cult desires, and artistically it is neither ground-breaking nor radical.

Pi is a well-crafted film which effectively tells a story. Perhaps the quirkiest aspect of the film is the low budget synthesizer sound-track, which is initially worrisome but, in the end, serves the film well.

Rating:
Summary: Does NOT live up to its hype
Review: I had heard a lot of really good things about this movie. Several different people all recommended it to me: "It involves math and science fiction; you'll like it.", "It's off-beat and weird; you'll like it.", and "It's unique and makes you think; you'll enjoy it."

Nope, can't say that I did. It dragged in the story. It didn't make much sense at any point. I barely found the characters interesting. And the ending was a relief that I no longer had to watch the drudgery of a film rather than the satisfaction of an entertaining movie.

Maybe I just missed the point of the film. Maybe it really was entertaining. But I would rather slide down a razor blade into a pool of iodine than watch this a second time.

Rating:
Summary: 3.141592653589793238462643383279....
Review: 12:05 AM, began writing review for Pi, an amazing film by Darren Aronofsky.

Mathematician Max Cohen is obsessively trying to find a pattern for the way the stock market rises and falls. He bases these on his three fundamental assumptions: 1) Mathematics is the language of nature. 2) Everything around us can be represented and understood by numbers. 3) If you graph the number of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everwhere in nature.

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He's a mathematical supergenius but a severe misanthrope and so introverted, he makes me look like Bill Clinton. He's very disconnected with society and spends time around the clock on his problem, helped by a regimen of pills. His computer setup is a muddled patchwork system that is a reflection of the chaos and disorder of his mind. He finds solace visiting his old mentor Sol Robeson, with whom he plays go.

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Sol's pearls of wisdom are lost on Max. Sol sees the world as chaotic, without any order. He explains the go board as a microcosm of the universe, where an infinite number of reflects a complex and chaotic universe. His parable of Archimedes (Eureka!) is also lost on Max. Ever the voice of reason, Sol tells Max there's more to life than mathematics and to take some time off, to take a bath like Archimedes.

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A group of agents want him to figure out the pattern to the stock market but he refuses them, turned off by their representative's persistent and pushy approach. At first, anyway.
Max also meets the more extraverted Lenny Meyer, a Hasidic Jew who's also into math theory, but using the Torah as his data set. The dual use of the Hebrew alphabet as numbers and sums was a fascinating thing I never knew about.

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When Max's computer crashes, it spits out a long digit that may be a similar digit that caused Sol's computer to crash back when he was calculating pi. When Lenny mentions a 216 digit word that may hold the key to his search, Max teams up with him.

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References to the Golden Spiral and ratio of the rectangles by Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Fibonacci sequence will be of delight to scientific-minded. For those who don't know the Fibonacci, start with 1 and 1. The sum of the first two numbers equals the third, resulting in 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,56, etc. The ratio theta, which is the quotient of two numbers in the series, reaches 1.6180339887499, for anyone interested. Take a rectangle with a ratio of that to 1. Make that rectangle a square and the remaining smaller rectangle has that same ratio theta. Cool?

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This b&w independent wonder by Darren Aronofsky is full of swimmingly dizzying shots to emulate the chaos of the city and in Max's mind. Bizarre imagery also comes into play, such as the mystery man with the bleeding hand, the brain, and his visions and dreams. This movie seeks to create a common ground between rational science and religious mysticism, as represented by Max and Lenny. There's also the opposing viewpoints of an ordered universe (Max) of patterns versus chaos (Sol). Top honors go to Sean Gullette (Max), Mark Margolis (Sol), and Ben Shenkman (Lenny). So, why call the movie Pi? Because pi is a decimal that's irrational, nonterminating, nonrepeating, just like a go game.

12:30 AM, finished writing review for 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172E

Rating:
Summary: faith in chaos = no personality
Review: this movie was very disturbing. perhaps one of the most disturbing films I have ever viewed. i liked how it was shot, in 16mm black and white film, giving it an 'indie' approach, and due to its opaque themes and colours, making the movie a lot more disquieting.

the movie is about an antisocial, psychotic, reclusive mathematician, Max Cohen, who sees patterns in everything, and tries to come up with a 216 digit number to describe the pattern of the stock market. while Hasitic Jews lead him to find this number to define the true meaning of God, and some near-stalker business tycoon wants him to find the equation to make some major bang in the stock market. yes, he was brilliant. yes, he was a genius, but the man had no personality whatsoever. there were times when he went through spells of migranes, head trauma, and sometimes vehement outbursts of frustration, even so much as to look for a dirty piece of paper with a rejected idea in a smelly garbage can in New York City. of course he was tortured, but he seemed to have no compassion for the outside world, and his trauma was only caused by the failure of his intelligence, therefore meaning that I had no sympathy for him.

the film didn't even have a climax. it was just one thing after another, even leading to the same scenes a few times over to show him having a fit or a major headache! I knew that one way or another, Max would self-destruct. ... this movie is proof that emotions count more than intelligence. not a bad debut for a director who uses great cinematography (Darren Aronofsky), but his directorial debut was missing something his next movie (Requiem For A Dream) that would have me create any sense of compassion for his characters: some human-like qualities, and emotions.

Rating:
Summary: For those who want to find the reason of everything
Review: Mathematics is everywhere and is the base of all the other sciences, so it is not strange to try to find the essential explanation of every kind of phenomenon, natural, non-natural, and even divine in mathematics, the chaos itself describes a pattern. That's what Pi is about. A mathematician obsessed with finding the number that controls Wall Street and would predict its behavior, and this same number happens to be the much hidden name of god if its digits are transformed into Hebrew letters according to the tradition of Kabala. The black and white and the hypnotizing techno music transmit a very special feeling when you see this movie. Some weird and surrealistic scenes complete this environment. It has an excellent photography and a great and very original argument.

Rating:
Summary: More fun doing Math Equations
Review: Ok this movie was pure garbage. The idea behind it was good but it was badly directed. First of all it was friggin black and white. Piece of trash movie! Im glad I don't own it! Don't buy it unless you are a math major @ MIT!

Rating:
Summary: A Great Film To Think About
Review: Arronofsky is a director everyone should know by now and to keep an eye on in the future. Pi is his first film and it's a fantastic film to add. With a great story that makes you think...it's a must for everyone who loves really good films.

A great DVD with GREAT features that is a must for the DVD collector.

Rating:
Summary: Pi is Truly Original.
Review: Pi is an intense mind trip through the eyes of a crazed genius. The story is about one man's obsession with finding a code to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Once he is on the verge of finding that code, people are after him trying to get it from him to break through the stock market or to unlock the code that reveals the name of God. Others are trying to kill him to prevent an apocalypse of some kind. This is a very groundbreaking film that creates a style that is very disturbing. The picture is in grainy black in white and the sound is very eerie. The scenes are often shot through the eyes of the main character so we can see firsthand what is going through his mind. The viewer would feel the character as if he/she were in his place. Darren Aronofsky wrote the screenplay and directed it and did a good job casting Sean Guillete, a college buddy, as the main character who plays Max Cohen. Sean Guillete also appears in Requiem for a Dream as a man who seduces Jennifer Connelly. I liked Requiem but i still think Pi is a better, more powerful film. It is visually entertaining and will leave you breathless. I recommend the soundtrack as well to accompany the film. It has cutting edge electronic music with great dialouge from the film.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute power! What would you do with it?
Review: There are movies that cost [more] and shouldn't. There are movies that cost less and should cost more. This one should be on the [more] rack. A movie of such magnitude for such a good price.

Engrossing, thought provoking and masterful are only the beginning when it comes to my thoughts of this picture.

Some things to know when purchasing this movie.
1. It's BLACK & WHITE (Part of the experience).
2. You don't have to be a math major to watch it.
3. Plan to watch it again (You will).
4. No matter who you are you will relate to it.
5. Darn, I got to go watch it again... LATER!

RJD