NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ben hibburd I didn't really want to review this film as there's not a great deal to say about it that people haven't already. Darren Aronofsky's debut film is a bizarre, surreal, intelligent, paranoia fuelled film about a mathematician who's trying to uncover the patterns of the universe.The main reason I wanted to talk about this film, is that Clint Mansell's incredible score is in my opinion one of the best scores I've heard in any film. It's an expertly constructed piece of work that helps to elevate every aspect of this film. The score is perfectly intertwined with the central character of the film, and works as his inner monologue to reflect his different mental states throughout the film. From being eerie to panic ridden to sheer mania it's a bold piece of work. That when I found myself drifting from the film it was the score that kept sucking me back in with it's intoxicating atmosphere.The film on the whole is pretty good, but without the score I don't think this film would've worked nearly as well as it did. I would recommend watching this film for the soundtrack alone.

thor-teague Darren Aronofsky's first feature, Pi, is an overly ambitious undertaking suffering fatally from a number of different problems. Pi is more a psychological character portrait than anything--it fails as a thriller. The narrative overall is barely enough to keep me interested--and has little to no replay value for me.Max, a paranoid mathematician, is searching for a numerical formula that will express all the patterns of life and seeks to 'crack the code' of the universe. It is, in so many words, a quest for the Ark of the Covenant. It is not impossible to do this film, I don't think, but I do think Pi has failed.I did enjoy the style and felt it worked well. Stark lighting, manic cuts and camera operation, and surreal audio all add to the psycho paranoia that could have made this a great movie. It doesn't have a whole lot of technical flaws, in fact outside of the acting probably none.But the flaws are dealbreakers. The film's Achilles's heel is definitely its delusions of grandeur. Perhaps I've misinterpreted something--but the film seems to think its correct?! The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything? Nobody knows (yet), but I promise you it is not an inexplicable 216 digit integer. You are thinly veiling mysticism and numerology as science. The easiest way to solve this problem in the context of Pi, drop the bubblegum pop pseudoscience and, if you want to pretend that he found the correct Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, just leave it to the imagination. It should have been a complete MacGuffin. Or, make it clearer that Max is just plain bonkers. The film seems to believe its own drivel. Make it about Max's descent into insanity, and you've got a potentially good story. It may be successfully arguable that the film doesn't believe itself and is trying to portray Max as insane, but that's looking like a stretch from where I stand.The next thing is the bad acting from the supporting cast. Everything was at least working for me until the conspirators' trap was sprung, at which point I had to start wondering, "Are you kidding?" Overall my suspension of disbelief just fell like a house of cards at this point. Please note that I do however feel that Sean Gullette's performance was quite convincing and worked well throughout.And finally, I didn't care for the soundtrack. It hasn't aged as well as other successful electronica soundtracks of its day. Overall I have to describe Pi as being both self-righteous and pretentious.

grantss Being a mathematical person (I have a Masters degree in Statistics) I was intrigued by the premise of the movie but in the end I was left with more questions than answers and was left hanging. The plot includes too much of the mathematical detail (and medical detail, listing all the drugs Cohen was taking!), often coming across as nerdy.The solution seemed too straightforward and practical, with many details lacking here (unlike in the build-up). I thought the final mix might include emotions, basically a more relationship-centric argument, especially as the plot did allude to the potential for something to happen between Cohen and his neighbour, but this didn't come up at all.This all said, Darren Aronofsky is clearly a very talented director. His use of the black&white medium and close-up camera shots in Pi were a stroke of genius - it certainly helped one get into Cohen's mind. Requiem for a Dream is an outstanding movie but Pi fails to deliver because he took on a very weighty and complex subject in his first attempt at a motion picture. The problem lies in the screenplay (which he co-wrote), and not his direction, however.It is interesting to note Aronofsky's use of some of the effects that he would later use in Requiem for a Dream, especially the fast- forward pill-popping sequence which was always worth a chuckle in both movies (in a dark sort of way).

craigh01 How do movies like this get a 7.5 rating and cause me to waste 84 minutes of my time? I'm not a mathematician but I know a little about science, I already know about the Fibonacci sequence and how it appears in nature, PI, etc. They just threw a bunch of mathematical clichés and threw it all together into a stupid, irritating mess that made no sense.I was waiting and waiting for something interesting to happen, nothing ever did. The ending was completely ridiculous and unbelievable.What I want to know is how does a movie like this get a 7.5 on IMDb? OK I started out giving it a 1, but in retrospect, since I'm still thinking about it, I'll up it to a 3.Unless you really like artsy movies I'd skip it...