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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Pi
Artisan Entertainment


8.2

based on 23 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 15 votes
Read user comments
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FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: R for language and some disturbing images

Starring Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, Stephen Pearlman, Samia Shoaib, Ajay Naidu, and Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao

Max Cohen, a mathematician and computer genius, finds himself pursued by Wall Street traders and a Hasidic cabal in this award-winning film.

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Darren Aronofsky (also story) Sean Gullette (story) Eric Watson (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Darren Aronofsky
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 24, 2001 Video: March 14, 2000 Theatrical: July 10, 1998
RUNNING TIME:	84 minutes, B/W
ORIGIN:	USA

Winner, Director's Award and Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, 1998 Sundance Film Festival; Winner, Best First Screenplay, 1999 Independent Spirit Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

It is a brilliant intellectual adventure that fans of bold independent filmmaking will want to experience, even though the ending is something of a letdown.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

A triumph of low-end production design, shot in sizzling, solarized black and white, and driven by a propulsive, insinuating score, Pi is a horror movie that makes you think and an indie film that makes you squirm.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Joshua Klein

Aronofsky's ability to capture the rush and confusion of racing down a timeline toward infinity, only to suddenly slam into a dead end, makes for impressive and occasionally disturbing stuff.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The seductive thing about Aronofsky's film is that it is halfway plausible in terms of modern physics and math.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

Whatever its faults -- and it has more than a few -- it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller.

Salon.com Laura Miller

It's precisely when Pi is the most arty and least "commercial," when it's serving up head scratchers instead of intrigue, that it's most entertaining.

Slate David Edelstein

This is very much a first feature, with all the hyperbolic, sometimes indiscriminate cinematic energy of a student film. But it's also sensational, a febrile meditation on the mathematics of existence.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Brilliant, surreal, and emotionally draining, this first feature from American Film Institute grad Aronofsky recalls such low-budget sci-fi epics as "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" and more traditional paranoiac suspense films (Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's Ladder" in particular, but also Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby") and yet manages to be a wholly original animal.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Audacious and bursting with ideas, the paranoid little sci-fi independent film Pi marks an auspicious debut for New York writer Darren Aronofsky.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser

Pi will not be for everyone, but for those who are fed up with the mainstream idiocy that gets dumped into theaters each summer, this movie willbe like a great big palate-clearing taste of sorbet.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie's freakazoid intensity gets to you, but there's something at once cramped and show-offy in Aronofsky's refusal to even slighty vary its atmosphere of shock-corridor burnout.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For anyone who wants a movie to feed their intelligence and imagination more than their eyes and ears, Pi is a solid choice.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This intellectual allegory would carry more punch if it didn't slip into melodrama so often, but it marks Aronofsky as an exceptionally promising new filmmaker.

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

Aronofsky's delirious, Kafkaesque writing and imaginatively distorted camerawork don't quite add up, but it's fascinating, hallucinogenic film work.

Variety Dennis Harvey

The film's imaginative, diverse images create a mind's-eye urban claustrophobia; such intensity may exhaust over 85 minutes' course, but it's never less than impressive.

Washington Post Eve Zibart

Pi may be the most engrossing piece of cyberpunk cinema yet.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

As smart as it is, Pi is awfully hard to watch. Filmed with hand-held cameras in splotchy black-and-white and crudely edited, it has the style and attitude of a no-budget midnight movie.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Its power lies both in Aronofsky's evocation of tightly wound paranoia and in his flawless dovetailing of personal obsession and cultural anxieties.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

In the end, it's primarily a brain teaser, obtuse and ultimately limited in its emotional impact.

Empire Kim Newman

Shot in grainy, high contrast black-and-white with a lot of simple but effective optical and aural tricks to suggest the workings of his unusual mind, this is one of the most intimate movies in recent memory.

Film Threat Tom Meek

Director Darren Aronofsky, creates an eerie "Eraserhead"-like world that keeps the film compelling even when it digresses into a silly cat-and-mouse psychodrama.

Chicago Reader Bill Boisvert

With this odd mixture of elements the film's tone is gloomy, portentous, and hysterical, yet at the same time strangely earnest and square, as if David Lynch had tried to somehow make a movie version of Scientific American.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Aman A. gave it an8:
Interesting and thought provoking movie... slightly disturbing.. but a fun watch.

Daniel C. gave it a10:
Confusing Plot? Maybe, but repeat viewings are very enjoyable. The sound effects and the drum & bass soundtrack are completely awesome. The filming was so very well done. Utterly unique. We see the simplicity of the circle and the maddening complexity of Pi - 3.141 off in to infinity.

SaTaN gave it a10:
I love this movie! It is truly a work of art.

Jonh F. gave it an8:
Very good movie. The script was well written and complex, and made this a very insightful character study. The acting was solid, and the directing was, well, gritty, but I mean that in a good way.

Dylan B. gave it an8:
This a most entertaining and dynamic film, beautifully use of chairoscuro lighting in the shots with a plot which commands ones interest throughout! Though I find in places that it is poorly researched and contains minor flaws in factuality, causality and continuity.

Erwin K. gave it a2:
I found this movie thouroughly pretentious in its black and white photography and pseudo-cyber-punk babble. But worse was the fact that it had zero plot or story behind it, which totally bored me. Also coming from a maths background, I would have liked to know more about this pi number and how it related to the way the world works. The epiphonies the main character went through meant nothing for me. It was all this prentious drivel of staring at the spiral in a sea shell, and all this idiotic Jewish symbolism. Totally random, jarring, and irritating. In "the making of" bit I couldn't believe the film makers brainstormed 8 months(!) to come up with the script.

Ben A. gave it a 5:
This movie is overrated. Not bad, but overratted. It went in unfortunate directions. Arinofsky made some disagreeable decisions.

Pi Artisan Entertainment

Pi
Artisan Entertainment