Pi (Darren Aronofsky) - Goddamit, as if pretentious titles like
Se7en weren't enough, here's one that's not part of the ASCII
character set. Quibbles over nomenclature aside, this is creepy and
effective stuff, though perhaps more as a portrait of mental illness than
as anything more substantial. Sean Gullette plays a digit-obsessed nerd who
stumbles across the numeric key to a secret code with implications far
beyond the stock market predictions he was seeking. He's also teetering
on the edge, with hallucinations which become indistinguishable from his
"reality"; it all makes for uncomfortable viewing (assisted by a thumping
hard score from former Pop Will Eat Itself grebo god Clint Mansell),
and you'll likely need
to go through it more than once to get a handle on it. Aronofsky loses his
way somewhat in the middle of the film when the tenuous grip it has on
reality flies out the window altogether, but he manages to pull things back
together in a disturbing final reel. After this, and the NC-17 rated
Requiem for a Dream, it will certainly be interesting to see what he
does with franchise Batman: Year One, which he's been picked to do
by Warner Bros. Joel Schumacher, he is not... B-
See also...
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