Pi

Those who know director Darren Aronofsky only for his sentimental Oscar flick The Wrestler will likely have their minds blown by his first film, a jittery, black-and-white thriller about a paranoid, migraine-suffering mathematician named Max (Sean Gullette). A lone geek on a quest to seek patterns in stock market fluctuations, Max soon becomes involved with a pack of Wall Street wolves and a Hasidic Jew cabal looking for divine messages encoded within large strings of numbers. It’s seriously tripped-out stuff (a pulsating brain on a subway platform) that telegraphed Aronofsky’s next film, the drugged-out Requiem for a Dream.
The Royal Tenenbaums

The jewel in director Wes Anderson’s crown of preciousness, Tenenbaums concerns a family of three child geniuses — Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), the wunderkind playwright, Chas (Ben Stiller) the young entrepreneur, and Richie (Luke Wilson) the pre-adolescent tennis star — who fizzle as adults. Deserted by their father Royal (Gene Hackman) just as they began to soar in each of their respective fields, the trio have since turned into frustrated grownups reminiscent of J.D. Salinger’s Glass family.
Full of deadpan irony, exaggerated character tics, precisely detailed and whimsical production design, and a top-notch ensemble cast, Tenenbaums gathers all of Anderson’s oft-repeated stylistic tendencies into a funny and ultimately touching package.

























