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It’s Pi Day! Here’s the formula: Take several highly talented leads, mix with a positive or negative force, add a dash of inspiration and turn up the heat – dramatically. No matter how you slice it, movies about the science of numbers are “mathemagically” delicious. And what better treat on Pi Day (3.14 … March 14) than a heaping helping of math movies? It all adds up to plenty of entertaining couch time.
“Hidden Figures” – Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae play a trio of highly influential Black women in the early space program at NASA, who help to create the science, mathematics and engineering necessary to launch astronaut John Glenn into space and bring him home again, all while breaking past racial barriers.
“Stand and Deliver” – Based on the real-life story of Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos), a high-school teacher at Garfield High in East Los Angeles, this film follows a group of written-off Latino kids who took and passed the AP Calculus exam under Escalante’s tutelage.
“Good Will Hunting” – Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, this drama centers around Will Hunting (Damon) – a genius autodidact whose working-class roots keep him in trouble. While employed as a janitor at MIT, he anonymously solves an equation posted for the grad students. When he is found out, a professor arranges for Will to study mathematics and receive therapy in lieu of jail time.
Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind” (Universal Pictures photo)
“A Beautiful Mind” – Directed by Ron Howard, this biographical drama of the life of gifted American mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe) chronicles his lifelong struggle with schizophrenic hallucinations that led him to believe he was conducting anti-Soviet research on behalf of the Department of Defense.
“Moneyball” – What can you do when your ball club is not the winningest and has a tiny budget? If you’re Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), GM-ing the Oakland A’s in the early aughts, you get creative. Turning away from traditional “gut-based” scouting, Beane pulls together a team that almost wins it all using empirical analysis – assigning players a mathematical value stemming from their on-base percentage.
“The Imitation Game” – This tense historical drama is based on the life of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), who helped turn the tide of World War II by decrypting messages sent by the German Nazis using the Enigma machine.
“Agora” – Rachel Weisz plays Hypatia, a fourth-century astronomer and mathematician in Alexandria, Egypt. She theorizes with a small group of follower-students while civil and religious unrest threaten the world around them.
“The Theory of Everything” – The tragically triumphant love story of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife and partner Jane (Felicity Jones) begins at Cambridge University, where the two meet, and carries through as Hawking is diagnosed with the motor neurone disease that will leave him progressively unable to move.
© 2021 King Features Synd., Inc.
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