Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
OK, OK: I’m aware I’m at risk of catering to the stereotype that girls don’t like math. I like math. Unfortunately, I like movies about math more than actually putting pencil to graph paper and calculating sine, co-sine, and tangents. Those are things, right?
Coming soon to a theater near you is The Big Short, a numbers-crunching dramatic thriller (oxymoron, amirite?) about a group of brainy suits who predicted — using maths! — the collapse of the housing and financial markets in 2008. Starring Ryan Gosling, Gosling’s already infamous wig, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, and Christian Bale as the mad genius, Michael Burry; The Big Short is an in-depth look at how the big banks of Wall Street chose to ignore the warning signs leading up to the infamous fold of Lehman Brothers. Based on the best-selling account by Michael Lewis (who also wrote statistic-focused, Moneyball) and directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Ant-Man), The Big Short looks like it just might have a shot at making us care about math. And Excel sheets. So. Many. Excel sheets.
Below are ten movies that forced us to exercise the left side of our noggins and, in a few instances, won some Oscars along the way. Without further ado, here they are ranked in order of how hard they racked our brains.
'Agora' (2009)
Not one of Alejandro Amenábar’s finer moments, but a fantastic one for geometry. Sorry, but Rachel Weisz donning ancient Egyptian attire while playing around with cones is about as exciting as shapes and dimensions are going to get. Weisz plays real-life astronomer and philosopher, Hypatia, who boldly challenged the geocentric notion that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
'The Theory of Everything' (2014)
Based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s nonfiction account of her marriage to Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything is an Instagram-filtered romance with an astrophysics backdrop that earned Eddie Redmayne the Oscar for Best Actor. Needless to say, this biopic didn’t require much brainpower, but all that hubbub about black holes, sure was cool.
'Good Will Hunting' (1997)
Alright, so maybe this movie didn’t really teach us anything about math. It did teach us, however, that we should never underestimate the hot, smart janitor writing on chalkboards outside of our classrooms because not only is he destined for greater things, but he’s also in love with us.
'Rain Man' (1988)
Despite its relatively #problematic assumption that people with autism are automatically savants, Rain Man is an Oscar-winning tale of estranged brotherly love; made possible by some stolen Lamborghinis, a vast estate, and some handy card-counting. Able to recall and count large amounts of numbers on command, Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) helps his conman brother, Charlie (Tom Cruise), win back $80,000 playing blackjack.
'A Beautiful Mind' (2001)
In Ron Howard’s Best Picture-winning biopic, Russell Crowe portrays mathematician John Nash, who, after being invited to take part in a cryptography project, begins to mentally and emotionally unravel. Barely held together by his loyal wife, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), Nash must struggle to find a balance between his tangible reality and what’s in his head. The lesson, here? Stay the hell away from puzzles.
'21' (2008)
Based on Ben Mezrich’s disputed account, Bringing Down the House, 21 depicts the real-life story of six M.I.T. students who swindled Las Vegas casinos for millions of dollars via card-counting. In the highly-fictionalize movie adaptation, the group was led by professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), who created an intricate system to let one another know when the deck was hot, and therefore, profitable.
'The Imitation Game' (2014)
It’s tough to get excited about ciphers and machines and a place called Bletchley Park. But if anyone can do it, it’s Benedict Cumberbatch. Portraying brilliant but tortured mathematician Alan Turing, Cumberbatch takes us back to World War II, where the allies gathered codebreakers to intercept Nazi communications using a massive Enigma machine.
'Moneyball' (2011)
Stats and baseball. You honestly think if Aaron Sorkin didn’t write it and Brad Pitt wasn’t cast as lead, that anyone would care about watching a team lose for two hours? No. But we did. And it earned Jonah Hill an Oscar nomination. Based on the book by Michael Lewis, Moneyball chronicles the Oakland Athletics’ triumphant rise to the American League Championship Series in 2002 based on their hiring of players with high on-base percentages. Go figure.
'Pi' (1998)
For Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette), brilliance comes at a hefty price. Believing he’s destined to find a key number that will unlock all patterns in nature, Maximillian becomes increasingly paranoid, resulting in a stomach-turning ending only the twisted Darren Aronofksy (The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream) could think up.
'Primer' (2004)
When Shane Curruth presented his mind-bending feature debut (he’s a software engineer by trade) at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, audiences left wondering what in the world they just experienced. The $7,000 indie went on to win the Grand Jury Prize that year and has left us scratching our heads for the last decade. There’s a handy cheat sheet available for reference, but the gist of Primer is as follows: two engineers discover means of time travel where an original body is can be replaced for a certain number of hours by a double. Instead of improving the Originals lives, however, the Doubles get greedy and eventually impede on the Originals’ existence.
