Movies Similar to NOVA: The Great Math Mystery

Cube Zero(2004)

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

5.7

Pi(1998)

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

7.1

Cube(1998)

A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison. It soon becomes clear that each of them possesses the peculiar skills necessary to escape, if they don't wind up dead first.

6.8

Cube 2: Hypercube(2002)

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

5.5

The Standard Deviants: The Dangerous World of Pre-Calculus, Part 2(1996)

This edition includes topics such as exponential functions, common log or base 10, rules of exponents, natural log or base e, applications of exponents, rules of logs, logarithms, solving log equations and converting logs to base 10 or base e.

0.0

Fermat's Room(2007)

Four mathematicians are imprisoned in a shrinking room; with the walls closing in, they must try anything to escape this fatal puzzle.

6.6

Proof(2005)

Catherine is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert, a brilliant and well-known mathematician whose grip on reality is beginning to slip away. As Robert descends into madness, Catherine begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father's mental illness along with his mathematical genius.

6.3

Clouds Are Not Spheres(2010)

Until recently geometry was 'cold', incapable of describing the irregular shape of a cloud, the slope of a mountain or the beauty of the human body. With fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot gave us a language for our natural world. In this captivating documentary, the man himself explains this groundbreaking discovery.

7.7

Metamorphose: M.C. Escher, 1898-1972(1999)

A documentary about the life and works of the artist M. C. Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

7.0

Terror by Night(1946)

Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.

6.5

Magic Money: The Bitcoin Revolution(2017)

What is Bitcoin? With the advent of Bitcoin, the world's first digital currency, for the first time in history money is no longer controlled by banks or governments, but by the people who use it. But where did this currency come from? How does it work? And is it truly the way forward, or just a flash in the pan? Magic Money answers these questions and more as it explores the mysterious origins of Bitcoin, its role in society, and how it could shape the future.

7.5

The Oxford Murders(2008)

At Oxford University, a professor and a grad student work together to try and stop a potential series of murders seemingly linked by mathematical symbols.

6.0

The Story of 1(2005)

A humor-inflected history of the of the number one, covering military applications in ancient Rome, the measurement of distances in India, and the decimal system created by Leibnitz.

7.6

Achieving the Unachievable(2007)

M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?

5.0

The Genius of George Boole(2015)

Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons, The Genius of George Boole assembles academics and industry leaders from across the globe to explore the life and importance of one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes.

7.5

M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity(2018)

A portrait of the visionary Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972), according to his own words, taken from his diary, his correspondence and the texts of his lectures.

6.9

N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős(1993)

In an age when genius is a mere commodity, it is useful to look at a person who led a rich life without the traditional trappings of success. A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös wrote and co-authored over 1,500 papers and pioneered several fields in theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83 he still spent most of his time on the road, going from math meeting to math meeting, continually working on problems. He died on September 20, 1996 while attending such a meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

7.2

Decoded(2024)

In the 1940s, the world was in turmoil, and it was crucial to decipher the enemy's communication codes in a timely and accurate manner. Rong Jinzhen has shown amazing mathematical talent since her childhood, and because she solved the problems assigned by her math teacher, she was noticed by more people, and even walked into the door of code-breaking by mistake.

6.0

The Most Brilliant Human Mind - John von Neumann(2024)

John von Neumann, one of the most incredible Hungarian-born scientists of all time, was named Man of the Century by the Financial Times in 1999. Among other scientific works, Neumann pioneered game theory and, along with Alan Turing and Claude Shannon, was one of the conceptual inventors of the stored-program digital computer. In late 1943 Neumann began to work on the Manhattan Project at the invitation of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and helped to design the first atomic bomb. This biography showcases the famous mathematician's work and legacy from the perspective of his daughter and colleagues. It is based on artefacts and documents from scientific history collections and on the personal memories of Marina von Neumann Whitman, Neumann's daughter. The film's production team has been filming all around the world, from Budapest to Los Alamos and Princeton, with the participation of several Hungarian and American scientists.

6.0

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Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture(2015)

In April 2013, a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics. Within weeks word spread: a little-known mathematician, with no permanent job, working in complete isolation, had made an important breakthrough toward solving the Twin Prime Conjecture. Yitang Zhang's techniques for bounding the gaps between primes soon led to rapid progress by the Polymath Group, and a further innovation by James Maynard.

7.0