Pi (1998)

Darren Aronofsky's debut is the most frantic film here and the one closest to a computer's-eye view of the era. A mathematician, Max Cohen, believes he is on the verge of decoding the numerical pattern beneath the stock market, and the closer he gets, the less he can tell insight from breakdown. Made for roughly $60,000, it won the directing award at Sundance in 1998 and feels like late-night anxiety put on film. It is short, abrasive and deliberately uncomfortable to watch, but for anyone who remembers trusting the machine a little too much, or fearing it would fail, nothing on this list captures the feeling better.