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People are voting emotionally.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

If you are interested in chess or computers you may be tempted to watch this film. Don't be. The film is only tangentially about chess or computers. It has nothing to say - no purpose. Many of the scenes are meandering. Some seem to have nothing to do with the movie. Some are genuinely creepy.The film's title and back cover description miss-represent what the film is about. If is was titled "Creepy people play computer chess" then the potential viewer at least has an idea what they were in for. Now I know the typical stereotype of the computer nerd who plays chess, and there are some in this film. Fine for dramatic effect. But that's not what chess or computer development is about.I have a keen interest in film. Most film produced and distributed today is of a good standard in terms of purpose, script and production values. This fails on all three.Disclaimer: I have played competitive chess for many years and have a FIDE rating over 2000.

This low key mockumentary is so dry in it's humor that it's more likely to produce a nostalgic or rueful smile than a belly laugh. Set at a 1980s man vs. computer chess competition, and shot on what looks like a video camera from the time, it certainly succeeds in capturing a time, place and atmosphere. On the other hand, some of it starts to get a bit repetitive and meandering. Unlike Christopher Guest's hysterical mockumentaries, this is so close to 'real' for much of it's length that it started to wear down a bit. And then when it switches to a more 'over-the-top' tone, as when one of the young leads is hit on by a pair of middle- aged swingers, it suddenly feels like a scene from another film. None-the-less, this is an impressive accomplishment, using it's lack of budget as a plus to create the feel of a truly home made documentary of the time. It may not be brilliant, but it's sweet, inventive, and fun, which puts it well ahead of most of what's out there.

'COMPUTER CHESS': Four Stars (Out of Five)Bizarre indie comedy film about computer programmers, for Chess software, all attempting to design a system that can beat a human being (set during a tournament in the early 1980s). It was written and directed by Andrew Bujalski and is presented (almost entirely) in black-and-white. The film is one of the best reviewed movies of 2013 and I found it to be extremely funny (at times) but a tad to abstract (at other times). Definitely worth seeing for some good laughs though.The film is set over thirty years ago when computer software programmers were still obsessed with the idea of defeating 'man' in the game of chess. It takes place during a weekend tournament, where programmers pit their software against each other (with the hopes of winning it all and being the one team to take on a human 'chess master'). We get to know each programmer as they struggle with fulfilling their dreams and attempt to relate to each other. It's cast with all unknowns and the quirky characters are all delightful. It's funny watching this after first seeing 'HER' last weekend, seeing as they're both about the evolution of artificial intelligence (taking place just several decades apart). This is of course nowhere near the masterpiece that 'HER' is and doesn't deal with any real human (or human/computer) issues like it does. It is a very humorous look though; at what drives the people working so hard to develop and progress computer software. The characters are all exaggerated caricatures but believable in some ways too. If not for the really 'out there' scenes I would have enjoyed the movie even more and given it a higher ratingWatch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFwTi2pdqMs

The film takes place in 1983? at a lousy hotel during a little computer vs computer chess tournament with the participation from major technical universities of US of A and a not so major chess grandmaster as an end game boss. Most of the time camera stays indoors hence the direct orders from the grandmaster who is also the host and splunge of the show restricts the cameraman who is making the documentary of the tournament to shoot outdoors while the early model video camera is sensitive to light. Stick in the hotel, camera discovers which can be put as colliding worlds of eccentric characters of a spiritual action-therapy convention group and bunch of the tournament.The first interesting move that film makes is to split the stance of camera in two, almost as son as it is restricted to outdoors. Without trumpets celebrating the move film slowly slides from being a mockumentary to a conventional drama. Yet the second personality of the camera protects the cinema verite understanding of the first personality of the camera that is still inside the film. This is one of the key elements of the film since one of the main subjects of the film is the deus-ex machina, referring to 'the turk' several times, the chess playing automaton which is a mixture of a device of illusion and a simple puppet, film settles to its ground to ask one simple question to all the elements in the movie which is 'who are you'. This is the question digitally been asked to one of the computers, who is the more extrovert one in the group, and been answered in a more certain manner and quickly than the human characters.Except other values that film has, by dealing with this matter of subject film becomes -what i can put with my narrow English- a provincial science fiction film, science fiction in its purest form. Science fiction of an era, a world, which has gone beyond or reached the borders of the genre. This is a funny feeling which i felt just the opposite of during 'gravity', at that experience, and still is, it is clearly visible that the film is not a science fiction but an ordinary series of events happening but in space plus the Hollywood exaggeration quite similar to 'die hard'. For me it is almost inevitable to write a few words on 'gravity' when writing about 'computer chess' not only because they occurred almost at the same period and culture, standing at the two extreme points of contemporary film making but also because of this mind blanking shift in the understanding.