Hellmant '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

Turfseer In 1984, I was invited by a friend to a poker game, who happened to have the latest in video equipment at the time and taped all the raunchy conversations between the games' participants, for most of the night. With a little editing, I mind's well submit this old tape to the Sundance Festival. Given the current mindset of most film critics today, with their preening and slavish devotion to anything in the least nostalgic, I might have a good chance of winning some kind of award.I can find no other explanation as to why the critics were taken in by 'Computer Chess', except for this love of nostalgia. Certainly it's not the Computer Chess plot that is at all engaging; creator Andrew Bujalski saw to that. But what he did do was shot the film on the old Portapak cameras, giving one the impression that this mockumentary, about a computer chess convention, actually took place in the early 1980s. As we gaze up on the screen, we see that Bujalski mimics old video--the dimensions aren't large enough to fill the entire theater screen (just like my old 1984 video appears, when I play it back on my computer today). Bujalski also populates the screen with images of beloved old computers and text from word processors, which none of us have seen in decades. So it's a sort of hypnotism that's going on here. It doesn't really matter what happens as far as the story is concerned. It's a meandering affair, where we can get the basic idea in the first fifteen minutes. Think 'The Big Bang Theory' meets 'Bobby Fischer'. A group of nerds have developed software programs, which they pit against one another over games of chess. The games take place at a low-rent hotel where there are two other groups in attendance: a new age group led by a guru from Africa and a bunch of swingers. Bujalski is actually aiming for laughs in this lightweight spoof. His main nerd is a boorish guy who discovers that the hotel never received his reservation, so he's forced to crash in different rooms of his fellow convention attendees, every night. Due to a mix up, the nerds must share their convention room with the new age group and there's also another bit, where a libidinous couple attempts to seduce another one of the nerds, without success.Computer Chess is strictly for those who have a nostalgic longing for the early 80s. It's a film with a little style but virtually no substance. While Bujalski looks sympathetically at his computer nerds, their machinations are of little consequence. For more sophisticated film-goers, avoid this lightweight debacle, like the plague.

k_nerede 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.

Sergeant_Tibbs Computer Chess may have an unconventional and experimental style, but its story is simple. It's very much like a Christopher Guest competition mockumentary setup with a similar satirical sense of humour and fortunately its exposition is welcome and well-handled. Its video and black and white cinematography feels more than a gimmick and places the film convincingly in the 80s. At least it makes better use of it than last year's disappointing No. Although it's intended as a character-based film, peering into the lives of the contestants rather than concerned with the competition itself, it's the area it struggles with most. It's difficult to keep track of characters and many feels like cartoons. But its themes still work. It makes you think about the progression of technology and its integration with society as well as what you should live for. It's more of a directors movie with hints of surrealism and meta scenes where the gimmick breaks the mold which results in making Computer Chess interesting, thoughtful and entertaining film but wildly inconsistent with the places where it doesn't know what it's doing.7/10