Absolutely Fantastic

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Andrew Bujalski and his team did an unbelievable job in recreating all the details of this world of a group of computer nerds in the 80's, especially the eyeglasses, haircuts, clothing, classic computers. The cinematography is brilliant not only because of the bold choice of using a vintage black and white video camera. Bujalski and his long time cinematographer Matthias Grunsky created odd but very strong compositions. The camera moves through the hotel halls in a very strange and eerie way. One could say the filmmakers have invented their own new aesthetics for this movie.It is definitely something I have never seen before.

In this mock-documentary, the computer nerds meet the chess nerds (spoiler: They're about the same thing) in a black and white, cheesy hotel setting during the 70's. In the background, a purposeful primal therapy group works its spells and enchantments. One of the computer chess entrants is a sociopath that looks and speaks oddly like Chevy Chase, giving this movie unexpected authenticity. Another, the father of a chess buff, is one of those guys from the time that loved being the loudest guy in the room and loved asking the smartest persons in the room questions he couldn't answer. Along with these there is the 'Cal Tech team' and the 'MIT team' and a wicked science fiction plot that seems to be fizzling towards the end, just as the nascent sex life of one of the team members does also. Enjoy!

If you are out of sleeping pills or have insomnia.Guaranteed to put you to sleep. I actually had a fabulous nap - 2 or 3 of them actually - while attempting to keep my eyes open. There might have been a premise somewhere in there but only the director and his friends could tell you about it since everyone else will be fast asleep - or doing the neck dance of nodding in and out of sleep.Computers, chess, retro, dry dialogue, vintage cameras.... on paper this could have been fun and quirky and a nice time. Anyway, next time you feel too wired to sleep and don't have any substances to help you, put this on and you'll conk out in minutes (that or throw your TV against the wall).

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.