Computer Chess is a 2013 independent comedy-drama film on DVD, written and directed by Andrew Bujalski. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, and subsequently screened at such festivals as South by Southwest and the Maryland Film Festival.
In 1980 a group of software programmers converge on a rundown hotel in Middle America for a weekend in which they will stage the ultimate battle between man and machine. The challenge is to program computer software to take on and defeat a human in chess. Meanwhile another group of new age types has descended on the hotel at the same time for primal therapy and group relations, in the case of one zealous hippy couple. Government agents seem to be monitoring the findings of the software designers on the chance they stumble upon a cutting edge breakthrough. A litter of stray cats wander around the corridors while the more ambitious jostle for recognition among their peers. Shot on video using Sony portapaks from the era, Computer Chess recreates a period of ridiculous fashions, facial hair and haircuts in the ultimate search and deadpan meditation on artificial intelligence by contrasting the future from the prism of the not so distant past.
Jug Face Movie Reviews
“Artificial intelligence remains an intoxicating theory and a heady possibility, about which I am hardly qualified to speak. But I do know real filmmaking intelligence when I see it.” The New York Times
“A supremely intelligent, beautifully constructed film, interweaving comedy and character, satire and subtext.” Time Out
“A breakthrough – not just for indie writer-director Andrew Bujalski, but for American movie comedy.” Chicago Reader
""Computer Chess" is open to many interpretations, and it's great that Bujalski doesn't explain any of them. In a summer filled with numbingly repetitive entertainment, here's an extraordinary movie that invites viewers to think." San Francisco Examiner
“Sneakily, the best science-fiction film of the summer.” Film Freak Central
“It's the first sign that "good” is no longer the template; Bujalski is now a great filmmaker." The Playlist