Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

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

RandN-Perry 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.

SgtPluck Films about sport tend to suffer from the fact that it's extremely difficult to adequately recreate sporting action, as most actors play sports about as well as most sportspeople act. This can't be said about chess, which presents another problem for the filmmaker: Films about chess tend to suffer greatly from the fact that chess dosn't really work as a spectator sport. Whilst field games can be convincingly condensed into action set-pieces, chess games go on for days with little obvious progression or tactics to those not deeply versed in it. The more successful attempts have thus tended to have very little chess in them, focusing instead on the personalities involved (Bobby Fischer Vs. The World) or the sacrifices involved in making it in any sport (Searching For Bobby Fischer). Computer Chess instead chooses to see the humour in it, intentionally coming across as a VHS-era oddity found in a skip in Omaha.Much like any good chess film, this film isn't really about chess. Instead, it pivots around a very brief and particular moment in the early 1980s when the prospect of a computer beating a grandmaster was cause for alarm rather than a quiz question as a group of computer scientists convene on a nondescript hotel for a computer chess tournament. The modern tech revolution was born in such enthusiasms, not that anyone cared at the time. The main joy of the film comes from how it sidesteps the problems involved in trying to make a compelling film about chess by avoiding chess scenes for the most part. It's more so an off-kilter ensemble comedy about very intelligent people battling with the limitations of state-of-the-art computer technology (a comedic highlight is the programmer whose computer constantly plays to lose in seeming rebellion against its master), their own social skills and a coldly indifferent outside world that won't let them use the hotel's conference room. The film is shot in grainy black and white so as to look like a cheap documentary from the period, which makes the massive computers and mustaches look a lot more believable. Unfortunately, it's too believable at times, with intentional jump cuts and out-of-sync audio drawing too much attention to the self-consciously "quirky" nature of the film at the expense of cohesion, giving the film an episodic structure. Some of these episodes are brilliant, whereas others are just bemusing. Scenes where characters discuss questions in artificial intelligence and the possibilities of their giant computers are juxtaposed with computer programmers unintentionally participating in self-help seminars and endless shots of cats. Maybe this is intended as some sort of comment on the origins of the internet and what it eventually became. But when watching Computer Chess, these differing elements tend to cross over one another and leave any viewers without a very deadpan sense of humour feeling very lost.On the whole it's a fascinating take on a moment in time: funny and frequently brilliant but also difficult and obscure. It's worth watching, but will probably be loved by a small core of people, liked by a few more and leave many others cold.

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.

venz31 I can usually appreciate dry dialogue and the "mockumentary" style, but I cant find anything redeeming about this movie. It was just plain boring. I do not consider myself an action junkie by any stretch, and I thought I knew what I was in for with this film. Chess is not a topic that is easily portrayed on screen but perhaps a stronger focus on the game would have improved things and "spiced things up", but unfortunately that seemed to take a backseat to the dull subplots of a man with no hotel room, a couples therapy session and a kid who doesn't get laid. The scene at the beginning with the panel of experts actually shows the audience falling asleep as the experts speak. Yet this goes on for fifteen minutes which put me the viewer to sleep. I enjoy the game of chess, I enjoy dry dialogue, and I appreciate the independent films....That being said, I cannot find it in myself to give credit to any portion of this movie. There was a movie that was released a few years back which documented a man who attempts to achieve the high score in a certain primitive video game( I think we all know the movie) and the characters in that documentary were nerds, geeks, and dweebs, yet the portrayal of them at least kept you interested in their individual personalities and stories. None of which was present in this dreadfully boring film. This is the first review I have ever given, and I don't feel comfortable ripping a film. But I believe that this film needed to be criticized.