A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 13, 2025

Unfortunately, writer-director Andrew Bujalski’s latest is as deadly dull as the event it covers...

| May 13, 2025

Computer Chess is bounded only by the ambitious weirdness of its creator’s willingness to baffle, discombobulate, introduce unexpected new elements.

| Jan 25, 2023

<I>Computer Chess</I>' deep-ecology tech comedy is completely under control, never sacrificing an innate, lovely weirdness. [It] looks like it wasn’t even made, that it just happened, and sat, shedding magnetic flakes on a closet shelf for decades.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jun 4, 2022

While relations between actors are delightful, what Bujalski does to link man and computer is clever and singular -- slyly masterful.

| Jan 31, 2020

Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess is bracingly idiosyncratic-and close to perfect.

| Aug 28, 2019

Surprisingly provocative and delightfully maddening.

| Aug 22, 2019

Consistently funny throughout, fans of squirm-inducing humour will find much to enjoy as will those keen on a more absurdist qualities.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2019

A double or maybe a triple nerd-fest, influential independent Andrew Bujalski's typically deadpan Computer Chess is a small movie with a comic novel premise and a near cosmic theme.

| Feb 22, 2019

If you want to know how Skynet might really have been born, you need to watch Computer Chess. And if you just want to hang out with some groovy nerds who are debating the Singularity, you can come for that too.

| May 23, 2018

[Director Andrew] Bujalski makes fine use of an ensemble cast and achieves a sense of drift reminiscent of Robert Altman's films.

| Feb 21, 2018

It's the type of film that introduces a type of funny that you didn't know existed, that isn't based in popular culture or punchlines or pratfalls or virtually anything that we've seen before.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 2, 2014

Those weird elements don't take over the film, but they certainly make it a more delirious experience. It helps, though, that it's still grounded by real-feeling characters and an offbeat, low-key sense of humor.

| Original Score: B | Apr 8, 2014

Might bore viewers like myself who are not chess or techie knowledgeable.

| Original Score: B | Jan 31, 2014

Strange, hilarious and curiously moving.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 30, 2013

As much as it is comedy, Computer Chess is also a treatise on isolation, social hierarchy and the crippling male fear of inadequacy

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 19, 2013

I really don't know what to think of this movie. It did not do much for me. It was neither interesting nor compelling. A number of ideas are brought up, but I could not see that they go anywhere.

| Original Score: D | Dec 17, 2013

Think vintage found footage meets wilfully anachronistic dot matrix art. And then think way, way outside the box.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 27, 2013

Odd, but in a good(ish) way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 24, 2013

The code for the future has already been written - and as Bujalski seeks to discover who we are and where we come from (not just as wired-in 21st-century users but as human beings), it's checkmate in 12 hilariously unorthodox moves.

| Nov 22, 2013