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

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

| Aug 28, 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

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

Like early Cronenberg, but funnier and sweeter, Computer Chess brings a dysfunctional, pioneering community to life. Bujalski must do a sequel.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 22, 2013

A fascinating, genuinely strange and experimental film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2013

Director Andrew Bujalski's archly low-tech and improvised comedies can have a richly chortling edge and a nicely crude virtuosity and collegiate intelligence and warmth.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 21, 2013

The spirit of Altman returns! A film to study, pick apart, discuss and debate.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 21, 2013

It's fashionable to dismiss mumblecore as prone to obtuseness, but Bujalski offers a wryly funny slice of nerd-vana.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2013

Computer Chess will make you scratch your head and wonder what it's up to - but there's no doubt you'll never have seen a film quite like it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2013

Computer Chess is one of the most original and satisfying movies I've seen in ages.

| Nov 4, 2013

In the end, you simply wish the characters (and the actors) were in a more subtle and focused film. "Computer Chess" plays a risky game. Unfortunately, it loses.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 17, 2013

A supremely intelligent, beautifully constructed film, interweaving comedy and character, satire and subtext

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2013

It becomes something that's hard to decipher; hard to put into words in a review. That's a good thing.

| Original Score: 3.5/5.0 | Sep 26, 2013

A breakthrough -- not just for indie writer-director Andrew Bujalski, but for American movie comedy.

| Sep 26, 2013

It's idiosyncratic, actively noncommercial, and doesn't follow the rules -- like playing a game of chess on a board with no squares.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2013

It's impossible not to see "Computer Chess" as both a humble, low-fi ode to evanescence and the deceptively cute baby picture of the digital disrupters who will soon bestride the Earth.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 8, 2013