Game Over: Kasparov And The Machine

Vikram Jayanti's documentary about the disputatious 1997 chess match during which Garry Kasparov — widely regarded as the best player in the history of the game — was trounced by an IBM supercomputer provocatively named Deep Blue, has the paranoid tone and narrative urgency of a conspiracy thriller. Excessive trappings for a documentary about some chess games, you might think. But the question that lies at the film's heart — did the machine win fair and square, or did IBM rig the contest for its own benefit? — is anything but trivial, since it's inevitably connected to broader questions about corporate ethics. History is dotted with stories of mechanical chess whizze...