Ever since I saw it at SXSW this year, I’ve had trouble comparing Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess to other things that I’ve seen. I’ve read and heard others compare it to Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Carruth. While I agree that it shares spiritual DNA with some of the flavors, themes, and cerebral complexity of those directors’s work (most notably 2001, ExistenZ, Videodrome, and Primer), Computer Chess is its own sort of sentient cinematic intelligence.

I the interest of full disclosure, I’m friends with two of the actors in the movie, Wiley Wiggins and Daniel Metz. I also helped organize a screening of the movie during this year’s Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), too. I didn’t do the latter because of the former, but rather, because Computer Chess struck me as the movie most perfectly made for the hardest core nerds among us.