GAME OVER
unrated, 90 mins.

Garry Kasparov defeated one chess machine only to lose to another. In 1985, he beat Anatoli Karpov and the Soviet Chess establishment to become the youngest ever world chess champion; it was a game that made his career. Then in 1997, he lost a six-game match to the IBM chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue – a game that all but unmade it.

The latter game and the controversy surrounding it is the subject of “Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine,” a clunky, conspiracy-minded documentary by director Vikram Hayanti that fits right into the paranoid culture of elite chess.

The film goes to great lengths to draw a parallel between Deep Blue and The Turk, a chess-playing automaton that dazzled and confounded crowds in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was later discovered that The Turk housed a chess-playing midget who directed its moves from within. In similar fashion, Mr. Hayanti means to guide our hand: We’re to conclude that Deep Blue beat Kasparov with the aid of human intervention.

The controversy hinges on two moves in a single game – game two of six – in which Deep Blue played uncharacteristic computer chess. Forced into a closed middle game position – a scenario in which computers traditionally fared poorly – Deep Blue made a sophisticated move, rejecting a pawn sacrifice and ensuring victory. Then, only moments later, it made the kind of rudimentary blunder its processing power shouldn’t allow, opening itself to perpetual check. (In his agitated state, Kasparov overlooked it.)

Kasparov lost the game and his composure. He implied in the press conference that followed that IBM had cheated and demanded to see the computer’s logs. He threatened to quit. Unable to recover his focus, he played terribly and went on to lose the match.

Certainly, there was incentive for IBM to cheat. The Kasparov/Deep Blue match was an enormous media spectacle (billed as “The Brain’s Last Stand” in Newsweek). And as the filmmakers point out, IBM’s share price jumped 2.5% in the 24 hours after the match, adding some $2 billion to the company’s value.

But motive isn’t proof, which is something neither Kasparov nor the filmmakers can supply. What they offer instead is plenty of grist for the conspiracy mill: Deep Blue was housed in a guarded room that neither the media nor anyone from Kasparov’s camp were allowed into; IBM reneged on its promise to produce the logs from game two; IBM intimidated and dismissed its own in-house reporter who was covering the match for the company Web site.

Most damning of all is the fact that IBM never again conducted research into computer chess. After beating Kasparov, it simply mothballed the project and dismantled the machine, never permitting anyone to analyze it. Which lends credence to a lesser, more reasonable charge: that IBM’s aim was never sport or science at all, but profit alone.

– Martin Edlund

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
unrated, 90 mins.

Writer-director John Deery’s sincere new film attempts to deal with the issue of clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church. Well made and intriguing for much of its duration, it ultimately falls prey to the natural danger of such material – sensational storytelling.

“Conspiracy of Silence” opens in a small town in Ireland, where loyal and deeply religious seminarian Daniel Mclaughlin (Jonathan Forbes) is expelled after an elder priest witnesses him exiting the room of a fellow male student after hours. No transgression has transpired, but the accusation is enough for Rector Cahill (Sean McGinley), the head priest, to make the controversial decision.

Daniel returns home and finds love with a local girl he used to date. Meanwhile, the church is held under public scrutiny after an ambitious journalist David Foley (Jason Barry) begins investigating the suicide of Frank Sweeny (Patrick Lynch) a disgraced former priest who had contracted HIV. Soon, Cahill and his bishop (Jim Norton) are fighting off accusations that the church has turned a blind eye to sex among the clergy and covered-up a growing AIDS epidemic within the church.

Films about the forbidden sex lives of priests have been made before, but it is rare for a movie to tackle AIDS and clergymen. Too bad, then, that “Conspiracy of Silence” goes out of its way to be so ridiculous at times. The surprisingly cheesy resolution, for instance, takes place during a debate between the princi pals on an ‘Oprah’-like talk show, thanks in large part to a just-recovered damning suicide letter left by Sweeny.

Silly moments like this invite the viewer not to take the film seriously.

– Eddie Goldberger

AFTER MIDNIGHT
unrated, 80 mins.

Charming and eccentric, the Italian romantic comedy “After Midnight” doubles quite nicely as a tribute to the silent film era. Set mostly inside the Mole Antonelliana (Turin’s museum of cinema), the film gets underway when shy cinephile Martino (Giorgio Pasotti), keeper of the museum, comes to the aid of Amanda (Francesca Inaudi), a fast-food worker who’s on the run from the police after dumping hot oil on her domineering boss. He allows her to seek refuge with him while she waits to be rescued by her car-thief boyfriend, known only as “The Angel” (Fabio Troiano).

Martino is a curious sort; he spends all day and night watching Buster Keaton films and seems to exist only inside his museum. (“Can we say Martino is happy?” asks the films nameless narrator, “Yes, if happiness means never wondering if you’re happy.”) But Amanda finds a connection with him, a sense of wonder she has never shared with her other suitor.

Davide Ferrario’s film turns a bit too silly for its own good during a stretch in the last 20 minutes, when Amanda goes through the decision of choosing between the two, but is otherwise a clever, intimate, and at times spellbinding film.

– Eddie Goldberger