A CHESS GENIUS , a smug IBM team, and a hulking machine with spooky, near-HAL 9000 thinking capabilities converge in Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, a new doc by Vikram Jayanti (who, as a coproducer of boxing epic When We Were Kings, knows a thing or two about translating fierce real-life rivalries to the screen). At first, the 1997 match between Garry Kasparov, the world's top-rated chess player, and supercomputer Deep Blue seemed like an exciting, fun exercise; a year prior, Kasparov had beaten Deep Blue's less-refined earlier incarnation. But all pretensions of friendly competition evaporated when Deep Blue answered Kasparov's "anticomputer" strategy by playing like a human – a development so gobsmacking, the champ was ultimately unable to recover. Soon after, Kasparov's camp began questioning whether IBM had a secret component to its invention: a flesh-and-blood someone who was able to influence Deep Blue's moves. Though it also includes a biographical sketch of Kasparov, an engaging guy with enough good humor to spoof himself in a 2001 Pepsi ad, Game Over leans heavily on the conspiracy-theory angle, employing a JFK-style ticktock score and offering evidence that Kasparov's paranoid reaction just might be justified. Game Over never actually proves its theory, and the IBM guys Jayanti interviews seem reasonably trustworthy. But the notion that a big corporation would casually undermine such a symbolically important event (Kasparov's loss is described as "a blow against humanity") in favor of greed and free publicity? Hardly a stretch. (Cheryl Eddy)