Bobby Fischer Against The World: Season 1

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Universal acclaim based on 8 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 8 Ratings

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6.8

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6.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 8 Ratings

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Season Details & Credits

HBO | Season Premiere Date: June 6, 2011

Summary: The documentary directed by Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Liz Garbus, explores the life of Bobby Fischer from his 1972 match with Russian Boris Spassky to his subsequent exile in Iceland.

Genre(s): Sports, Drama, Documentary

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Season 1 Episodes

No episode information is currently available for this season

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Critic Reviews

100

Uncle Barky Ed Bark

Jun 6, 2011

So far it's the televised documentary film of the year, with its truths stranger than fiction from opening move to checkmate. Read full review

Sam Allis

Jun 6, 2011

Robert James Fischer's story is astonishing on and off the chess board, and tonight's HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World captures it well. Read full review

Robert Lloyd

Jun 6, 2011

Garbus, director of the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning "The Farm: Angola, USA," fills in many of the blanks--to an impressive extent, given the obsessively guarded privacy of her subject--in a film that is both meditative and exciting, like the game it concerns, and mercilessly penetrating even as it reserves judgment on a man whose outrageousness practically demands it. Read full review

David Hinckley

Jun 6, 2011

[Garbus] captures the epic, almost mythical scope of his talent and thus the tragic height of his fall. Read full review

David Wiegand

Jun 6, 2011

Despite what we know about his troubled childhood, Fischer remains enigmatic. Read full review

Verne Gay

Jun 6, 2011

This intelligent, sensitive portrait effectively explores a lost childhood and remarkable mind. It's engrossing to a point, then tiresome. Read full review

Hank Stuever

Jun 6, 2011

The film, which kicks off HBO's long, annual summer of well-curated documentary offerings on Monday nights, is certainly absorbing. For those only vaguely familiar with the competitive chess circuit (or even the game's 1,500-year history), Bobby Fischer Against the World is both an easy introduction and a thorough recounting of Fischer's improbable rise to superstardom some 40 years ago. Read full review

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jdb26354

Sep 9, 2011

Documentary of chess prodigy pursues world clichÃ© championship. Left alone by a hippie mother with a bottle of Drano and a book on chess tactics, the 6-year old Fischer takes the slower but surer poison of intellectual obsession resulting in worldwide acclaim and emotionalDocumentary of chess prodigy pursues world clichÃ© championship. Left alone by a hippie mother with a bottle of Drano and a book on chess tactics, the 6-year old Fischer takes the slower but surer poison of intellectual obsession resulting in worldwide acclaim and emotional isolation. More mysterious than the origins of Fischerâ… Expand

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