animufmina This animation film is produced by Pixar studios. An elder man plays chess. However there is no opponent. He plays chess by himself and he changes his character. One is very quiet and cowardly, another is confident in himself and plays chess provocatively. At the beginning, he seems to be lonely because there is no one around him, in this place he is alone. On the other hand, he really enjoys playing chess so gradually loneliness will disappear. There is no dialogue but it isn't needed. Without lines we can enjoy this movie. This is an animation but it shows many expressions like really human. In the course of watching, I misunderstand there are two elder man. Through this animation film, I rediscover that the animation technology of Pixar is very high. The animation technology is shown up not only in the elder man's expression but also in the background landscape. The landscape is so beautiful and it looks like a picture. I think everyone should watch this film once.

Michael_Elliott Geri's Game (1997) *** (out of 4)Oscar-winning Pixar short has an elderly man showing up at the park to play a game a chest against his rival, which just happens to be himself. I was a little surprised to see that this one won an Oscar because it wasn't the strongest film I've seen from the studio but then again, I'm not sure how strong the other films were that year. I thought the film just repeated the same gag one time too many and it never really made me laugh outside the first time. The slow, old man slowly going from one chair to the other was got me to laugh the first time but not after that. The scene of them getting mad with himself were funny the first time but not after that. The animation was quite nice and I really liked the look of the old man but it just didn't work as well as many other Pixar shorts.

Jackson Booth-Millard This short film started just before the main Disney Pixar film at the cinema, A Bug's Life. This was a brand new Pixar movie and it won Best Short Animated Film at the Oscars. It is basically a guy (named Geri) sat on his own with a chess set. He has no partner, so he is playing with himself. As he gets up and down to both sides of the game, you realise that he is meant to be two personalities. It is very interesting to see how changing camera positions can give you the idea of more than one person in the "game". Also, if you have seen Toy Story 2, you may recognise that Geri appears as the guy that repairs Woody. It was very funny, and got you even more excited to see the real film that people wanted to see. Very good!

Michael DeZubiria Pixar, especially now that Monsters, Inc. (preceded by the endlessly amusing For The Birds) has been released, is quickly becoming more and more famous for the tremendous quality of the short short animated films that precede their feature films. Geri's Game, which can be seen before A Bug's Life, is one of my favorite of all of Pizar's short animated films. It's a testament to the quality of the film that the punchline (that Geri is playing chess against himself) is not only revealed in the film's tagline, but is also clearly revealed right at the beginning of the film, and yet it still retains the surprising and amusing affect. The editing in this film is so well-done that, as the chess game switches back and forth between Geri and his alter ego, you almost forget that you already saw that he is alone in the park and is therefore playing against himself in this heated game. I just learned from one of the other IMDb reviewers that Pixar dedicated enormous resources just for such a minor detail as to get Geri's coat to crease just right, and that is exactly the kind of thing that makes a good film, especially a short one. That is a tiny detail, but Pixar is so determined for their films to look just right that it is no surprise that they are now winning Oscars left and right for those films. Pixar spends all of the money that they put into their films in just the right places, and this can clearly be seen in the final product. The purpose of these short film is clearly just to add to the huge amount of entertainment that is almost invariably involved in watching a Pixar film, because they can obviously not serve any other purpose, being so short. It's obvious that they are not put in to increase the viewing time of the sometimes rather short films that Pixar puts out, but rather just to increase the enjoyment derived from their films. When you go to see a Pixar film, you get more than your money's worth, and not because the films take up more of your time, but because the quality is so high. If anything, people should be grateful that the people at Pixar are able to create such huge amounts of entertainment in relatively short periods of time, unless you have nothing better to do than spend your days in a movie theater. While that is definitely how I would personally LIKE to spend my days, I just don't have the time, and I am grateful that Pixar is so good at what they do that they are able to provide entertainment of such high quality and not take up two and a half hours of my time. Bravo!