SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER
The Movie Channel, 10:10 p.m. ET
This 1993 movie was a sleeper favorite of mine when it was released: a low-budget character study about a young boy who was gifted at chess, and the parents who didn’t know quite what to do with that gift. The screenplay adaptation of Fred Waitzkin’s book was written by Steven Zaillian, who also directed. The young boy is played, very touchingly, by Max Pomeranc, who quit acting shortly thereafter, and his parents are played – even more touchingly – by Joan Allen and Joe Mantegna. Two additional, wonderful performances are contributed by the actors playing the boy’s very different chess mentors: Laurence Fishburne and Ben Kingsley. Zaillian, by the way, went from Searching for Bobby Fischer to write the scripts for Schindler’s List (reuniting him with Kingsley), Moneyball, HBO’s The Night Of and Netflix’s The Irishman.