Atari: Game Over (2014)

Super hero movie screen writer Zak Penn directs and appears in this documentary about a 2014 landfill dig in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which unearthed the contents of a long rumored 1983 cartridge dump by the Atari corporation, one which had reached the status of an urban legend. The movie chronicles the dig, the people involved in planning and carrying it out, as well as a few of the people who traveled, sometimes from great distances, to see a bunch of old Atari game cartridges dug out of the New Mexico desert. Alternating with the story of the dig is a brief history of the rise and fall of the Atari cooperation, the company that essentially created the home video game industry, and how the failure of its 1982 release E.T. The Game, now regarded as legendarily bad, factored into the cartridge dump and eventual death of the company. Best of all this movie is only about an hour long, the perfect length for what it has to say. **1/2