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Chained for Life

2018

Jess Weixler, Adam Pearson, Stephen Plunkett, Charlie Korsmo ...

6.4

Drama This film-within-a-film is set behind the scenes of a wacky horror film where a romance blooms between characters Rosenthal, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, and a beautiful blind woman, Mabel; who, upon miraculously regaining her eyesight, is unable to cope with the appearance of her lover.

	Author	Review
United States	Keith Uhlich The Hollywood Reporter	"Bizarre and beautiful (...) Schimberg confidently blurs the lines between fantasy and reality"	POS
United States	Henry Stewart Slant	"Schimberg mostly avoids advocacy. 'Chained for Life' isn't much of an argument, just a provocative discussion"	POS
United States	Richard Brody The New Yorker	"Schimberg creates a melodrama that reflects on the terms of melodrama while also pointing toward a grass-roots cinematic revolution"	POS
United States	Dennis Harvey Variety	"Easier to admire than to love (...) More often than not, the immediate impact is engagingly droll"	POS
United States	Calum Marsh Village Voice	"'Chained for Life' is a fine film about how disability is misappropriated (...) Exciting"	POS
United States	Katie Rife AV Club	"The film is clearly enamored with its own cleverness—which isn’t to say that it’s not clever, just that a more clear-headed film could have distilled its ideas better, and been more satisfying as a result"	NEU
United States	Ben Kenigsberg The New York Times	"An inventive hall of mirrors (...) Schimberg’s film is odd, darkly funny and — when it means to be — a little frightening."	POS
United States	Sheila O'Malley rogerebert.com	"Schimberg is dazzlingly inventive (...) [The director's] touch is very light, but the film reaches the depths, not despite his light touch, but because of it (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Robert Abele Los Angeles Times	"'Chained for Life' stands up as both a quiet ode to the experimental, dreamlike spirit of moviemaking and a seriocomic corrective to sentimentalized sideshow portrayals."	POS
Canada	Shelagh Rowan-Legg Screen Anarchy	"Both a commentary on the joys and pains of indie filmmaking, and a sly and deviously funny look at perceived identity via physical appearance"	POS
United Kingdom	Leslie Felperin The Guardian	"It has an amiable warmth and an inexhaustible reserve of originality that make it compelling as hell(…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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