Chain

A dreamlike travelogue that transforms a mundane world into something strange and new.

What makes the strongest impact is the superb documentary photography and the "found" audio segments--telemarketing ads left as voice messages.

Thought-provoking, but not quite as profound as it pretends to be.

A visually arresting cinematic essay that, unfortunately, makes its points long before its conclusion.

The melancholy joke - if you can call it that - is that the pall of global mediocrity has erased national differences and turned women like Tamiko and Amanda into ghosts drifting through their own lives.

Links narrative fiction filmmaking to avant-garde with vision and authority.

For all its bleakness, the movie, filmed in nearly a dozen states and in half a dozen countries, is not without a certain beauty. There is comfort to be found in blandness and homogeneity.