Chelsea on the Rocks (2008)

Critic Reviews

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  You may not learn much about the hotel itself from Chelsea on the Rocks, but you come away knowing exactly what it was like to live there.

• Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

  This is Ferrara's first documentary since 1977, and it has the crackbrained air of menace and the ferocious humor that mark his fictional works.

• Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

  Ferrera's shaggy tone, which fits the iconic building, gets irritating. Still, if you come for the stories, you'll stay for the company.

• Lou Lumenick, New York Post

  Chelsea on the Rocks rambles a bit, but it's a real slice of New York history that includes everything from Ethan Hawke recounting a hilarious story about Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller at the hotel to footage of the 9/11 attacks...

• Stephen Holden, New York Times

  An enraptured fantasia of high times at the hotel, the film is so intoxicated with the Chelsea's bohemian mystique it virtually consumes itself.

• Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

  Chelsea rambles -- and in a way that makes you want to move down the bar.

• Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl

  A creative community is as fragile an ecosystem as any salt marsh and just as easily destroyed: Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates a hotel which nurtured some of the greatest talents of the twentieth century.

• Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

  There's a great movie to be made about the Chelsea Hotel; unfortunately, this isn't it.

• Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  It's a cheap, vicarious high to hear these unidentified denizens reminisce about the orgies and overdoses that seem to have been included with the rent.

• Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

  Fond and funky elegy

• Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics

  Nostalgic and fun to talk about but not that much fun to listen to. At some point the dead will simply rest in peace.

• Betsy Sherman, Boston Phoenix

  A visually poetic, if erratically edited, portrait illustrating how "the energy of this hotel is bigger than the people in it."

• Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

  Unfocused and uninteresting documentary about the famous hotel for bohemians of all stripes.

• Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

  Often drags with poor editing and lack of sufficient insight while leaving you feeling unengaged and underwhelmed.

• Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

  ...Ferrara has left a testament to a beloved place whose spirit has been corrupted by commerce.

• Sean Gandert, Paste Magazine

  In need of a re-edit like few other films, Chelsea on the Rocks isn't so much bad as it is disappointing.

• Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

  Ferrara found a way to adapt his ramshackle style to the documentary format, and his new Chelsea on the Rocks works spectacularly.

• Sam Adams, AV Club

  Ferrara himself is no stranger to substance abuse or self-destructive impulses, and he's perfectly in sync with the Chelsea's spirit.

• Kam Williams, Sly Fox

  Not exactly art for art's sake, more like a case of film for historic preservation's sake!

• Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

  It makes sense that, within his own act of remembrance, Ferrara would include a hotel tenant's home-movie footage of the September 11 attacks. The underlying message, in both cases, is the same: Never forget.

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