But Chelsea on the Rocks is a happy film-I find it hard to think of a movie released this year that's more optimistic.

| Dec 14, 2017

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.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 30, 2009

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 29, 2009

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 29, 2009

Fond and funky elegy

| Oct 26, 2009

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

| Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 19, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 15, 2009

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

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 14, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2009

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

Full Review | Oct 8, 2009

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

| Original Score: 3.85/10 | Oct 3, 2009

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

| Original Score: B- | Oct 3, 2009

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

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 2, 2009

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

| Original Score: 40/100 | Oct 2, 2009

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...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 2, 2009

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 2, 2009

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

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 1, 2009

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

| Original Score: B- | Oct 1, 2009

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

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 30, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 30, 2009