Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

lipolaughing Screenwriter Nicole Burdette's female scrutiny of the male gender in Chelsea walls can be painful at times. The men in the film, except one, are artists desperately devoted to their chosen callings who have trouble loving anything beyond their own work. Of course this is a problem for men well beyond the Chelsea Hotel Bohemian microcosm, so the film has a universal reach. The use of sound is especially impressive, as music and conversation will bleed over into a new scene with new characters like sound travels through hotel walls, giving the film a dream-like quality. Also impressive is the number of characters and story lines the film carries (as can be seen by the list of characters). The film cuts between the numerous story lines and then returns to them in a masterful way that never leaves you lost. It's not a happy film and offers little in the way of redemption, except perhaps in the young Vietnamese poet's capacity for love, yet the use of music, poetry, and the mesmerizing way the stories are folded together and told, make the movie a lovely and insightful viewing experience.

Andy (film-critic) The Chelsea Hotel is a landmark in American culture, alas, due to modern advances in low-income housing; it has become nothing more than a demolished idea coupled with a forgotten past. Hawke, using nearly every technique patented by Richard Linklater, attempts to revitalize the forgotten hotel with non-sequitur stories and impossible characters, yet incredible actors. Using now-cliché camera style (a.k.a. The grain of pure film school) and a powerful score by Wilco, Hawke pulls every grunge independent filmmaker technique known to man, mashes them together like potatoes, and hopes – actually prays – that it will be a big "hurrah" at the cinematic Thanksgiving. Enough references for now, but truthfully, Hawke creates an eyesore of a film with "Chelsea Walls'. Beginning with characters that never develop AT ALL, coupling with a story that is never existent, Hawke horribly displays whatever talent he may have thought he had by employing friends to carry the burden. "Chelsea Walls" was a smear on cinema, not because of the subject (of which I do believe an honest film needs to be made of the events leading to the demise of this building), but because of the surroundings. Hawke borrows, as mentioned before, unsuccessfully from Linklater's work, attempting to bring a "Waking Life"-esquire story to the surface sans the animation. Where Hawke failed was that he brought unexcited characters into a place that really needed an introduction. He needed to guide this audience through his train of thought – not just assume we were all as intellectual as he portrayed himself to be.What upped me about this film was that we had intelligent, powerful actors giving us nothing. From the beginning of the scene until the end, there was nothing solid for us to stand. Kris Kristofferson is a phenomenal actor, but he couldn't bring me to the surface in "Chelsea Walls". He cried, he drank, he womanized, but for what purpose – this critic has absolutely no idea why. The same can be said for Natasha Richardson, whom in my eyes, cannot do wrong, was misguided from the beginning thanks to Mr. Hawke. Rosario Dawson gave the only comprehensible portrayal throughout the film, but she was flanked by horrid direction and choppy "anti-independent" cliché surroundings. She tried, but Hawke wouldn't allow her to prosper. The only one that went the distance, albeit horribly, was Robert Sean Leonard who only was given screen time because of his friendship with director Hawke. He did have a moving story, and if we were left with just the central focus of Leonard's character as he interacted with the others of this building, I think we could have had a keeper of a film, but we didn't. We jumped. We jumped from one actor to another hoping that we could see the chaos surrounding these talented artists. Alas, all we witnessed was Jell-o slipping down a wall -- nothing was sticking.I hate to be pessimistic because I had high hopes for this film. Look at the billing for "Chelsea Walls", who wouldn't get excited. What did happen is that Hawke went to the Linklater school of direction, but abysmally failed out, possibly never quite going to the first class, but instead just copying someone's notes. This was a dark depressing tale that had elements that could work, but just like any first year filmmaker, it all depends on how you put those ideas together. Hawke had some great ideas, but he could not assemble them. He tried to bring music into the scene, and the use of Wilco was genuine, but overbearing – not to mention overused – throughout the film. This seemed to be the common theme or pedestal that Hawke used for "Chelsea Walls" – overuse, until it becomes painful to the viewer. You can obviously see that with the extra lack-tastic features attached to this disc. There are some additional scenes, which only continue the abrasive, unknown of the film. There are some interviews, but done many years after the film. Hawke tries his best, but the funniest is Robert Sean Leonard who forgets everything and attempts to change the subject. My favorite, "What was your favorite scene Mr. Leonard", answered with a long pause and the phrase, "…anything with Rosario". That sums this film up in a nutshell.Overall, I cannot suggest this film. I love the actor Ethan Hawke, and I like this style of film-making, but for "Chelsea Walls" it just didn't seem put together. Linklater would have been upset with the results – just as we were as we watched it. Do not be fooled by the big names associated here, they accomplish nothing and in the end, make you want this hotel to be torn down. This was a sad attempt at film-making, and I can only suggest watching a better combination film with these actors called "Tape". I have mentioned this in a couple of other reviews and truly believe this is the best Hawkes/Leonard/Linklater combo platter you will ever get.Grade: * ½ out of *****

dredyoung I watched, with unenthusiastic anticipation, Chelsea Walls last pm. Ethan Hawke directed it, and well, and it was filled with top actors and a few good unknowns. Another independent, Art-house movie no one saw! A collage of struggling artists in a rundown New York hotel once haunted by great and famous artists. Interesting and sad. An authentic commentary of the lives of people who would wrench beauty and truth from their starving souls, bodies, and lives in a surrounding world of indifferent walls and lost, disconnected, bustling, solipsistic climbers. For the casual movie goer or average movie buff? - too raw, too realistic, too deep into the nightmare life of those simultaneously struggling, slavishly, and exclusively devoted, full of emaciated hope, to their art and, yet, never having been loved enough are still - and eternally and desperately - reaching with withered and scared hands and hearts for connection. While both wanting to and searching for elusive care, even while self imprisoned in their anguished solitude, they labor, possessed by and surrendered to their evolving dream creations, to just eke out survival so as to have one more day to forge one more note, one more line, one more stroke of their brush, or one more verse. It is a portrayal of a tattered but soulfully beautiful social Ghetto in the midst of a dazzling, opulent, technologically overly well-appointed, commercially successful, sky-rocketing, Gotham-like Empire. To the artistically inclined: Look and listen to its intimately personal, heart-singeing, message at your own risk. You may find it more informing and rewarding than entertaining.

Pepper Anne Chelsea Walls is supposed to document the daily occurrences of several "artists" housed in the notorious Chelsea Walls hotel in New York, which is an entertainment landmark that has grossly mutated into a housing community to New York yuppies (though the movie doesn't show that). I waited a long time to see this, eager to see many of Frank Whaley's hard to find titles, even though he mostly shows up in a movie these days for about two minutes. Chelsea Walls is one of THE most boring movies I have ever seen, I'm surprised I managed to get through the remainder of it. There is absolutely nothing particularly interesting or wonderful about these characters that I could see the need for anyone to want to make a movie about it. Kris Kristopherson plays a mumbling, drunk writer. Uma Thurman floats around there, she's supposed to be a sculptor. There's some awkward scenes with Rosario Dawson, playing a poet, and her boyfriend who I don't know whether he's supposed to be a ska musician or a gangster. All I can say that Chelsea Walls is one of the most boring "artsy fartsy" pretentious movies that I have ever seen. This, in addition to some other films, have made me weary of Ethan Hawke-directed films.If you're looking for entertainment, it surely doesn't lie in Chelsea Walls.