Chelsea on the Rocks (2008): review: unfinished film

Length of film: 88 minutes
Length tolerated before switch off: 23 minutes
Percentage suffered: 20.24%

This is a documentary about the New York's Chelsea Hotel and the people who lived there.

Reason for switch off: Just being famous doesn't make someone interesting. The film offers no insights into the creativity of anyone and, more importantly, fails to tell a story, so the interviews conducted are dislocated and boring.

The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984): review: unfinished film

Length of film: 121 minutes

Length tolerated before switch off: 54 minutes

Percentage suffered: 44.62%

Narcissistic Italian-American scoundrels in New York, more used to stealing from their catering employers, plan a robbery. They have various romantic complexities too.

This is a very sub-Scorcese picture with a lot of method style mannerisms, and observations of proletarian New Yorkers eating, drinking, walking about and being rude to each other.

Reason for switch off: the film dawdles hopelessly, unsympathetic characters, facing challenges of no consequence.

The acting is all good, but it is insufficent to hold against the films aimlessness. In addition, the characters are nearly all unplleasant, but none in a way that could generate any passion: they are mediocrities of vice- low scum. Their interior lives are flat and consequently their relationships are without richness. The challenges they are set are uninteresting, and it's impossible to give a hoot about whether they succeed or not.