NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

valerie-hoganfamily-fan Well I just loved the Chinese Coffee for its brilliant acting and direction. It reminded me of the theater of the Absurd in a strange haunting way! With Chinese Coffee Mr. Pacino surpasses his own status of being a stellar performer & a superstar combined and cements his position as one of the greatest artists of all times. The tone of the movie is intimate and artistic at times a little dark. I loved the stream of Levine's consciousness which makes the audiences look into his past---his hopes & failures. Pacino is brilliant as a middle aged struggling writer who is haunted by his own past, his parents' and his own shortcomings and aspirations. Kudos to Mr. Pacino for providing us with such a brilliant artistic piece! He truly is a gem of an artist. Love him! God bless!

CinefanR It's been a long time since I've seen Al Pacino in a different role from his usual "cop/mobster/lawyer" fare. Take Francis from "Scarecrow", one of my favorite Pacino roles, add 25 years and a passion for literature, and you've got a struggling artist, another dreamer waiting for life to happen.Ideas on identity, art, time, love, sometimes with an absurdist bitter-sweet touch, are explored. As I watched, it reminded me of Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" and Luigi Pirandello's "One, No one and One Hundred Thousand". The writing and acting are excellent. It's performances like this that cement Pacino's status as one of the world's greatest actors.

vyrkolak I never was a fan of The Godfather... I like Scarface, but there Al is somehow proving himself to everybody, proving that he is The best actor living..... I was simply amazed by him in Insomnia, i made it my number 2 best movie, after The usual suspects, not only cause the incredible script, location and simplicity, but because Pacino played a guy, who hasn't slept in a week and tries to think str8, because Robin Williams is AS good as Pacino, and that is the first movie i actually enjoyed watching him, the first time i saw how brilliant he is... Watching Chinese Coffee i honestly believed that Insomnia sucked ass, that Scarface wasn't good enough... 1 room, 2 incredible actors, a breathtaking, sublime, PERFECT script and absolutely NO special effects... Pacino here is better than ever! i honestly believed everything that he said and i was completely blown away by his story, by his problems...Orbach is also amazing, but i think in some moments he's pushing HIS envelope to look full of apathy and that drove me back...but the rest of the movie he is on Pacino's level and that u all know is not easy... I simply cannot say how good it is, u have to see it and u'll believe it.

jzappa Eight-time Oscar-nominated, Tony-winning master actor Al Pacino draws from off-off- Broadway this semi-autobiographical character study and boasts a cast of actors who've proved themselves before and after, a Greenwich Village setting, and thus the world of floundering poets, bartenders, belly dancers, photographers, jealous doormen, haughty Shakespearean quotes, urbane coffee shops and French restaurants. And yet not all of these intermingle naturally within the story, but are forced by a tug-of-war between the play Ira Lewis had written and the film Al Pacino wanted to make.The narrative is almost exclusively as a one-on-one conversation between the two main characters, yet it is littered with various ineffectual camera angles and at times redundant flashbacks that add nothing to the story, which apparently relates the rapport, romance and failure in the pathetic mid-life of a failed writer barely making ends meet as a doorman, that is, until he is fired. It does so as if such cerebral notions of life would pull the emotional triggers they do here between the writer, Harry Levine, played by Pacino, and his friend Jake Manheim, a photographer played by Jerry Orbach. The result is that, yes, some arresting moments and observations are produced, but they feel nonetheless forced. As director, Pacino brings to bear a periodically overwrought utilization of cuts in the dialogue scenes with Harry and Jake, and so perhaps it is not the words themselves, but the prevention of their taking priority that causes them to seem contrived.Harry visits Jake impulsively because he is desperate for money and Jake owes him some from a long time ago. He doesn't have the money, so the two engage in an all-night conversation about the aesthetics and troubles of their separate trades, past and present loves, and the directions their lives are taking. The play and film are set in New York City circa 1985. Why? I don't know.After years of withholding it, Pacino allowed it to be released as a part of a three-movie boxed set called Pacino: An Actor's Vision. Though I see why he might not have been happy with his work, the film stands as testimony that art-house and independent films need not be about overrefined individuals, for Harry and Jake are, from what I could tell, animatedly high-handed men who have merely outlived their functions in society. This is decidedly the case for Jake, but whether or not it is for Harry seems the question of the film.