GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

elenahendi When I see the movie so many feelings and ideas filled my mind. is one of great acting ever saw. but not only acting make the film fabulous, and script too. is about, life about art, about how long way must take to rise to know who you are. is not only about dream, i think is not about dreams at all i think is about the day when you wake up and see your life is somewhere behind you, and can't be reach it. is about one "me" with 2 face, so different in way the so compatibility! i think is about creations when you are full with so many things expected to be shared and somehow you can find the way to share. if was only about the common things used, like dreams, hopes love, friendship, maybe not give in to me that feelings but is much more, maybe is more after all about the felling to impotency when you have resorts. only think is i can talk about movie, about every word from this movie hours. every scene open so many possibility in way how can be receipted

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.

Cosmoeticadotcom Watching the 2000 film, Chinese Coffee, starring and directed by Al Pacino, I smiled because, yet again a film proved to me the utter primacy of the written word over the moving image, even in an art form that would not exist without pictures. The film is based upon a play written by Ira Lewis, who did the screenplay as well, and, given the superb and realistic dialogue uttered by the two main characters, Harry Levine (Pacino) and Jake Manheim (Jerry Orbach), the play seems likely to be a great one.Yet, the filmic aspects of the movie are almost nil. Pacino's direction is not awful, merely bad. In so many ways this film would have been much better had it followed the My Dinner With Andre route. Proof? I can still visualize the scene in the Louis Malle film where Andre tells Wally about being buried alive in the Polish woods. So what? Well, the scene was never filmed, merely described to the viewer via the words of Andre Gregory to Wallace Shawn. Now, contrast that with the numerous pointless camera angles and even pointless flashbacks that add nothing to this film, and the difference is clear. Even worse is the sometimes frenetic use of cuts that Pacino employs whenever Harry and Jake speak. We do not need to see close-ups for every syllable. Long shots that captured their whole body, and even shots from behind, where tone and inflection could take primacy, would have been a welcome addition. Pacino should have relied more on cinematographer Frank Prinzi's experience to dictate how the scenes would be filmed. The film's score, by Elmer Bernstein, is adequate- not too distracting nor too telegraphic. The low budget film also fails when it tries to show, in flashbacks, the younger pair of men, with Pacino sporting a bad wig and Orbach's hair atrociously dyed. The scenes where Pacino's Harry is supposed to be only 42 fail, as Pacino, then 60, is just far too old and dissipated- wig notwithstanding, to pull off the eighteen year old age difference convincingly….Chinese Coffee is proof that art house films need not be about effete individuals, for Harry and Jake are, if nothing else, vibrant and opinionated men who have simply outlived their utility in the world; or so it seems. This is clearly true for Jake, but whether or not it is for Harry is the crux of the film. Would that more films were based upon works that proved themselves literarily, with realistically drawn characters, rather than works based upon video games, and American cinema might hearken back to its Golden Age in the 1970s, the period that saw the rise of Al Pacino and his generation of actors. Circularity can be a good thing, no?