Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

They described it here as a feelgood film. It is not.

I was initially kinda angry when I found out this wasn't a real documentary. I had this weird emotional dump. It's hard to describe but I felt cheated in a way.

Thankfully though it also works as a regular narrative film, so I've gotten past them feelings and tried judging it based on that. A fictional film with mostly non-actors. And by them standards, it's still very very good. One of the best of the year actually. Which kinda begs the question, why did they even feel the need to try to sell it as a doc in the first place?

I found this film very believable and as a former bartender I know many people who could have been characters in a place like this. The film builds slowly in mosaic fashion and creates a multi-dimensional depiction of a so called "third place" that has real value in our increasingly corporate homogenized world. I really liked the film.

Sure it was believable and entertaining, but finding out afterwards that it wasn't a real documentary, changed the way I viewed it. For better or worse.

From all the reviews I'm reading... it's sounds like a movie version of an episode he did to get smoking back into bars.