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Men at Lunch

Play trailer Poster for Men at Lunch Released Sep 20, 2013 1h 11m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
38% Tomatometer 13 Reviews 39% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
Filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin traces the history of a photograph showing 11 construction workers eating lunch perched on an I-beam over Manhattan.

Critics Reviews

View All (13) Critics Reviews
Leonard Maltin leonardmaltin.com Few New York City photos are as familiar or evocative as the one that inspired the documentary "Men At Lunch." Oct 4, 2013 Full Review Inkoo Kang Los Angeles Times Regrettably, "Men at Lunch" obsesses over disappearing ghosts instead of the records we already have and the history we should know. Rated: 2.5/5 Oct 3, 2013 Full Review Miriam Bale New York Times The film feels meandering. Not only does it offer a jumble of ideas that aren't followed through, but it's also structured oddly. Rated: 2/5 Sep 19, 2013 Full Review Pat Padua Spectrum Culture Relies too much on blarney and not enough on the rich history of New York and photography. Rated: 2/5 Aug 31, 2018 Full Review Brent Simon Shared Darkness Men at Lunch loses sight of its lede and fumbles away viewer interest. The photo itself says more than this muddled documentary. Rated: C- Oct 14, 2013 Full Review Nathalie Atkinson National Post Whether it merits a feature-length documentary or a slot on PBS, I'm not sure. Apr 18, 2013 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (6) audience reviews
Audience Member too much repetition. more research, less guesswork. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Men At Lunch is one of interesting documentaries I have ever watched. It's history that we all should respect. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Loved it! Foreigners arent just foreigners they do work, are creative and they build and work their asses of as usual! Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member http://www.clevelandmovieblog.com/2014/01/men-at-lunch-january-8th-at-cleveland.html Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review walter m For the record, watching a documentary try and describe New York City while watching it within the city limits is sort of odd but at least we get said descriptions in the dulcet tones of Fionnula Flanagan in the documentary "Men at Lunch." And as maddeningly vague as it is with the identities of the 11 men photographed having lunch on September 20, 1932(two definite and two more probables from Ireland) 800 feet above the ground at the construction site of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, that's not really the point here.(There is a valuable reminder here of the photographers who were also risking life and limb to get those photos, however staged they might have been.) What the documentary is really after and does so in fine form is to salute the work and lives of all of the anonymous ironworkers who still put their lives on the line everyday to build the city.(Of the two Irish workers identified, one died back in Ireland at a ripe old age, the other one not so much in New York City.) So, after the movie was over and I was walking south down Sixth Avenue, I tipped my hat towards the new One World Trade Center and all the workers there. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member By indulging (at length) the fantasies of participants who claim connections to the iconic photograph; whether by descent, or heritage, or - most tenuously - by being photographer for a current skyscraper project, the movie undermines the value it could have found by taking a different and deeper approach. Cut to half an hour this might be good filler for The History Channel. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Men at Lunch

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Movie Info

Synopsis Filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin traces the history of a photograph showing 11 construction workers eating lunch perched on an I-beam over Manhattan.
Director
Seán Ó Cualáin
Producer
Eamonn Cualáin
Distributor
First Run
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Sep 20, 2013, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 10, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$2.3K
Runtime
1h 11m