25 Best Movies Set In Los Angeles
In honor of Steve Martin's "L.A. Story," which debuted 25 years ago this week (on February 8, 1991), here are 25 movies about Los Angeles that you need to see.
'Beverly Hills Cop' (1984)
It's instructive to see Beverly Hills through the eyes of outsider Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy). The Detroit cop immediately sees past the facade of power, money, manners, and culture to the sordid secrets beneath the surface. And he also immediately figures out how to game the system to his advantage. There's actually a surprising amount of subtle social satire going on in this action comedy.
'Blade Runner' (1982)
Apparently, this is what L.A. Is going to look like in three years. Ridley Scott's influential nightmare vision of Los Angeles in 2019 depicts a "Metropolis"-like city of rich people living like pharaohs in sky-high pyramids while the dark, rain-slick streets teem with poor, mostly immigrant working people. Giant neon advertising is omnipresent and inescapable. Hmm, flying vehicles aside, maybe Scott wasn't that far off.
'The Long Goodbye' (1973)
Robert Altman created the definitive L.A. movie of the woozy 1970s by taking a fish-out-of-water approach. Elliott Gould plays Raymond Chandler's classic sleuth Philip Marlowe as a visitor from the 1940s, with an obsolete chivalric code, set adrift in the then-contemporary L.A. of hedonists, hippies, and hustlers.
'The Big Lebowski' (1998)
If "The Long Goodbye" places an anachronistic 1940s noir detective in stoned 1970s L.A., then the Coen brothers' cult fave puts an anachronistic 1970s stoner sleuth in an even weirder 1990s L.A. Jeff Bridges' aging slacker may be the ultimate Los Angeles hero, which is why, two decades later, The Dude still abides.
'Boogie Nights' (1997)
Paul Thomas Anderson staked his claim as the bard of his native San Fernando Valley -- and the heir to Robert Altman -- with this sprawling, multi-character saga of the glory days of the porn industry.
'Boyz N the Hood' (1991)
Presenting his hometown of South Central on screen in a way never before seen in a mainstream studio film, John Singleton paints an alternately exhilarating and heartbreaking portrait of a neighborhood under siege, both by gang violence and by an occupying army of police.
'Chinatown' (1974)
Screenwriter Robert Towne didn't just revitalize the film noir with this sun-drenched entry; he also gave a valuable history lesson in the politics of water in this drought-plagued city. In his tale of a 1930s detective (Jack Nicholson) overwhelmed by a vast conspiracy among the power elite of a city suffering growing pains, Towne also created the template for similar future films set in noir-era Los Angeles.
'Clueless' (1995)
13 years after making one of the definitive movies about San Fernando Valley teen mall culture with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," Amy Heckerling directed her satirical eye southward to Beverly Hills. If nothing else, we have "Clueless" to thank for the maxim that every place in Los Angeles is 20 minutes away from every other place.
'Collateral' (2004)
Los Angeles at night looks like an entirely different world, with its noir-ish neon, wet streets, and the sleek, gleaming surfaces of cars cruising the boulevards and alleys toward illicit destinations. No one has made the city look better than Michael Mann in this crisp, pioneering, digitally shot crime drama that finds silver-haired assassin Tom Cruise forcing cabbie Jamie Foxx to shuttle him all over the city. Seldom has a Los Angeles so teeming with people seemed more isolating and lonesome.
'Day of the Locust' (1975)
"Midnight Cowboy" director John Schlesinger brings Nathanael West's novel of a 1930s Hollywood apocalypse faithfully to life. Symbol of 1970s excess Karen Black and symbol of 1970s perversity Donald Sutherland prove perfectly at home among West's mob of sour, frustrated self-deluding L.A. dreamers.
'Double Indemnity' (1944)
Want to see what L.A. looked like in 1944, before the Interstates? Check out this classic proto-noir, showing off the city in all its sunny glory as sultry, sunglasses-sporting Barbara Stanwyck lures hapless Fred MacMurray into a web of adultery, insurance fraud, and murder.
'Drive' (2011)
From the gut-rattling synth score to the sickly neon hues, "Drive" takes audiences on a violent and meditative tour of the city -- all through the 1000-yard-stare of Ryan Gosling's stunt car driver-turned-wheelman. The only thing we love more than the soundtrack and the visuals is Gosling's scorpion jacket.
'Heat' (1995)
From Robert De Niro's lonely Malibu pad to that famous late-night coffee shop where he meets Al Pacino, from the celebrated downtown shootout to the climactic chase at LAX, Michael Mann's epic crime drama definitely makes the L.A. cityscape into a central character.
'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' (2005)
Downtown L.A. often gets short shrift, but a number of recent movies have made vivid use of the neighborhood, especially this Robert Downey Jr.-Val Kilmer detective comedy, which features numerous scenes at the Standard Hotel and the surrounding streets and alleys. Of course, there's also plenty of action at more typically-L.A. waterfront locations in Venice, Santa Monica, and Long Beach.
'L.A. Confidential' (1997)
Based on a novel by the bard of Los Angeles crime sagas, James Ellroy, this may be the greatest L.A. movie ever. Set in the early 1950s, it's the story of three detectives (Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and Guy Pearce) who independently stumble upon the same vast, overwhelming, "Chinatown"-like conspiracy. In a city on the brink of massive physical changes wrought by the freeways, the story maps connections linking Hollywood, the city's power brokers, organized crime, police corruption, the scandal-sheet media, and various Angelenos from a variety of neighborhoods and backgrounds. Everything people love and hate about the city is here on vivid display.
'L.A. Story' (1991)
Steve Martin's magical-realist romantic comedy, in which an electronic freeway sign plays Cupid to a lovelorn weatherman (Martin) in a city with no weather worth reporting, is a backhanded valentine to the Texas-born comedian's adopted hometown. Bonus points for giving Sarah Jessica Parker her star-making role as the most stereotypical trend-chasing, flaky Angeleno ever.
'Laurel Canyon' (2002)
Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale play a square couple who get ensnared in his music-producer mom's (Frances McDormand) web of sex, swimming pools, and songcraft.
'Magnolia' (1999)
Even more than "Boogie Nights," this is Paul Thomas Anderson's grand, visionary, Altmanesque epic about the San Fernando Valley he grew up in. An enormous cast of outcasts, from Tom Cruise's bitter pick-up guru to Julianne Moore's guilty trophy wife, all are groping blindly in search of human connection.
'Mi Vida Loca' (1993)
Allison Anders' melodrama takes a sociological peek at the lives of an underdocumented subculture -- that of Latina girl gangs in the pre-gentrified neighborhood of Echo Park. Mixing professional actresses with colorful locals, Anders offers a look at an L.A. seldom captured on film.
'Mulholland Drive' (2001)
A typically David Lynchian blend of romantic longing, nostalgia, surrealism, violence, and music, it's all in the service of the story of a perky aspiring starlet (Naomi Watts), whose narrative of danger, forbidden love, and rewarded talent turns out to be the escapist fantasy of a bitter, failed nobody. In real life, the movie did make Watts a star, so score one for the Hollywood dream.
'The Player' (1992)
After more than a decade in the Hollywood wilderness, Altman came back with a vengeance to bite the Hollywood hand that fed him. It's as funny and bitter a portrait of Hollywood as any movie this side of "Sunset Blvd." The 60 or so cameos by celebrities playing themselves are a nice touch.
'Repo Man' (1984)
At the center of this wry sci-if satire is Emilio Estevez (in his finest performance) as a disaffected punk searching for a code to believe in, and the majestic Harry Dean Stanton as the unlikely mentor who helps him fumble his way toward meaning and purpose in this sci-fi comedy drama.
'Sunset Blvd.' (1950)
Long before the lurid "E! True Hollywood Story" series, there was "Sunset Boulevard" -- maybe the darkest, most cynical movie ever made about what Hollywood is really like.
'Speed' (1994)
The Keanu Reeves-Sandra Bullock classic is not just an action movie about a runaway bus (and later, a runaway subway car). It's a cautionary tale about the dangers of public transportation in a Los Angeles whose citizens would much rather rely on their own cars.
'Training Day' (2001)
Denzel Washington won an Oscar for his towering performance as a charismatic, corrupt cop who's the terror of L.A.'s most desperate streets. Ethan Hawke is his naive new partner, who nearly loses himself in his effort to determine where the moral high ground is in Washington's murky world.
