The best Los Angeles movies of all time

Los Feliz housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into killing her husband—they stage his death on the train to Palo Alto—and then things get dirty. Directing one of the shadiest film noirs ever made, Billy Wilder bathes his femme fatale in pitch-black sunlight and bad intentions.—Stephen Garrett

Terence Stamp plays a rugged Brit out of water, an ex-con come to L.A. to avenge his daughter’s death in Steven Soderbergh’s gloriously time-jumbled thriller. The urban environs are filmed like an existential playground, and costar Luis Guzmán hilariously sums up the town’s hazy climate: “You could see the sea out there, if you could see it.”—Keith Uhlich

Julianne Moore is an affluent San Fernando Valley housewife who becomes allergic to her environment—literally and figuratively—in Todd Haynes’s unsettling character study. The threat of illness is everywhere for this silver-spoon suburbanite who seems to be adversely reacting to everything from the omnipresent Los Angeles smog to her own banal lifestyle. Haynes’s tour de force speaks brilliantly to L.A.’s anxiety-inducing influence.—Keith Uhlich

Quentin Tarantino’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch adds the perfect sense of lived-in verisimilitude by grounding it in the less-than-glamorous South Bay region. Shooting in the area’s actual dive bars and bail-bond offices, the film offers the kind of pulp-perfect L.A. where career criminals hold court and desperate working-class stiffs concoct escape plans.—David Fear

Because it’s made up almost entirely of clips from other movies, you’re never going to be able to rent or purchase this seminal study of the city’s onscreen presence (assembled by CalArts film theorist Thom Andersen). But if you ever hear of a public screening, clear your schedule: The connections are humorous, with nods to everything from Female (1933) to Swordfish (2001).—Joshua Rothkopf

Dan Gilroy’s dazzling directorial debut transforms the gory horrors of the nightly news into a playground for a closet psycho, expertly portrayed by a hollowed-out Jake Gyllenhaal. We’re in the presence of a new Travis Bickle, one who haunts the seedy diners on Sepulveda, and plots his excursions from an apartment in Echo Park.—Joshua Rothkopf

Truthfully, it takes place in Michael Mann country: a cool urban landscape of postmodern interiors bathed in gunmetal-blue twilight. (Few filmmakers have staked out a terrain as stylishly.) That said, the movie’s heist centerpiece, spilling out violently onto downtown Flower Street, is undeniably Los Angeles, and one of Hollywood’s finest bits of mayhem.—Joshua Rothkopf

One is the loneliest number in Paul Thomas Anderson’s kaleidoscopic fever dream of Valley alienation. A former child prodigy (William H. Macy), a simpleminded cop (John C. Reilly), a despondent trophy wife (Julianne Moore) and a misogynistic motivational speaker (Tom Cruise) are among the emotionally stunted. Respect the cock—so long as it’s not raining frogs.—Stephen Garrett

Set in an unglamorous stretch of Hollywood, with its sun-faded donut shops, mini-mall laundromats and fleabag motels, Sean Baker’s mesmerizing feature opens like a shot of indie adrenaline and doesn’t let up. Filmed completely on an iPhone, this day-in-the-life of two trans hustlers (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s fresh-out-of-jail firecracker, Mya Taylor’s voice of reason) is the kind of fresh modern story Tinseltown just doesn’t tell—even though it’s happening right in its backyard.—Tim Lowery

Something tells us that Paul Thomas Anderson’s turn-of-the-’70s stoner odyssey will rise in estimation over the years. There’s simply nothing like it, certainly not from its evolving director, riding the herky-jerky rhythms of “unfilmable” novelist Thomas Pynchon and arriving at something gloriously weird and wonky.—Joshua Rothkopf

“The more you drive, the less intelligent you are,” goes a line of wisdom: Alex Cox’s brilliantly bonkers debut is a punk-tinged riff on aliens, generic supermarket products, Scientology, G-men and jaded youth. Its Los Angeles is a town where the automobile is king, but car repossessors rule. The casual lunacy is intoxicating, with a blasé acceptance of anarchy that epitomizes L.A. cool.—Stephen Garrett

Howard Hawks’s sizzling adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s mystery novel casts Humphrey Bogart as private dick Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the alluring dame who assists him. More about atmosphere than plot (and shot entirely on the Warner Bros. back lot), this quintessential noir turns L.A. into an immersive, shadowy dreamscape filled with gun-toting mystery men and goggle-eyed femme fatales.—Keith Uhlich

French filmmaker Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) brought his inimitable romantic sensibility stateside with this tale of a troubled architect (Gary Lockwood) who has a fateful meeting with an erotic model (Anouk Aimée, reprising her role from the director’s Lola). Lockwood wanders gauzy Dockweiler Beach with mesmeric aimlessness, the perfect complement to his character’s melancholy longing.—Keith Uhlich

Horndog Beverly Hills hairdresser George (Warren Beatty) frantically motorcycles between a girlfriend (Goldie Hawn), a lover (Lee Grant) and an ex (Julie Christie) on the day that California’s Richard Nixon is elected President. Hippie auteur Hal Ashby and scribe Robert Towne turned a jaundiced eye to the flameout of the sexual revolution.—Stephen Garrett

Both a gorgeous throwback to ’50s Hollywood tough guys and a piercing comment on the post–Rodney King ’90s, Curtis Hanson’s tightly wound cop drama runs on the tension between L.A.’s dream-factory mechanics and the sordid reality. It’s a place where one could run into a hooker at the Formosa Cafe who looks like Lana Turner—or into the real Turner herself.—David Fear

Amy Heckerling’s totally awesome teen comedy is supposed to offer an investigative eye into youth culture at the dawn of the ’80s: writer Cameron Crowe famously went undercover at a high school to write the book that inspired the movie. But while its insights are universal (teenagers are horny and desperate to grow up!), the details are quintessentially Californian. Ridgemont High doesn’t exist, but the Sherman Oaks Galleria – the nucleus of Valley teen interaction – sure does. And while surfer burnout Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) may seem like a zonked-out cartoon character to outsiders, it’s fair to say he’s real, too. —Matthew Singer

When Brian De Palma decided to update Rear Window, he went sky-high: to the Hollywood Hills’ octagonal Chemosphere, an icon of architectural Modernism. In addition to this ominous bachelor pad, the movie visits a surfeit of L.A. landmarks (many of them now gone), such as the beloved Tail o’ the Pup hot-dog stand, the swank Rodeo Collection mall and Tower Records.—Joshua Rothkopf

The subject of this crown jewel of Hollywood musicals is, unsurprisingly, Tinseltown itself. Gene Kelly plays a silent-movie star making an uneasy transition to sound. His failed screen test is a classic comedy set piece, but it’s the giddy, astonishing musical numbers—especially the peerless title love ballad, shot on a two-block-long back-lot set—that will forever mark this as one of La-La Land’s creative peaks.—Keith Uhlich

Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller (starring Ryan Gosling as a stoic stick man) is a throwback to the neon-lit loner cinema of the 1980s, especially the brooding action pictures of Walter Hill. Refn gets the situational details pitch-perfect, from the low-rent body shops and eateries of less-glamorous L.A. to that most recognizable of local activities: late-night cruising.—Joshua Rothkopf

In the Coen brothers’ surreal 1940s-set comedy, an Odets-like East Coast playwright reluctantly goes West for a potentially lucrative screenwriting gig (“a wrestling picture!”) and gets tangled up in mystery, murder and writer’s block. The satire cuts deep: From lowest-common-denominator studio moguls to cynically tough-talking gals to naively idealistic artistes, no California type is let off easy.—Keith Uhlich

The neighborhood of Watts has never been as poetically rendered as it is in Charles Burnett’s iconic indie. Though its shots of the area’s riot-scarred streets double as a historical document of the African-American district, it’s the way Burnett restores dignity to the community that gives this movie its staying power.—David Fear

South Central native and USC grad John Singleton gives his own soul-crushing update to the PG-rated delinquency of white-bread classics like American Graffiti. In this sobering coming-of-age film, cruising doesn’t lead to pickups but to hit jobs, and getting into college isn’t as important as getting out of Compton alive.—Stephen Garrett

In LA, if the Big One doesn’t get you, the traffic will. No other city could have provided the backdrop and the playground for Jan de Bont’s insanely fun bomb-on-a-bus flick. Where else is both sprawling and congested enough to make the concept of a city bus strapped with an explosive that will detonate if the odometer dips below 50mph instantly and consistently hair-raising? It’s the only place where a cop might look like Keanu Reeves and someone resembling Sandra Bullock might plausibly take public transport.—Matthew Singer

Teen angst finds its charter mascot as James Dean pouts through a switchblade duel outside Griffith Observatory. Later, a tragic game of chicken at fictitious Millertown bluff (shot near Palos Verdes) puts him on the lam with crush Natalie Wood and troubled Sal Mineo. Only in L.A. could a hunk be a loner.—Stephen Garrett

Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel, an essential piece of L.A. fiction, deserves a movie version more faithful than this one, which emphasizes glamour over despair. Still, the well-chosen locations—from Bel Air to Malibu—capture the city well, and Tinseltown’s favorite comeback kid, Robert Downey Jr., announces himself as a major talent.—Joshua Rothkopf

Accidental detective Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) is hired to find a wily white woman (Jennifer Beals), but is sucked into a world of corrupt politicians and dirty murders. Novelist Walter Mosley’s sly private eye gets superb big-screen treatment in this sumptuous look at the racial dynamics percolating in 1948 Los Angeles.—Stephen Garrett 

The short-lived swing revival of the late ’90s is one of those fads that seemed dorky upon arrival, but watching the era-defining indie comedy that preceded its national breakout, you get why it caught on: in LA, anyway, it looked like a totally hip scene, man. And it was: as the movie shows, retro-cool night spots like The Derby and The Dresden allowed the most struggling of actors to cosplay as the Rat Pack, even if they’d spent the earlier part of the night sitting around a shitty apartment eating pizza and making video-game Wayne Gretzky’s head bleed. —Matthew Singer

Deceptively shallow but ultimately fascinating, Sofia Coppola’s crime drama doesn’t quite take the side of the real-life teen thieves who raided the Hollywood Hills homes of Paris Hilton, Megan Fox and others. But it doesn’t depict them as monsters, either—or anything worse than the nincompoops that bored kids can often be—and that’s provocative. Fun fact: Hilton let the crew shoot scenes at her actual pad on Clerendon Road.—Joshua Rothkopf

The poet of the San Fernando Valley, Paul Thomas Anderson, set his delirious love story amid the Chatsworth area’s industrial warehouses and ticky-tacky apartment complexes—which, strangely, seem like the most romantic places on earth when turned into backdrops for Adam Sandler and Emily Watson’s swooning soulmate connection.—David Fear

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York City cop, so already he’s a fish out of water. But when his estranged wife and others are taken hostage at the top of the sleek “Nakatomi Plaza” building (the recently completed headquarters of Twentieth Century Fox), our hero springs into action with honed urban instincts. A classic Hollywood action picture, it also evokes the catty maelstrom of L.A. media.—Joshua Rothkopf

Not a skewering of the archetypical Valley girl so much as an affectionate portrait of a spoiled Beverly Hills do-gooder, Amy Heckerling’s modernization of Jane Austen’s Emma swaddles itself in shallowness, until the final result is warmth. Mall culture at the Westside Pavilion is captured, as is a scary driver’s-ed scene on the freeway.—Joshua Rothkopf

This West Coast cousin to director William Friedkin’s French Connection (with even sleazier cops) takes us on a vivid, Wang Chung–scored tour of the L.A. underground. Memorable set pieces abound, from a terrorist attack at the Beverly Hilton to a wrong-way car chase along the Terminal Island Freeway.—Keith Uhlich

The awful cult auteur Edward D. Wood Jr. inspired Tim Burton to make his most humane and adult film, filled with keen views of the Pantages Theatre and seedy Hollywood hangouts like Boardner’s. Most evocative of L.A., though, is the sad specter of Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), the first celebrity to publicly enter rehab.—Joshua Rothkopf

The City of Angels as a land of enchantment? Steve Martin wrote and starred in this whimsical love letter to his adopted hometown, where highway signs flash personal advice, French restaurants are named L’Idiot, and museumgoers wear roller skates. Best of all: Quintessential Gotham girl Sarah Jessica Parker plays vivacious Venice bunny SanDeE*. (Yes, she insists on that punctuation.)—Stephen Garrett

There’s enjoyable humor (and beautiful acting) as brow-furrowed, rhyme-scribbling teen Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr., Cube’s real son), shrewd drug dealer Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (Jason Mitchell) and frustrated DJ Andre (Corey Hawkins as the future Dr. Dre) come together in the studio, hatch N.W.A. and set off on an incendiary path. Outside, director F. Gary Gray captures the L.A. riots and even that old Tower Records sign on Sunset.—Joshua Rothkopf

Many Paul Thomas Anderson movies are love letters to the greater Los Angeles area of his youth – five of them are on this list – but this is his Valentine’s Day card: a freewheeling romcom about kids running wild through the San Fernando Valley circa 1973. It’s positively giddy in its depiction of young love – or at least, youthful infatuation – and unabashed in its nostalgia: the movie is named after a defunct SoCal record store chain that never factors into the film itself. Look out for a demonically intense Bradley Cooper as LA scenester and movie producer Jon Peters, a personality as big as Laurel Canyon.—Matthew Singer

Virginal college grad Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) was educated on the East Coast, but it’s in L.A. that he gets schooled in the real world. Beverly Hills MILF Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) tutors him at the Taft—the old Ambassador Hotel—and upends a generation’s definition of the California girl.—Stephen Garrett

A profoundly influential 1950s fear film, this is the one about giant radioactive ants laying waste to the human population. The gargantuan pests are spawned in New Mexico’s A-bomb deserts, but make their way to the sewers of L.A., where soldiers descend (via the Los Angeles River spillway) to do fiery battle.—Joshua Rothkopf 

The definitive record of a crucial moment in the city’s musical history, this doc puts you right where the action was, from the dingy church where X practiced to the mosh pit at a Germs show at the Masque. This is L.A. punk, year zero, in all its uncut glory—an ’80s time capsule that doubles as a note from the California underground.—David Fear

Rogue narc-squad chief Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) straddles law enforcement and street justice to ferment his own brew of swaggering vigilantism and wet-beak opportunism, while undercover rookie Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) watches mortified, even as his sleazy superior slips him a PCP-laced joint. The chronically maligned LAPD never looked so demonic (at the movies, at least).—Stephen Garrett

Kent MacKenzie’s near-forgotten fugue for the urbanized Native American is a heartbreaking look at the down-and-out denizens of now-razed Bunker Hill, an ethnic enclave and de facto reservation within the city limits. Luscious black-and-white cinematography (including views of the beloved Angels Flight funicular railway) impart a noir sheen to the nocturnal high jinks and existential dilapidation.—Stephen Garrett

From Reseda’s disco palaces to the hot-tub-adorned backyards of West Covina and Van Nuys, Paul Thomas Anderson’s supercharged portrait of the porn industry boasts an enviable precision with local details. Dirk Diggler’s rise and fall is a distinctly L.A. tale of hedonistic reinvention—an X-rated echo of the mainstream movie business playing out just to the south.—Joshua Rothkopf

John Schlesinger’s surreal adaptation of Nathanael West’s bitter novel turns “Hollywoodland” into a Depression-era hellscape, epitomized by the desperate residents of the San Bernardino Arms: a broken-down vaudevillian, a two-bit actress and a simple man on the edge of psychosis. The most horrifying scene is an apocalyptic movie premiere set at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.—Stephen Garrett

New Yorker Noah Baumbach’s movie about a fortysomething failure may seem like it’s marinating in East Coast haterade. But its blindingly bright yet perpetually smoggy L.A. perfectly mirrors the mind-set of Ben Stiller’s mopey protagonist; few movies have better captured how this beautiful city can seem like one big storm cloud to its losers.—David Fear

As viewed from Elysian Park, Los Angeles is obliterated in nuclear fire, in one of James Cameron’s most nightmarish sequences—Hollywood blockbusting at its darkest. But the director recaptures some municipal goodwill via a landmark chase scene set in the cement waterway of the L.A. River.—Joshua Rothkopf

Squeaky-clean SoCal teen Sandra Dee hits the beach, and America gets its first good look at Malibu’s surfer culture. This adolescent rom-com didn’t just inspire a wave of fun-in-the-sun movies; it would serve as an advertisement for L.A.’s world of tanned bodies and good vibrations.—David Fear