Stephen Garrett

Despite being the home of Hollywood, ‘LA movies’ seem less exalted as a subgenre than ‘New York movies’, or London movies, or Paris movies, or Rome movies. Maybe it just seems a bit too meta, or perhaps it’s because the city occupies such a polarising spot in the collective consciousness. (To love Los Angeles is to hate it, and to hate it is to really, really hate it.) In any case, the list of truly great LA movies is a bit tighter than those taking place in other large metropolises. But those films cover a lot of ground, from dramas set in the showbiz world to gritty thrillers depicting the inner city, fizzy-headed musical comedies to shadowy noirs that make the most of that twinkling, imposing skyline. Here’s our ranking of the 57 best Los Angeles movies of all-time. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies ever made.📽️ The best LA movie theaters to visit.🌕 LA’s best outdoor movies to see this summer.

Multiple rapes. Infanticide. Aboriginal strange fruit. You’ve been warned. Brutal is too soft a word to describe ‘The Nightingale’, a brilliantly harrowing indictment of white male oppression set in British-ruled Australia circa 1825. If you thought Jennifer Kent pulled no punches in her terrifying supernatural debut ‘The Babadook’, brace yourself for the existential evil that lurks in the hearts of men – not figures out of a children’s storybook but a keenly observed sense of historical place. Newlywed mother Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi of ‘Game of Thrones’, hypnotically fierce), a convicted Irish street urchin sent to a Tasmanian penal colony, sings for randy, rum-soaked soldiers when she’s not suffering derision as a scullery maid. The local sadistic commander, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), helplessly infatuated with Clare, taunts her with the promise of freedom along with his special brand of toxic, self-loathing abuse. After learning that his only chance at promotion is a four-day trek to personally petition his superiors, Hawkins spitefully obliterates any chance of Clare’s happiness by attacking her and her family. The viciousness is off the charts. Left for dead, Clare is transformed into an avenging angel, enlisting a shrewd Tasmanian tracker named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr, sly and spiky) to help her hunt down Hawkins and his crew. And so begins a dark journey into the unmapped wilds of Van Diemen’s Land, where white devils plunder with impunity while a deva