Movie Media Fan's Top Five NYC Movies

Who doesn't love movies about New York? In a city that's been consistently evolving, it's always a pleasure to not just see a snapshot of a period of time in the Great Apple, but get lost into a world of that time period with a filmmaker and/or a film's characters. I was wandering around the city on my birthday recently thinking about how there are so many definitive 'lists' about what is considered the 'best' movies about New York. Scrolling through, all of the movies are so.....academic: Woody Allen's Manhattan. William Friedkin's The French Connection. Billy Wilder's The Apartment. 

I realized a list of one's favorite NYC films is going to be as personal as one's experience with the city. In a cultural metropolis of that size, no two people are going to have the same experience, right? The same goes for what glimpses of NYC past people choose to celebrate. So, ranked with the best for last, here are my top five films about New York that I'd love to share with you today.

5) Go Go Go, Marie Menken

Experimental filmmaker Marie Menken, who was the basis for the character Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, made this tiny film on her 8mm camera between 1962-1964. It's rumored that because of her large frame, Menken could hold the camera steady in the palm of her hand as she swept through the city. What's so wonderful about this silent 11 minutes is that it captures quite a few things about New York other films can't. First off, it's silence makes one focus simply on the rich images. The images rush through the camera because of the low frame rate in which it was shot. This gives the viewer that Go Go Go feeling of the city, as Menken takes her audience on a journey through city streets, a theater, and Coney Island to name a few. 

Also, the time period makes this film stand out because it is right on the cusp of when a gritty recession started to permeate the air of the city. Some shots illustrate this as the camera flies through more industrial neighborhoods, while other sections of the film show a more wealthy and post-war America version of the city with images similar to a 1950s Hollywood portrayal. My absolute favorite part of this film is the section shot in Coney Island, which parallels something out of the opening of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life. 

4) Fame, Alan Parker

An ensemble piece about kids at the New York High School of the Performing Arts from 1976-1980, the gritty recessed 70s version of the city of New York plays an important character in this piece. An NYC long gone, we see everything from characters eating cheap hot dogs in a run down Times Square with the old Coke sign, street fights as they exit the subway, the original Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Roxy Theater, and run down elevators leading into luxury apartments. Its portrayal reminds us of what type of city NYC was for a young person during this period, if not through the images than through the dialogue-- several characters in the film talk about going to the performing arts school because of their fear of violence in New York public schools at the time.

3) On the Town, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

MGM recycled many storylines in their musical department, and sexually charged servicemen on leave for one day in a big city like New York was one of them. They all stemmed from the 1945 Broadway musical version of On the Town with music by Leonard Bernstein. Ironically, a similar film Anchors Aweigh which takes place in Hollywood was released in 1945, 4 years before this film version of On the Town was released. This film gloriously captures 1940s New York in 3-Strip Technicolor, and while only four of the songs and a sliver of the original script of the Broadway show remain, the film's use of color and cinematography do a great job of making a post-war New York bounce to life and for 97 minutes the audience gets to join the sailors in the excitement of what visiting New York at that time would have been like. True, a lot of the film is shot on a Hollywood soundstage, but a great deal of footage exists in subways and outdoor locations as well. The opening number "New York, New York" is a great example of this.

2) Oliver & Company, George Scribner

How did an animated film about New York make this list?! Truthfully, all of the films on this list are artistic representations of the city, and this example is no more abstract of an example than the experimental film Go, Go, Go that I listed earlier. A 1988 take on Oliver Twist, featuring cats and dogs as the main characters, this movie always makes my heart smile. The animation and color choices bring 1980s New York to life and while it may be an animated movie, whenever I'm walking around midtown or the upper east side of the city, the images of this film always come to mind for me. Whether it's seeing the animated dogs and cats running through a construction site, hanging out in an alley, sitting in the window of a 5th Avenue apartment, or stealing hot dogs from a cart vendor, we as the audience are surrounded by the city as much as any of the other films on this list. I will always remember being in a theater at 4 years old and hearing Billy Joel sing "Why Should I Worry?" and strolling through the city. Watching it again recently, I found myself noticing how even though this was only 8 years after Fame, the New York shown here from 1988 is so different than the New York of 1980-- more wealth, less grit. And the hustle and bustle of the city can still be seen through the minimalist animation used throughout the movie.

1) One Fine Day, Michael Hoffman

My absolute favorite New York movie. It is funny, adorable, flawed, and too cute to care about these flaws. Two successful single parents of young children are forced to cooperate and coparent for the day when the kids miss their field trip and off we go into a day long adventure in Rudy Giuliani's 1996 New York. The zany antics take them all over the city: Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and the Lower East Side just to name a few. A suspension of disbelief needs to be adopted for anyone who knows New York geography, but once this happens, the viewer can sit back and enjoy this homage to a modern New York and fall in love with the characters as they fall in love with each other. Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney were at the top of their stardom when this film came out, and while the film was given lukewarm reviews by critics at the time and wasn't the box office hit that 20th Century Fox anticipated, the film is a cult classic today.

2017 Annual Dusk Til Dawn Horrorthon

Fall is such an interesting time to be in Los Angeles. We don't get the autumnal changing of leaves, different varieties of  corn andapples don't blossom into our supermarkets like they do in the midwest, and flannel shirts don't run rampant due to the lack of weather changing. We do however, take our Halloween season very seriously. The repertory film circuit is the perfect example. Screenings of horror classics run regularly throughout the month of October, and two theaters, the New Beverly Cinema and the Aero Theater (part of the American Cinematheque) do their own all night horror film marathons! The Aero's Dusk Til Dawn Horrorthon, now celebrating its 12th year, has become a staple in the rep film circuit, and how could anyone resist?

Seven films are run, this year's lineup being An American Werewolf in London, Popcorn, The Tingler, Hack-O-Lantern, Shocker, Brainscan, and Death Bed: The Bed that Eats. All films were presented on beautiful 35mm prints, with the exception of Death Bed, where only a DCP was available. When I say beautiful, I mean every print had minor scratches, rich color, and rich sound to ensure audience members would be popping out of their seat at just the right moments as the filmmakers had intended. American Werewolf in London, the print that showed the most wear, was a Polydor print from its European release and there are better prints available from Universal Studios (such as the one shown at UCLA in 2013 as a double feature with the 30th anniversary of Thriller) but it would still fall in the Good condition as the scratches were limited to the first few minutes of the reels. The Tingler had some splices during dialogue in it, but it was still as enjoyable as the others with very few vertical lines and a sharp black and white contrast from when it was printed. The print of Shocker was so great that it could have been used as a DVD transfer-- not a single scratch on it and comparable to what one would see on a DCP of a new film.

This year, to avoid tickets selling out in less than 10 minutes as they have in the past, the theater did NOT announce when tickets were going on sale, giving more people time to purchase. As the theater filled around 7:15 (festivities begin promptly at 7:30 to ensure people are let out at a reasonable hour), people pulled out their blankets, pillows, libations, and candy, getting ready to snuggle with some horror classics. Each film began with Grant, the master of ceremonies, energizing his audience, throwing candy and DVDs into the crowds, and bringing out classic characters that were created especially for the event. Candy Randy runs throughout the audience throwing fun size packs of candy, and Corn Gorn is a man in a Gorn Star Trek costume who runs around with a giant corn on the cobb.

Then begins the filler entertainment, which can be silly and a bit repetitive but was well reigned in this year. Silly commercials, videos of Star Trek and TJ Hooker, and a bizarre music video by porn star turned disco star Dennis Parker, for example, will run for about 20 minutes to get the viewer engaged with the screen for the next horror film. As the films run, the audience might scream, cheer, boo, or even heckle the screen during silly parts of films, such as Hack-O-Lantern, which was so terrible it was entertainingly humorous, or Popcorn, an over-the-top film that was about a horror-thon that goes awry when people start getting murdered. In this film, for example, when an ugly college kid tries to disgustingly flirt with the protagonist, a guy near the front of the theater yelled "Swipe Left!", a reference to the dating app Tinder, which sent the audience into hysterics. Instead of chiding the audience for this when it could potentially get out of hand, by the time Shocker started, a head volunteer yelled "No heckling this one guys, this is Wes Craven," which was prompted by applause by the same audience as they agreed the mood was about to change.

The staff at the Aero were so generous to open their home to audience members at a price that they could afford but by no means gave the theater a profit: a mere $25 not only paid for my admission for seven films in a row, but also ample amounts of pizza, candy, coffee, and other snacks. During slower parts of the films, volunteers came through the aisles offering "Soylent Pizza", which was really just Little Caeser's pizza, to patrons. When an unfortunate flood hit the concession stand a few hours into the marathon, the staff managed to call a company to fix the problem, and reopened concessions within a reasonable time. Leaving the theater it looked like a war zone, with wrappers, popcorn, cups, and lids tossed all along the seats and aisles, but everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. Thank you again to the American Cinematheque for giving its community of Angelenos an evening that they will always remember.

You can check out more events by the Aero and its sister theater the Egyptian at www.americancinematheque.com.