New York Cinema - Some Of My Favourites

New York Cinema - Some Of My Favourites

I'm just back from my first visit to New York and it's made quite an impression on me. Rather than write a review of y holiday, which would be really sad and full of hyperbole (much like my music reviews), I thought I'd put together a list of my favourite New York films. And I didn't just mean film that happens to be set in New York, I meant a film in which New York is integral to the film in terms of the buildings, the size, the scale and the people. I hope you find something interesting to watch in these.

Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese, 1976

Scorsese's seminal film follows DeNiro's damaged Vietnam vet as he wages a personal crusade to 'wash the scum off the streets'. Far from being a one-man-army shoot-'em-up, this is a haunting study of loneliness and broken masculinity in the midst of a teeming endless metropolis.

Kids – Larry Clark, 1995

Known as the film that launched Rosario Dawson's career, Larry David created this cinema verite micro-budget film which warns of the dangers of AIDS. Plot-wise, though, it follows a day in the life of some bored New York teens, who care about nothing but sex and getting high. Featuring extremely frank discussions of sex and a disturbing ending where nothing it resolved, this depiction of the city is so realistic, you can almost feel the sweltering heat.

Do The Right Thing – Spike Lee, 1989

Spike Lee is unfairly pigeonholed as a 'Black Filmmaker' or a 'New York Filmmaker' when he should really be known simply as a great filmmaker. This, his calling card, depicts a fateful day in the life of a Brooklyn neighbourhood where Italian- and African-American communities clash. One of those films where you get to hang out with the characters rather than follow a plot, this simmers and then boils over. Features a discussion on 'Prince vs. Bruce' musical preferences, a character called Senor Love Daddy and dialogue like “God bless the left nipple...”. Timeless, important and unassailably cool.

The French Connection – William Friedkin, 1971

Always the realist, William Friedkin's made this wonderfully grungy depiction of New York detectives taking on a heroin ring. While Gene Hackman's brutal 'Popeye' Doyle is the memorable character, Friedkin shoots the city as such a festering mess it's almost a character itself: subways, bars, disused buildings, cramped apartments all play their part. The car-vs-train chase is still among the best in cinema history and only made so because of the location.

Manhattan – Woody Allen, 1979

Annie Hall is probably a better film but here, Allen's love for his city is most prominent. Typically Allen, this is all about intellectuals in crisis, both romantic and bittersweet, all about the failings an impulses of love. He's covered the subject many times but rarely this well, with the city (and Gershwin soundtrack), photographed in beautiful black and white, forming the perfect backdrop. That shot of the couple on the park bench overlooking the bridge sums it all up.

Summer Of Sam – Spike Lee, 1999

I wasn't going to feature any director twice on this list, but Lee deserves it with this tale of cultures clashing in an Italian-American neighbourhood, set against the backdrop of the 1977 'Son Of Sam' murders by David Berkowitz. A serial killer film that doesn't care about the serial killer, this is all about characters dealing with how their Catholic upbringing is incompatible with their human desires, and how fear of an unknown 'other' (in this case, Adrian Brody's punk rocker) can lead people down bad paths and tear a community apart.

Once Upon A Time In America – Sergio Leone, 1984

Leone didn't make many films, and most of them were Westerns. This, his final film after the stress of studio interference retired him, is a beautiful, hideous, and complex depiction of New York gangsters. Covering decades and told out of sequence in a series of memories, friendship and betrayal are the man themes, but Leone's amazing photography of New York is what you remember it for.

Cloverfield – Matt Reeves, 2008

A monster movie that is not King Kong nor Godzilla, and certainly not Sharknado 2? The post-9/11 New York city is absolutely key to the drama, tension and threat here: the ease with which the largely unseen monster takes over the city is given new perspective once you've seen the size of New York. When New York buildings and monuments are destroyed in films these days, the shock is perhaps greater than it once was, and the characters' journey would not be the same were it set in any other place.