Entertainment For Lively Minds
What are the best New York films?
Posted by Chris G on 5 July 2010 - 9:53pm.
A friend of mine tutors on a Architecture course and has a rather old fashion idea that rounded people make better architects. To this end she likes to introduce students to a wider range of influences etc . This is especially true when they looking at the buildings etc of particular cities; last year Paris this year New York. To this end she shows films which capture something about the city or most importantly are just good films?
Anyway I help her with the list and thought the ever knowledgeable types round here would have some ideas too.
So what are the best films about/set/featuring New York old and new?
Thanks in advance for your help.
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The Cool World
Difficult, if not impossible, to find.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056952/
A quick tour with Frank and his pals
New York City is an architecture student's dream. What a great idea.
This clip gives a quick tour of the place circa 1949 when On The Town was released.
Is it true...
...that the people ride in a hole in the ground?
New York love letters
The Paper, directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton & Glen Close is a great New York movie.
Most of Spike Lee's oeuvre is a great love poem to NYC, but Do the Right Thing captures Brooklyn's Bed Stuy district well and the 25th Hour has some great Manhattan shots.
The French Connection captures the down at heel nature of late 60s/ early 70s Manhattan as does Shaft (damn right, sorry have to say that).
When Harry Met Sally is one long love letter to Manhattan, too. It's really gorgeous.
This website will help your friend out: http://www.newyorkinthemovies.com/
The Apartment
Defines "bittersweet".
As usual the answer is
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
new
King Kong is my favourite New York film. The 1931 version. Hard to beat
There's always this little gem from 1973...
I feel a list coming on.
Smoke.
After Hours.
Man on a Wire.
The Sweet Smell of Success.
Broadway Danny Rose.
Taxi Driver.
Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Barefoot in the Park.
American Psycho.
Man Push Cart.
Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Rosemary's Baby.
Once Upon a Time in America.
Once Upon a TIme in America trivia
Was partly filmed in Montreal and my wife's cousin was a body double for Robert de Niro!
If she's after a course book
then she won't go far wrong with Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies by James Sanders (basically an analysis, by a practising architect, of the architecture of New York as represented in the movies.) Now sadly out of print it seems but quite brilliant. She'll never be stuck for a New York movie again.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celluloid-Skyline-New-York-Movies/dp/0375710272/...
excellent thanks for this
I'll pass this on just the sort of thing I was looking for.
Ghostbusters.
And Annie Hall.
Midnight Cowboy
Not only is it my favourite ever film, it's the best film about New York, 1969, you'll ever find.
Spiderman...
... (I'm not joking) has some great New York shots - including the Flatiron Building (exterior used as Daily Bugle offices).
Three Days of the Condor
has Robert Redford in full sideburn glory skulking around a cold and rainy unsettling Manhattan/Brooklyn. It also has some rather sad scenes in the World Trade Centre which had just opened. The end when he melts into the New York Crimbo crowd to the tune of Good King Wenceslas is great 70s paranoia.
excellent list people
keep them coming!
Goodfellas
Not just the best New York/Queens film but the best film ever....
Honourable mention for Stuart Little.
I saw the sequel of "stuart Little"
being filmed. What an amazing New York film day that was, in one walk up town(?) we saw Lisa Kudrow and LL Cool J filming, stuart Little in central park AND WOODY ALLEN on set!
That's the wonderful thing about New York,
as foreign to this Californian as anyone. It's got to be the most filmed city in the world. The result is that almost every first visit (and many subsequent ones) lends the visitor a feeling of familiarity with somewhere they'd not previously been.
A lot of Allen movies mentioned
but no nomination of Hannah And Her Sisters yet.
In that movie, besides all the usual New York scenes of people walking and talking around the city, there's a storyline in which the sister played by Dianne Wiest ( can't remember character's name just now ) and her best friend is pursuing the same man; an architect who takes them on a seightseeing tour of New York to point out his favourite buildings.
Should be perfect for this I think.
The Chrysler Building
features extensively in Q: The Winged Serpent, being said serpent's lair when it's not out devouring the people of New York.
Money is Honey
A wee mention for The Producers which has some jolly NY rooftop and street scenes, though the money shot has to be Leo Bloom dancing round the fountain outside of Lincoln Center.
NY
'The Apartment'
'Rodger Dodger'
'Smoke' & 'Blue In The Face'
'Mean Streets'
'Midnight Cowboy'
This just in...
The Naked City
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040636/