As the cultural capital of the United States, it’s no surprise that New York City has fascinated filmmakers for generations.
The city has been the backdrop of more movies than we can count, and a number of them are absolutely awful representations. Hollywood has a tendency to show us the lives of “everyone” from fashion magazine editors in massive mythical apartments, to fashion magazine interns in unaffordable, non-existent sublets.
But that doesn’t mean there are no good — and even great — movies and documentaries about New York. With that in mind we’ve compiled 12 excellent examples that showcase the City That Never Sleeps on celluloid.
Man Push Cart
New York is still the best example of America’s “melting-pot” ideal. As such, it serves as a landing point for immigrants who wish to start a new life in the States.
Man Push Cart follows a former Palestinian rock star who came to this country only to wind up becoming a street vendor. As a narrative, it’s about as NYC as they come.
Kill Your Idols
New York City has been featured in more music documentaries than just about anywhere else. As a city where many artists go to “make it,” this makes sense.
But very few documentaries have settled down exclusively in New York’s music scene. This overview of New York alternative takes its name from a song by the quintessentially New York band Sonic Youth and offers an excellent look at 30 years of NYC cool.
Kids
Kids is a Moral Panic Starter Kit, everything you’ve heard about urban life for teenagers blown up to cartoonish proportions.
Still, it manages to feel like a realistic portrayal of New York City during the AIDS epidemic. The feeling of authenticity can largely be chalked up to the decision to use actual New York teens for the cast, regardless of acting experience.
The Warriors
Very few films have captured the gritty and claustrophobic feeling of summer nights in a city like this 1979 flick following a small gang trying to get back to their home turf on Coney Island.
The film feels like New York in the late ’70s because it is. The film was shot on location at night in New York City at the height of its period of urban decay, with actual New York gangs providing security for the cast and crew.
Death Wish
Much like The Warriors, this prototype vigilante film is cemented in a time and place by its decision to film on location in New York.
This film follows Paul Kesey (Charles Bronson) as he rampages his way across ‘70s New York City, leaving piles of murdered criminals in his wake. The film struck a nerve with audiences dealing with the decade’s high crime rates and remains the prototype for vigilante films.
Mean Streets
Director Martin Scorsese has made plenty of films set in New York City, but Mean Streets has the greatest sense of place.
The film follows two friends (played by Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro) who are ensnared in the local mafia of Little Italy. The film plays out like the visual equivalent of the “crab bucket” analogy, showing just how hard a neighborhood can work to keep its people from escaping.
Manhattan
Like Scorsese, it’s fair to say Woody Allen has a “thing” for New York.
Never were his feelings more apparent than his 1979 film Manhattan. Allen’s black-and-white, wide-angle comedic opus was crafted largely to show off his favorite city.
Allen went so far as to call New York “a character in the movie.”
Paris Is Burning
8.4 million people in close proximity provides the perfect breeding ground for subcultures. Paris Is Burning is the best existing chronicle of one of these, New York’s massive ball culture scene in the late ‘80s.
Escape From New York
Escape is a fever dream-rendering of a New York that never got any safer.
Set in the distant future of 1997, this 1981 film shows a version of the city that has been left to rot.
Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) must save the President of the United States from a post-apocalyptic Manhattan that’s being used as a maximum security prison.
Like all good sci-fi, it showed the fears of the day taken to extremes.
King Kong
What would King Kong be without New York City? Would it have the same effect if the titular ape stomped around on top of the Chicago Stock Exchange building?
The fact is, King Kong owes as much of its acclaim to the unique look of the Chrysler building as it does to its (at-the-time) groundbreaking special effects. Kong could never swat planes anywhere else.
Style Wars
This 1983 documentary focuses on the New York-born art form of graffiti, and years later still has the ability to place viewers inside the paint-splattered version of New York under mayor Ed Koch.
Do The Right Thing
Spike Lee’s directorial debut gains a lot of its power from the decision to set it in Bed-Stuy.
Every city in America deals with racial tensions, but New York has the longest and most-storied history in this regard. Do The Right Thing was a testament to the fact that every once in a while the melting pot boils over.
Taxi Driver
Living in an always-on city is a disruption of the body’s natural cycles.
No film has laid this out more plainly than Taxi Driver. Its sleep-deprived and mentally-ill protagonist is an ode to all those strange creatures who keep New York running while the rest of us are dreaming.
