Los Angeles movies: Choose the 50 L.A. films best of all time
Books can teach you plenty about Los Angeles. In fact, we’ve been getting readers to help us make lists of the best L.A. fiction and nonfiction. But as many people will tell you (just before asking you to read their screenplay), this is a movie town.So if I’m a stranger in town and I need movies to school me, what films would you suggest? What films show and say the most about Los Angeles, from the way it looks to the way it behaves, where it’s been and where it might be headed? What are the most emblematic L.A. movies ever?
Yes, “Chinatown” for the past. Yes, “Blade Runner” for the future. But what else?
This list-in-progress is the beginning of our answer. We’ll count on you, readers, to tell us what else we’ve missed and what we’ve overrated.
As you read through the list, you’ll see that we’re biased against movies in which Los Angeles plays someplace else (like 1958"s “Touch of Evil,” in which Orson Welles had Venice stand in for a Mexican border town). We’re skeptical of sequels. And we’d rather not include more than one film per director.
We’d rather not. But Robert Altman, James Cameron, Blake Edwards, Quentin Tarantino and Billy Wilder make that difficult, as you can see from their repeat appearances here.
Anyway, here we go, our choices fortified by counsel from Calendar section movie maven Susan King but uninformed (or untainted, if you prefer) by any input from actual Los Angeles Times film critics. Right now, this first-draft list is in no particular order, but that’ll change after we hear your likes and dislikes.
Use the comments section below to identify your three favorite emblematic L.A. movies, but don"t stop there. Next, name three others that we should kick off this list. With your help, we’ll whack this list in half and come back in a while with a new version, reliable as a campaign promise, scientifically sound as a racetrack hunch.
1 “L.A. Story” (1991), director Mick Jackson.
2 “Stand and Deliver” (1988), Ramon Menendez.
3 “Sunset Blvd." (1950), Billy Wilder.
4 “Training Day” (2001), Antoine Fuqua.
5 “The Omega Man” (1971), Boris Sagal.
6 “Angels in the Outfield” (1994), William Dear.
7 “Heaven Can Wait” (1978), Warren Beatty, Buck Henry.
8 “Heaven Can Wait” (1943), Ernest Lubitsch.
9 “Pat and Mike” (1952), George Cukor.
10 “2 Days in the Valley” (19