Hollywood is synonymous with movies, but Los Angeles isn't just a place where great films are made; there are countless great movies that are set in the City of Angels. Much like New York City is the setting of many great movies on the other side of the country, Los Angeles frequently represents the West Coast on the big screen.
It makes sense that Los Angeles, due to the importance of Hollywood, would be the setting of many films about making movies, and indeed, showbiz flicks are a whole genre unto themselves. Movies about Los Angeles' film industry are obviously a huge part of the city's silver screen representation, but LA—the second-biggest city in the nation and whose larger metro area is astoundingly diverse—is much more than just Hollywood studios. Los Angeles movies feature criminals trying to get away with it, rich kids learning a little something about themselves, poor families attempting to make it, and there are plenty of mysteries, too.
With that in mind, these are the 32 greatest Los Angeles movies. There are a few great showbiz movies, like Babylon or Singin' in the Rain, that were omitted from the list in favor of painting a broader picture of the city. Also, there are no documentaries on this list—otherwise, O.J. Simpson: Made in America would probably take the top spot.
32. Volcano
Year: 1997
Director: Mick Jackson
This natural disaster movie came out the same year as another volcano-centric blockbuster, Dante's Peak, in one of those weird quirks of the film release schedule. Dante's Peak, which is set up the coast in Washington state, is arguably a better film, but Volcano, which has an ensemble cast of characters gradually realizing that a volcano is about to erupt underneath Los Angeles, is pulpier and more fun. It offers exciting (if occasionally cheesy) special effects and paints a silly picture of a city coming together in crisis, a theme that it perhaps leans a bit too hard on since it's clearly influenced by the state of the city in the wake of the O.J. Simpson verdict.
31. Ambulance
Year: 2022
Director: Michael Bay
Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II star as adoptive brothers who attempt to rob a bank in downtown Los Angeles, only for things to quickly go wrong, forcing them to take an ambulance with an injured cop and a paramedic (Eiza González) hostage as they race through the streets of the city. Ambulance is a wild movie, full of audacious drone shots and exaggerated action. (It can also be read as an indictment of law enforcement, as director Michael Bay perhaps unintentionally presents the authorities as gung-ho and incompetent, causing almost as much mayhem as the criminals.) In any case, it's a decent tour of the city under extreme circumstances.
30. Fletch
Year: 1985
Director: Michael Ritchie
Chevy Chase stars as Irwin M. "Fletch" Fletcher, a confident journalist for the Los Angeles Times who talks his way into juicy stories and trouble, but most of the time he can talk himself out of the latter, too. Fletch is a fun '80s comedy that gets good use out of its setting (including the truth that Los Angeles beaches are not actually all that nice!) The sequels, 1989's Fletch Lives and 2022's Confess, Fletch (which stars Jon Hamm) are not set in the City of Angeles, sadly.
29. Night of the Comet
Year: 1984
Director: Thom Eberhardt
Valley girls meet zombies in this sci-fi post-apocalyptic comedy. Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney play sisters who both happen to escape the effects of a comet that turns everybody who saw it into dust (with a few remaining as zombies), so of course, the two do what any good teenage girl would do with a city all to themselves: go shopping. Night of the Comet is a hoot, offering a charming perspective on the city and one of its notable subcultures. The movie went on to become a cult classic and was a huge inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
28. Body Double
Year: 1984
Director: Brian De Palma
Craig Wasson stars as a struggling actor who gets hired to housesit in a swanky mansion in the Hollywood Hills, but once there, he starts noticing the beautiful woman dancing in the window in the house across the way. This voyeurism soon leads to a twisted conspiracy full of romance, doppelgangers, and danger. Body Double is a Hitchcockian erotic thriller that has plenty of the hallmarks you'd expect from the great Brian De Palma (Dutch angles, split diopter shots, nudity, and violence), so it might not be everyone's speed. If you're into De Palma, though, be prepared for a surprisingly astute look at how Los Angeles's great wealth and hungry creative community intersect in surprising ways.
27. Emily the Criminal
Year: 2022
Director: John Patton Ford
Rather than focus on the glitz or the stars, this undersung 2022 thriller stars Aubrey Plaza as Emily Benetto, a Millennial woman living in Los Angeles with crippling debt from her student loans that she's struggling to pay off. When she gets involved with a scam by chance, Emily soon finds herself embracing credit card fraud, making the money she needed illicitly because there were no avenues for her to make it through legitimate means. Getting involved in a life of crime has its risks, of course, and Emily the Criminal is an exciting movie about an extreme (but very much still in the realm of possibility) response to struggle that countless Angelenos and beyond find relatable.
26. Repo Man
Year: 1984
Director: Alex Cox
An oddball satire of Reaganism and consumerism that gripped Los Angeles (and the rest of America) in the '80s, Repo Man is a quirky comedy about a punk rocker (Emilio Estevez) who gets a job working for a repossession agency alongside a wizened repo man veteran (Harry Dean Stanton). The pair find themselves trying to track down a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu that has some sort of radioactive alien corpse in its trunk. It's a weird sci-fi riff on the many noirs set in Los Angeles and a homage to the town's famous car culture.
25. Speed
Year: 1994
Director: Jan de Bont
Anybody who lives in Los Angeles will tell you that a not-insignificant amount of time in the city is spent stuck in traffic on some highway. Speed, one of the great '90s action movies, is the opposite of this. A terrorist (Dennis Hopper) has rigged a bus with a bomb that will explode if it goes below 50 miles per hour, and only LAPD officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) can get everybody aboard to safety and stop the criminal, with some help from one of the passengers, played by Sandra Bullock.
24. The Bling Ring
Year: 2013
Director: Sofia Coppola
Based on a true story that was reported in the pages of Vanity Fair, The Bling Ring follows a group of Los Angeles teenagers (played by Emma Watson, Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, and Taissa Farmiga) who go on a burglary spree of rich celebrities' houses. Using social media, the group are able to determine when the stars are out of town, and that's when they invite themselves to the A-listers' nice things. A highly enjoyable crime romp, it's a movie about celebrities and the people who live in their shadow, with somewhat understandable envy!
23. Collateral
Year: 2004
Director: Michael Mann
Jamie Foxx stars as a cab driver who picks up Tom Cruise from LAX only to discover that the man in the backseat of his car is a professional hitman, and he's going to force the driver to chauffeur him around Los Angeles so he can kill the various people he's been hired to. A gripping neo-noir thriller, Collateral is one of the best portrayals of Los Angeles because of the way director Michael Mann filmed it. Shot on digital, Collateral was actually recorded on location in various parts of Los Angeles that don't often get the big screen treatment, giving the entire movie a sense of place and verisimilitude.
22. Miracle Mile
Year: 1988
Director: Steve De Jarnatt
Harry (Anthony Edwards) meets Julie (Mare Winningham) near the La Brea Tar Pits, and they instantly hit it off, but a power outage makes Harry miss his alarm and oversleep, so he isn't there for their date when Julie gets off her late-night shift. Things get even worse when Harry answers a call from somebody who dialed the wrong number and is claiming that World War III has begun and the nukes will hit Los Angeles in just over an hour. The clock is ticking for Harry to find Julie and somehow get to safety (assuming that the voice on the other end of the phone was right). Miracle Mile is one of the best movies to take place in just one day (or night, in this instance).
21. Bowfinger
Year: 1999
Director: Frank Oz
There are plenty of A-list actors and producers in Los Angeles, sure, but there are countless more struggling creatives, hustling to try to make their dreams come true. Bowfinger, an underrated late-'90s comedy, is a celebration of the town's B-list and below, starring Steve Martin as Bobby Bowfinger, a low-rent producer who aspires to make a sci-fi movie. He'll get major movie star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) to play the lead role… although Ramsey didn't agree to this and doesn't know he's in the movie, so Bowfinger and his team will shoot around him. Bowfinger is a side-splitting homage to Hollywood hustlers.
20. Point Break
Year: 1991
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Keanu Reeves stars as Johnny Utah, a rookie FBI agent who is tasked with going undercover in an attempt to catch a group of bank robbers known as the Dead Presidents who are currently believed to be targeting Los Angeles. Under the assumption that the thieves are surfers, Johnny hits the beach where he becomes friends with a group of chill surfers led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Of course, Bodhi and his pals are the Dead Presidents, forcing Keanu to choose between the law and this bromance. Point Break is an all-time action movie classic, one that shines a light on Los Angeles surf culture and, uh, bank-robbing culture.
19. In a Lonely Place
Year: 1950
Director: Nicholas Ray
Los Angeles is a famous setting for film noirs, and 1950s In a Lonely Place might just be the best of the genre. Humphrey Bogart plays Dix Steele, a talented but cantankerous and recently unsuccessful screenwriter who meets a girl and then becomes the prime suspect when that girl is murdered. While the investigation is ongoing, Dix hits it off with his neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame), and they begin a relationship under the looming pressure of the murder case. An expertly acted and tight mystery, In a Lonely Place is an excellent look at how much reputation matters in this crazy town they call Hollywood.
18. Beverly Hills Cop
Year: 1984
Director: Martin Brest
Beverly Hills might not have as luxurious and exotic a reputation as it did in the '80s, but this classic fish-out-of-water action comedy harnesses the city's glitz to immensely effective ends. Eddie Murphy stars as Axel Foley, a detective from the streets of Detroit who comes to the famously posh and wealthy part of Hollywood to crack a case. He doesn't fit in, and yet Axel is such a charismatic smooth operator that he manages to navigate Beverly Hills in his own hilarious way and get the job done.
17. The Long Goodbye
Year: 1973
Director: Robert Altman
An adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel of the same name, The Long Goodbye is a film noir put through the cynicism of the 1970s. Elliott Gould plays Philip Marlowe, a private eye who starts investigating after the death of his friend, only to discover there's a lot more going on—and that he's implicated. A deliberately shaggy film, The Long Goodbye spends a lot of time watching Marlowe meander through various parts of Los Angeles as he attempts to get to the bottom of things, a quirky tour of a unique scene in the city during a unique time.
16. The Big Lebowski
Year: 1998
Director: Joel Coen
Arguably the Coen Brothers' best movie and certainly their most beloved, The Big Lebowski is a movie about Los Angeles' wealthy coming into contact with one of its average citizens, though you could argue there's nothing average about The Dude (Jeff Bridges). When kidnappers take the wife of millionaire bigshot Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) hostage but mistakenly trash Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski's place (stealing the rug that tied the room together), the case of same-name mistaken identity spirals into a deliberate-yet-wacky crime comedy.
15. Safe
Year: 1995
Director: Todd Haynes
Julianne Moore plays a wealthy housewife in a well-off Los Angeles suburb who suddenly and inexplicably starts getting sick and having severe reactions to what she assumes is the environment around her. One of the scariest movies you'll watch that's not actually a horror movie, Safe asks uneasy questions about the healthiness of the modern world we've created around ourselves, while also offering a view on Los Angeles' wealth and the wellness cultures that are so prominent in the city.
14. Heat
Year: 1995
Director: Michael Mann
Few movies capture Los Angeles as well as Heat does because Michael Mann actually went and filmed around the city—especially in parts of the city that hadn't been picked over by film crews several times over beforehand. (Collateral, another Michael Mann film, is great in this regard, too.) Starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as a detective and a thief, respectively, Heat is a thrilling cat-and-mouse crime film that also boasts one of the greatest shootouts ever put to the big screen.
13. Slums of Beverly Hills
Year: 1998
Director: Tamara Jenkins
A theme that comes up in a lot of great Los Angeles movies is that the city is iconic for being a home to the rich and the famous, but there are millions of average people in LA, too, and they all have their stories. Slums of Beverly Hills is one of the best films about normal people trying to make it (or fake it) amongst the wealthy, starring Natasha Lyonne as a teenage daughter in a hard-up family that's constantly moving and scrounging around Beverly Hills in an attempt to hold on to a lifestyle they can't afford. Funny and insightful, it's among the great coming-of-age movies.
12. La La Land
Year: 2016
Director: Damien Chazelle
La La Land may not have actually won Best Picture at the Academy Awards (whoops!), but it's certainly one of the best movies about Los Angeles. A modern take on an old-school Hollywood musical, La La Land stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as two young artists trying to make it in Los Angeles as a jazz pianist and actress, respectively. They meet, fall in love, and experience the magic and heartbreak of the City of Angeles as they follow their dreams. (It did win six other Oscars, so it's not like it wasn't given its well-deserved accolades.)
11. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Year: 2019
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino brought the look and feel of 1969 Hollywood back to life for his 2019 masterpiece, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading actor trying to adjust to changing times and Brad Pitt as his loyal buddy and stunt double. The real magic of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood comes towards the end when this halcyon reflection of a bygone era for Los Angeles is revealed to be a fairytale. Granted, it's a fairytale that has an extraordinarily violent climax, but it's a wonderfully happy ending and a love letter to the city's past.
10. Ed Wood
Year: 1994
Director: Tim Burton
Ed Wood, the subject of Tim Burton's biopic, was a director in the '50s known for cross-dressing and for passionately making films that he did not have the talent to back up, like Plan 9 From Outer Space, which is commonly cited as the worst film ever made. What's so great about the 1994 film, though, is how much it celebrates Wood and his gang of misfits rather than mocks them. Hollywood is filled with people with dreams, and Ed Wood is an ode to the passionate, creative weirdos who help make the city so special.
9. Tangerine
Year: 2015
Director: Sean Baker
Shot entirely on iPhones in a movie that gives the film a unique sense of movement and verisimilitude as it captures the streets of Los Angeles, Tangerine stars Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee, a trans hustler who is released from a stint in jail only to discover that her boyfriend is cheating on her. She sets out with her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) to find and confront him in a journey through LA like no other movie. Uproariously funny and deeply sad in equal measure, Tangerine is big screen representation for Los Angeles communities who are rarely depicted in films—and rarely still depicted sympathetically.
8. Under the Silver Lake
Year: 2018
Director: David Robert Mitchell
There's no direct connection, but it's fair to consider Under the Silver Lake something of a spiritual sequel to David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Both tell surrealist mysteries in Los Angeles, but the 2018 film deliberately seems to raise more questions than it answers, eclipsing Mulholland Drive when it comes to madness-inducing theorizing. Andrew Garfield stars as an aimless thirtysomething living in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood when he becomes infatuated with a neighbor, played by Riley Keough. When she goes missing, he decides to try to find her, leading to a cascading series of conspiracies and strange occurrences. It's a sort of urban folklore that uses surreal exaggeration to accurately capture how Los Angeles, for all the city's wonderful qualities, can sometimes have bad vibes.
7. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Year: 1991
Director: James Cameron
Consider the following image: A kid riding a motorcycle while a cyborg in a truck pursues him, as another cyborg on a different motorcycle with a big shotgun chases the first cyborg through the concrete channels of the LA river. While absurd, this is one of the definitive images of Los Angeles on the silver screen. James Cameron's action masterpiece, which has Arnold Schwarzenegger returning as a good cyborg out to protect John Connor (Edward Furlong) captures something essential about Los Angeles. The fact that the villain, the evil T-1000 (Robert Patrick) disguises itself as a member of the LAPD, probably helps.
6. Mulholland Drive
Year: 2001
Director: David Lynch
One of the most acclaimed films of all time, David Lynch's surreal neo-noir Mulholland Drive is a tale of fame, crime, and identity in a bizarre version of Los Angeles—and yet despite (or perhaps because of) its many exaggerations and eccentricities, it captures the spirit of the City of Angels pretty well. Naomi Watts stars as a young, naive, aspiring actress who comes, wide-eyed, to Hollywood before meeting an alluring and mysterious woman with amnesia (Laura Harring). We can't say what happens next, both because it would be a shame to spoil Mulholland Drive, but also because what, exactly, happens in this trippy movie is a little open to interpretation.
5. Chinatown
Year: 1974
Director: Roman Polanski
Boasting one of the most famous closing lines in cinema history ("Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown"), Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir is a mystery masterpiece. Jack Nicholson stars as a 1930s private investigator who gets a job from a woman (Faye Dunaway) to follow her husband around. This soon leads to a massive conspiracy inspired by the real-life water wars that resulted in Los Angeles getting the water it needed in order to become the gigantic metropolis it became. Although fictionalized, Chinatown still serves as a decent history lesson, focusing on Los Angeles during a tumultuous and crucial period. More than that, though, it's a thoroughly engrossing motion picture, among the best ever made.
4. Sunset Boulevard
Year: 1950
Director: Billy Wilder
Ambition, fame (and lack thereof), and madness combine to create Sunset Boulevard, the great Billy Wilder's celebrated 1950 movie. William Holden stars as Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, who meets Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Although Norma was once one of the biggest silent movie stars, she's now an aged, reclusive has-been—and she's delusional, thinking that she's still big and it's the pictures who have gotten small. She hires Joe to write what she believes will be her big comeback role, and he's happy to take the paycheck, though this enabling of her misguided beliefs only gets thornier and thornier. Up there with the greatest movies ever made, Sunset Boulevard is a darkly funny noir and piercing look at the collateral damage Hollywood's fame causes.
3. Clueless
Year: 1995
Director: Amy Heckerling
"As if!" Loosely based on Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, Clueless transports the setting from the English Regency, with all of its manners and clearly defined social strata, and sets the action in the next-closest thing: a Beverly Hills high school. Alicia Silverstone stars as Cher Horowitz, a wealthy, popular, and extremely fashionable student who decides (in her own good-natured but ignorant way) to be a good person. An iconic comedy, Clueless is a whip-smart but ultimately sympathetic look at the privileged youths who have an outsized reputation in Los Angeles. And, in Cher's case at least, they're trying their best.
2. Boyz n the Hood
Year: 1991
Director: John Singleton
John Singleton had just turned 24 years old when he became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the Best Director Academy Award, and Boyz n the Hood was his debut feature film. (Singleton was also the first Black person to be nominated.) Watching the 1991 coming-of-age movie, it's easy to see why. Starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as a teenager growing up in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles, with Laurence Fishburne as his young father trying to teach him to be a man while his friend (Ice Cube) is embracing the lifestyle that has caused the deaths of so many young Black men, Boyz n the Hood is a masterpiece.
1. L.A. Confidential
Year: 1997
Director: Curtis Hanson
Hollywood celebrity. Police corruption. Film noirs. These are some of the enduring themes that keep popping up time and time again in big screen depictions of Los Angeles. L.A. Confidential, based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same name, is perhaps the most perfect synthesis of the tropes that have defined the city, and as a result, it's one of the greatest and most enduring LA movies. Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey star as three cops in 1953 Los Angeles—each flawed and talented in their own way—as they work to investigate a massacre at a late-night coffee house. The full scope of the case soon reveals itself. It's an enthralling crime saga in the City of Angels.
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