The 101 Best New York City Movies, Ranked

Some movies reflect the perilous reality of living here, others the urbane fantasy.

The greatest do both.

Save this article to read it later.

Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.

What makes a great New York City movie?

Not just a moviesetin New York there are plenty of those.

The best do both.

Not just in any big city, buthere.

101.West Side Story(Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise; 1961)

101.

This film is a dream of New York, so beautiful that even tragedy cant break the spell.

Matt Zoller Seitz

100.Ghostbusters II(Ivan Reitman, 1989)

100.

No, no, you read that right.

The mostly forgotten, supposedly lesserGhostbusterssequel just happens to be a great New York movie.

Park benches are coming to life.

Fur coats are attacking their owners.

The ghost of Fiorello La Guardia is haunting the current mayor.

Its all so conceptually deranged thatGhostbusters IImight as well be an underground movie.

(Honestly, all the terrible special effects probably just add to that effect.

)Bilge Ebiri

99.Dick Johnson Is Dead(Kirsten Johnson, 2020)

99.

Kirsten Johnsons remarkable picture is one of the most unlikely works about grief youll ever see.

The film is hilarious in its particulars but devastating in its overall impact.

98.The Naked City(Jules Dassin, 1948)

98.

72 on this list nearly vanished.

The microphones were too awkward and the ambient noise too great.

This has been one of them.

Christopher Bonanos

97.Jacobs Ladder(Adrian Lyne, 1990)

97.

New York becomes the labyrinth of the heros tortured psyche.

King among them remainsThe Odd Couple.Is it the most bulletproof premise ever?

The jokes (I cant stand little notes on my pillow.

Were all out of cornflakes.

Took me three hours to figure out F.U.

was Felix Ungar) always,alwaysland.

95.Wall Street(Oliver Stone, 1987)

95.

Greed is good, and it apparently does not understand irony.

Jen Chaney

94.Hester Street(Joan Micklin Silver, 1975)

94.

But he has come to America ahead of them and already taken on a mistress.

As a result, its almost literally timeless.

(Jump to Joan Micklin Silvers second film on this list.)

93.Weiner(Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg; 2016)

93.

Few movies, narrative or otherwise, have captured the frenzied absurdity of Big Apple politics quite like this.

The momentum of the Democratic Party was with him, as was the will of the city.

And then came the tweet.

Thats where this film picks up (and the story gets juicier).

Whats most compelling is how close to great Weiner is.

He was born to campaign.

Youll never see a wider smile than Weiners as he grabs a Pride flag and parades down Christopher Street.

Carlos Danger, New York will never forget you.

Jordan Hoffman

92.Cloverfield(Matt Reeves, 2008)

92.

91.Uncut Gems(Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie; 2019)

91.

90.The Blank Generation(Ivan Kral, Amos Poe; 1976)

90.

Miracle of miracles: a movie about punk that itself lives up to the punk aesthetic!

footage, accompanied by scratchy recordings that in no way match whats being sung.

89.Sidewalk Stories(Charles Lane, 1989)

89.

More specifically, it follows the format of Charlie ChaplinsThe Kid,with which its in constant conversation.

88.Wild Style(Charlie Ahearn, 1983)

88.

But its authenticity and warmth have allowedWild Styleto endure.

The movie is filled with scenes involving real-life rappers, artists, and breakdancing crews.

87.The Women(George Cukor, 1939)

87.

86.On the Bowery(Lionel Rogosin, 1956)

86.

The plot, such as it is, hardly exists, as with any barroom drunks rambling story.

Its a mesmerizing document and fascinating window into another gentrified neighborhoods past.

85.The Warriors(Walter Hill, 1979)

envisioning a gangs nighttime journey home to Coney Island as a Homeric journey interspersed with outbursts of balletic violence.

MZS

84.The Hottest August(Brett Story, 2019)

84.

83.Funny Girl(William Wyler, 1968)

83.

(Hello, gorgeous, she said, beaming at the statuette.)

MZS

(Jump to William Wylers second film on this list.)

82.Saturday Night Fever(John Badham, 1977)

82.

As withWall Street, its hard to disentangle the two.

81.Midnight Cowboy(John Schlesinger, 1969)

81.

Angelica Jade Bastien

79.The Clock(Vincente Minnelli, 1945)

79.

(The movie was released two weeks after V-E Day, but who can predict these things?)

(All of this re-created, at great expense, by Vincente Minnelli on the MGM lot.)

If this doesnt inspire a last-minute race for a marriage certificate, what will?

78.Park Row(Samuel Fuller, 1952)

78.

77.New Jack City(Mario Van Peebles, 1991)

77.

Ice-T, Van Peebles, and Judd Nelson join forces to take down the community-killing kingpin.

They enlist Chris Rock as a struggling ex-abuser in a clinch role that proved the nascentSNLstar had tremendous range.

76.The Heiress(William Wyler, 1949)

76.

AJB

(Jump to William Wylers first film on this list.)

75.Prince of the City(Sidney Lumet, 1981)

75.

(It is toSerpicoasCasinois toGoodFellas.)

Treat Williams stars as a DEA agent on a crooked squad, roiled by guilt.

He agrees to an internal-affairs investigation, but on one condition: He will not rat out his partners.

The bulk of this 167-minute picture is the slow-motion realization that hes going to have to do just that.

The courtrooms are brown, the streets are blue, and everyone looks miserable.

(Jump to Sidney Lumets second film on this list.)

74.The Fisher King(Terry Gilliam, 1991)

74.

73.Marty(Delbert Mann, 1955)

73.

Exteriors were shot on location in the Bronx and showcase mid-century elevated-train lines.

MZS

72.Speedy(Ted Wilde, 1928)

72.

Read aboutSpeedys great chase scene

71.Desperately Seeking Susan(Susan Seidelman, 1985)

71.

70.Summer of Soul(Ahmir Khalib Thompson, 2021)

70.

Woodstock has long been considered the musical event of the summer of 1969.

But this vibrant documentary argues that maybe history didnt have all the facts.

Morris Park Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, and more.

But some folks at the Harlem Cultural Festival saw it differently.

Never mind the moon, one attendee told a CBS News reporter.

Lets get some of that cash in Harlem.

The thing is generations are not monoliths.

MZS

68.Across 110th Street(Barry Shear, 1972)

68.

Its mostly remembered for the great Bobby Womack title song.

The white authority figures, both police and crime bosses, are openly racist.

Apart from Kottos character, virtually everyone with any power at all is pretty bad news.

67.Saving Face(Alice Wu, 2004)

67.

66.The French Connection(William Friedkin, 1971)

66.

MZS

65.Working Girl(Mike Nichols, 1988)

65.

MZS

64.I Like It Like That(Darnell Martin, 1994)

64.

Darnell Martins first feature is an exuberant, colorful explosion of life, love, and New York noise.

63.The Squid and the Whale(Noah Baumbach, 2005)

63.

MZS

62.In The Cut(Jane Campion, 2003)

62.

61.Born in Flames(Lizzie Borden, 1983)

61.

Jason Bailey

60.Baby Face(Alfred E. Green, 1933)

60.

You must use men!

New York can make a struggling actor do surprising things.

Quickly, Dorothy ceases to become a masquerade and morphs into her own take-no-b.s.

Since then, its rightly been reclaimed as a masterpiece.

57.Little Fugitive(Ruth Orkin, Ray Ashley, Morris Engel; 1953)

Who could resist the world of pony rides and arcades, a paradise just a subway ride away?

56.The Landlord(Hal Ashby, 1970)

56.

Naturally he falls in love (with Diana Sands) and begins the process of opening his eyes.

55.Putney Swope(Robert Downey Sr., 1969)

55.

54.Flaming Creatures(Jack Smith, 1963)

54.

Youve never seen anything like it and you never will, which is sort of the point.

A lot of love stories use New York backdrops to add a cosmopolitan allure to a film.

Somehow this brazenly of-its-time movie has aged as elegantly as Shafts leather jacket.

Its like living in a war, Peter Staley explains, early in David Frances documentary.

All around me, friends are dropping dead.

50.On The Town(Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; 1949)

50.

You cant see a sailor on the street during Fleet Week without thinking of it.

The horny comic-relief dialogue from Betty Garrett as the taxi driver, Hildy, is ageless.

49.Girlfriends(Claudia Weill, 1978)

49.

Shes just a young woman who likes her space, knows her self-worth, and keeps on hustling.

Thats remarkable in a film about a single woman today, let alone the mid-70s.

Theres some great footage of Soho galleries here, and some extraordinary costuming choices.

Also: Bob Balaban practicing his Italian with a box of Manischewitz matzos behind him.

You cant fake that kind of authenticity.JH

48.All That Jazz(Bob Fosse, 1979)

48.

The cutting, by Alan Heim, is some of the most innovative ever seen in the medium.

Read about the making ofCiao!

45.Applause(Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)

45.

New Yorks so big, dirty, and noisy!

And your theater: with all those men, and the girls with no clothes on!

His first feature, however, is drenched in New York texture and mannerisms.

whos thinking of switching to the cosmetics business.

It asks What aspects of Black life have not been given full treatment onscreen?

The first attempt to makeShadowsrelied heavily on improvisation, but Cassavetes started over after an intense rehearsal period.

(He even ditched most of an original score by Charles Mingus.)

37.Love Is Strange(Ira Sachs, 2014)

37.

The city presented inMan Push Cartis instantly familiar but also cruelly anonymous.

Its been stripped of landmarks, of any sense of community.

And, although 9/11 is never mentioned, we feel the constant tension in the air.

35.Smithereens(Susan Seidelman, 1982)

35.

MZS

(Jump to Susan Seidelmans first film on this list.)

When John was 21, he became one of the 7 million that believe New York depends on them.

But as he notes early in the film: I simply am not there.

30.The Royal Tenenbaums(Wes Anderson, 2001)

30.

For years, Sergio Leone made spaghetti westerns in which rural Spain stood in for the American West.

But his movie still has the spirit of those westerns: The world it presents feels very much mythical.

This vision of the city belongs as much to its creators Europulp imagination as it does to history.

(Jump to Martin Scorseses second film on this list.)

Read Griffin Dunne onAfter Hours

27.Black Caesar(Larry Cohen, 1973)

27.

Melon world, the even tinier distinctions are immense.

The response: I dont see why not.CB

25.Two Lovers(James Gray, 2008)

25.

Alfred Hitchcocks 1954 thriller taps into a universal element of New York apartment living: spying on your neighbors.

20.The Cool World(Shirley Clarke, 1963)

20.

The Dizzy Gillespie score helps, too.BE

19.Rosemarys Baby(Roman Polanski, 1968)

19.

So many horror stories dwell on the terror of isolation, butRosemarys Babyis all about the dread of intrusion.

A man and a woman wander through Central Park arguing bitterly about his manhood and her lack of passion.

A camera crew follows them around.

Another camera crew follows that camera crew around.

And another camera crew follows that camera crew around.

The actors (who sometimes change) are frustrated with the director.

Director William Greaves manufactures his own reality but also lets the world constantly intrude and shape his film.

At one point, a homeless Polish poet living in the park seems to take the entire movie hostage.

And, perhaps most important, its all so incredibly entertaining.

For all its experimentation,Symbiopsychotaxiplasmis one of the most watchable films ever made.

15.An Unmarried Woman(Paul Mazursky, 1978)

15.

Has 1970s Manhattan ever shined with as much possibility as it does in Paul Mazurskys masterworkAn Unmarried Woman?

But thats surface stuff.

The Corleones do not take no for an answer, and neither do New Yorkers.

Ill make him an offer he cant refuse could be the city motto.

(Either that or Dont ever take sides with anyone against the family.)

Director Francis Ford Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis constantly play with contrasts that emphasize how corruption invades the everyday.

Christmas lights twinkle outside the hospital where Michael is assaulted by an NYPD cop aligned with another mob family.

A quiet, neighborhood Italian restaurant in the Bronx suddenly becomes the scene of a double murder.

MZS

11.Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

(Leslie Harris, 1993)

11.

You hear that, New York?

Its visits to Manhattan landmarks (Sardis!

Joan Micklin Silvers romantic comedy is steeped in Lower East Side Yiddishkeit.

6.The Apartment(Billy Wilder, 1960)

Shirley MacLaine is the winsome elevator operator that one of those executives is toying with.

3.Sweet Smell of Success(Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)

Its a grimy, bombastic love letter to a place.

Its a sterling noir exploring what hustling in acity of hustlersdoes to the human soul.

Its the most improbably great of cops-and-robbers movies: For an hour in the middle, barely anything happens.

In the famous Attica!

1.25th Hour(Spike Lee, 2002)

Oh, how wrong they were.

The whole film is about self-loathing, but at junctures like these, Lee makes the self-loathing civilizational.

(Montys blistering monologue even recalls the extended direct-to-camera tirades of Lees other masterpiece on this list.)

(Watching these scenes in a midtown theater in 2002 was a downright levitational experience.)

(Jump to Spike Lees first film on this list.)

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.

Some movies reflect the perilous reality of living here, others the urbane fantasy.#

101.West Side Story(Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise; 1961)#

100.Ghostbusters II(Ivan Reitman, 1989)#

99.Dick Johnson Is Dead(Kirsten Johnson, 2020)#

98.The Naked City(Jules Dassin, 1948)#

97.Jacobs Ladder(Adrian Lyne, 1990)#

95.Wall Street(Oliver Stone, 1987)#

94.Hester Street(Joan Micklin Silver, 1975)#

93.Weiner(Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg; 2016)#

92.Cloverfield(Matt Reeves, 2008)#

91.Uncut Gems(Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie; 2019)#

90.The Blank Generation(Ivan Kral, Amos Poe; 1976)#

89.Sidewalk Stories(Charles Lane, 1989)#

88.Wild Style(Charlie Ahearn, 1983)#

87.The Women(George Cukor, 1939)#

86.On the Bowery(Lionel Rogosin, 1956)#

85.The Warriors(Walter Hill, 1979)#

84.The Hottest August(Brett Story, 2019)#

83.Funny Girl(William Wyler, 1968)#

82.Saturday Night Fever(John Badham, 1977)#

81.Midnight Cowboy(John Schlesinger, 1969)#

79.The Clock(Vincente Minnelli, 1945)#

78.Park Row(Samuel Fuller, 1952)#

77.New Jack City(Mario Van Peebles, 1991)#

76.The Heiress(William Wyler, 1949)#

75.Prince of the City(Sidney Lumet, 1981)#

74.The Fisher King(Terry Gilliam, 1991)#

73.Marty(Delbert Mann, 1955)#

72.Speedy(Ted Wilde, 1928)#

71.Desperately Seeking Susan(Susan Seidelman, 1985)#

70.Summer of Soul(Ahmir Khalib Thompson, 2021)#

68.Across 110th Street(Barry Shear, 1972)#

67.Saving Face(Alice Wu, 2004)#

66.The French Connection(William Friedkin, 1971)#

65.Working Girl(Mike Nichols, 1988)#

64.I Like It Like That(Darnell Martin, 1994)#

63.The Squid and the Whale(Noah Baumbach, 2005)#

62.In The Cut(Jane Campion, 2003)#

61.Born in Flames(Lizzie Borden, 1983)#

60.Baby Face(Alfred E. Green, 1933)#

57.Little Fugitive(Ruth Orkin, Ray Ashley, Morris Engel; 1953)#

56.The Landlord(Hal Ashby, 1970)#

55.Putney Swope(Robert Downey Sr., 1969)#

54.Flaming Creatures(Jack Smith, 1963)#

50.On The Town(Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; 1949)#

49.Girlfriends(Claudia Weill, 1978)#

48.All That Jazz(Bob Fosse, 1979)#

45.Applause(Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)#

37.Love Is Strange(Ira Sachs, 2014)#

35.Smithereens(Susan Seidelman, 1982)#

30.The Royal Tenenbaums(Wes Anderson, 2001)#

27.Black Caesar(Larry Cohen, 1973)#

25.Two Lovers(James Gray, 2008)#

20.The Cool World(Shirley Clarke, 1963)#

19.Rosemarys Baby(Roman Polanski, 1968)#

15.An Unmarried Woman(Paul Mazursky, 1978)#

11.Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.#

6.The Apartment(Billy Wilder, 1960)#

3.Sweet Smell of Success(Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)#

1.25th Hour(Spike Lee, 2002)#

More reasons to love new york#

Tags:#