In 2019, New York City opened its arms to about 67 million visitors. Needless to say, this year cannot begin to hold a candle to that number. Due to a second wave of coronavirus infections that’s currently making its way across the country—not to mention the new travel bans invoked to stop said wave—the perimeters of the Big Apple (sadly but necessarily) remain off limits for most tourists. For New Yorkers, Untapped New York’s tours have resumed with awesome new health and safety measures, and many of our tours are selling out fast!
Fortunately for the tourists, they don’t have to actually go to New York in order to experience it. The city has, after all, served as the setting of thousands upon thousands of movies. Of course, only a fraction of those films actually bother to portray what living there is like and, more importantly, only a fraction of that fraction do the city’s vibrant culture any justice. Frank Sinatra’s famous line, “If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere,” very much dominates the popular imagination of New York as it exists inside the minds of passing tourists, incoming settlers, and born-and-bred natives alike. But while the city is certainly a site of limitless potential, it’s also a harbinger of untapped potential and systematic shortcoming. Despite their social significance, these troubling aspects are rarely touched upon by most Hollywood films. Luckily, there are those who dare to explore such things, and they are stronger for it. Here are nine films that do.
1. Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee’s most famous beloved motion picture to date, Do the Right Thing, takes place entirely in Brooklyn’s racially diverse Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Here, over the course of a single day, under the sweltering summer sun, tensions between the various occupants of this community heat up until they reach their boiling point. The result is not pretty, but that’s the point. In the span of a few hours, Lee sketches an entire ecosystem, one whose people and problems feel as real as anything you might find in the real world.
2. After Hours
After Hours by Martin Scorsese follows a young businessman who goes on a very questionable date and spends the rest of the night trying to make his way back home. Most Scorsese fans would probably berate me for choosing this film over Taxi Driver, but I stand by my decision. Both movies explore how the nighttime streets of lower Manhattan can drive someone insane, but they go about it in very different ways. If Taxi Driver presents New York City as a concrete jungle, After Hours treats it like a prison.
3. Uncut Gems
Whereas the average crime thriller plays out in a generic urban environment, Uncut Gems really does not want you to forget that you are in New York. Much of the heavy lifting comes from Adam Sandler’s stellar performance, but credit should also be given to the film’s extremely realistic dialogue. Written by the Safdie brothers in collaboration with Ronald Bronstein, it’s got all the mannerisms and expressions necessary to imbue this story in the gritty glitter of Manhattan’s Diamond District.
4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Although Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse jumps back and forth between a number of different locations (and, as the title suggests, a handful of dimensions), it is still very much set inside New York. Unlike other Spider-Man adaptations like the Sam Remi trilogy or even the MCU films, this one is very much in sync with the city’s culture. From its clever use of modern music to the class conflicts between public and charter schools, Into the Spider-Verse managed to present its setting in a way that feels both thoughtful and authentic.
5. Synecdoche, New York
The directorial debut of the person who wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind among others, Synecdoche, New York centers on a theater director who wastes his life trying to stage a play that never gets produced and ailing from diseases which he’s convinced himself he has but really doesn’t. Like any Charlie Kaufman film, it’s delightfully meta and surreal, perhaps more so than any other film of his. Taking place on a film set modeled after New York, it breaks down the entire city only to rebuild it (literally) from scratch on-set.
6. Five Feet High and Rising
Like another entry further down the list, this is a film about inner city youth. ‘Film’ might not be the right term, however, as Five Feet High and Rising is actually a thirty minute short and you can watch it in full above. Written and directed by NYU graduate Peter Sollett, it follows a group of teens hanging out in the streets, one of whom is about to enter his first mature relationship.
Sollett later adapted the short into a feature film called Raising Victor Vargas which, while also great, feels slightly more contrived than this earlier, unfiltered version of the story.
7. Kids
Put simply, Kids is about a group of fifteen-year-old kids who spend their days looking for sex, drugs or alcohol. Although there are many films which explore the questionable life choices made by inner city youth, they usually include some or other authority figure that provides a voice of much-needed rationality and concern. Not here. From the opening scene all the way down to the end credits, there is not a single caring adult in sight, much to the detriment of their children.
8. Network
Like any metropolis, New York is full of careerists who live to work rather than work to live, and one of the films which best encapsulates that mindset is Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. A sprawling satire lamenting the commercialization of the news industry, this film focuses on the intergenerational conflict between an aging network boss who wants to keep on running his business the way he likes, and a young executive that chases ratings like they’re no tomorrow. Though released over fifty years ago, its cultural relevance has yet to wane.
9. Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat tells the story of an anthropomorphized cat studying at NYU who claims he thinks about becoming a poet but really just wants to smoke weed and hit on chicks. Needless to say, director Ralph Bakshi deftly captures the shallowness of young, urban academics who are more concerned with their own status than the things they study. As the first animated film to receive an X-rating from the MPA, Fritz also confronts viewers with many things they might not want to see, but probably should.
A list like this is never complete — what would you add? Also check out our previous features like #MonthofScorsese and a look into how The Alienist recreates 1890s New York City.
Tim Brinkof is a journalist based in New York City. He studied film and literature at NYU, and has published work on art and culture in outlets like PopMatters, High Times, History Today and The New York Observer.
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