Top 5 L.A. Movies

These films celebrate the greatest city in the world: Los Angeles. These stories can take place nowhere else, and the city itself becomes a sort of character.

5. MI VIDA LOCA

Mi Vida Loca is especially noteworthy for showing the neighborhood of Echo Park in the early 90s, when it was one of the most violent gang areas in the city. Echo Park has since been fully gentrified, and if you go there today, you're more likely to find bearded hipsters than the characters in this movie.

The acting isn't great, due in large part to the casting of new unknown actors, and actual neighborhood gang members, but Salma Hayek, Danny Trejo, and Jason Lee are all seen in early film roles.

The film honestly and poignantly portrays gang life, and L.A. Chicano culture, especially from the female perspective.






4. SUNSET BLVD. 

 Arguably the best film from legendary director Billy Wilder, pays tribute to two eras of Hollywood: the studio factory system of the 50s, and the crumbling bygone silent era of the 20s.

The film begins with Bill Holden's character floating dead in a swimming pool, and narrating from beyond the grave, he tells the story of his death at the hands of Norma Desmond, a deranged, obsessive fading silent star played masterfully by Gloria Swanson.

The film received eleven Oscar nominations, and won three: screenplay, art direction, and music.



3. BOOGIE NIGHTS

Boogie Nights is a film that, along with thousands of porno movies, wouldn't exist without the San Fernando Valley. It's an area rarely shown, and even more rarely celebrated in films other than those of P.T. Anderson.

The film helped launch the careers of many great actors, including Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as well as gave a resurgence to aging veteran Burt Reynolds.

Anderson himself was launched into the forefront of filmmakers with this, only his second feature, and has since become one of the distinct voices in cinema.

Boogie Nights received three Oscar nominations, including one for Reynolds, but didn't win any awards.



2. CHINATOWN

One of the most important figures in the history of Los Angeles is William Mulholland, the water superintendent who brought water from the Sierras to a thirsty city.

Though Mulholland isn't a direct character in the film, Noah Cross, and Hollis Mulwray both exhibit traits of the man who made the desert bloom. The film's plot itself has a great deal to do with the siphoning of water from farmlands for the growing city, and the hostilities that occurred, which is largely historically accurate.

Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston highlight an amazing cast, which includes an appearance b y director Roman Polanski as a smarmy hoodlum.

Screenwriter Robert Town received the only win for eleven Oscar nominations, but is #85 on imdb.com's Top 250, and is # 21 on the AFI's Top 100 films of all time.

1. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL

L.A. Confidential is a thorough portrait of 1950s Los Angeles. It shows the city to be a brutal, corrupt place, but also a city of angels and heroes.

The acting is top-notch, with performances from Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Danny Devito, Kevin Spacey, and Kim Basinger in an Oscar winning role.

The film is masterfully adapted from James Ellroy's incredibly dense novel, garnering L.A. Confidential an adapted screenplay Oscar.

There were only two wins for L.A. Confidential, but it was nominated for another seven Oscars, including best picture, and best director for Curtis Hanson.

Top 5 Fictitious Movie Drugs

Movies, especially those set in the future, have given us a prophetic visions and what-if scenarios of what the future of recreational narcotics could be. These are the drugs our grandchildren might be skipping school to do behind a futuristic 7-11, or take at a rave on the moon. They have strange effects not seen in present drugs. They have high tech delivery systems that make a line of coke and a straw look primitive, and they impact societies in big ways.

5. "NEUROIN" FROM MINORITY REPORT

In Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report, Neuroin users, such as Washington D.C. Precrime officer John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, administer the drug through a fancy looking plastic inhaler. The effects are like that of a painkiller or opiate, causing euphoria and numbness.

An interesting result of Neuroin's stranglehold on the inner-city is babies born addicted to the narcotic. If the child doesn't die from withdrawal, it has a good chance of developing telepathy that can infallibly predict murders in a city wide radius, making them a valuable crime prevention tool. Spielberg, what are you trying to say by making your police officer protagonist a drug addict, and his drug of choice resulting in super-human abilities?  


4. "SUBSTANCE D" FROM A SCANNER DARKLY
Substance D, from Richard Linklater's rotoscope animated A Scanner Darkly, comes in the form of a tried and true delivery system, the little red pill. It causes vivid hallucinations, and euphoria, and is also referred to as Substance Death, or Slow Death, as a result of the potentially lethal side effects. Prolonged use severs the link between the two hemispheres of the user's brain, often resulting in two distinct, mutually unaware personalities occupying the same brain.

Bob Arctor, played by Keanu Reeves, is an undercover narcotics agent who becomes addicted to Substance D, while posing as an addict in Orange County, an area ravaged by the D.  Bob eventually becomes two different personalities, one a cop, the other a criminal, but he's checked into rehab before any more damage is done.

Philip K. Dick, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, intended the story to be a warning about succumbing to drug abuse. He ends the book with a list of friends and loved ones who had died or had severe debilitating conditions as a result of drugs. Linklater ends the film with the same list.    


3. "SLO-MO" FROM DREDD

Created for the movie Dredd, Slo-Mo is taken by drawing a hit off a weird looking inhaler with some murky brown liquid in it. The user's senses become so acute that their perception of time slows down to 1% of it's normal speed. This causes everything to feel like it's running in slow motion, hence the name.

The camera effect when a person is on Slo-Mo is really fun, and lends a lot to look and feel of the film. Everything is vivid, saturated in light, and slowed down so every detail can be seen.

In the film, Slo-Mo has become an epidemic in the super ghettos, and high-rise slums of Megacity One. Along with his new psychic partner, Judge Dredd, in a Stallone-topping performance by Karl Urban, is assigned a murder case in the 200 story Peach Trees tower. They become trapped in the building, and the murderer, Slo-Mo kingpin Madeline Madrigal, or Ma-Ma, places a bounty on their heads. They must then fight their way out of peril, with scores of dangerous gangsters on every floor, with the best action being the fight scenes in Slo-Mo vision. The violence seems far more brutal when it's slowed down, and bathed in light.  


2. "SPICE" FROM DUNE 

One movie drug is so valuable that people will cross the universe, and brave a harsh desert planet filled with giant sand worms to get it.

In David Lynch's Dune, Melange, or Spice, as it is commonly referred to, is a substance only found on the planet Arrakis. It is so sought after that whoever controls the spice of Arrakis, essentially controls the universe, and it's no surprise considering how awesome it is. Consuming Spice extends your lifespan, increases your vitality, and can give you telepathy. Not to mention it makes your eyes look like Paul Newman's times a million. The only downside? It's highly addictive, and withdrawal is fatal, so you die if you stop taking it.


1. "NUKE" FROM ROBOCOP 2

Robocop 2 is a movie born out of Nancy Reagan's war on drugs from the 1980s. In the film, the city of Detroit is crippled by a new designer drug called Nuke, and the resulting crime from it's use, which of course is a far cry from reality. Drug dealers and gangsters infest the city despite Robocop's noble crime fighting efforts.

Just like Nancy Reagan taught us about the real life drug problem in America, in Robocop 2, Detroit's youth suffers the most. Video game arcades have been turned into drug dens, young people are using drugs, and twelve-year-old boys can become high-ranking drug dealers in the crime wave created by nuke.

By showing Nuke as this evil, mystery chemical, that's luring kids to an early demise, director Irvin Kershner parodied Nancy Reagan's wildly overblown and misguided war on drugs.    

Nuke looks very menacing, but in an exaggerated, cartoonish way.  It's a colorful liquid injected into the bloodstream via single use vials, and has an upper effect, like that of cocaine or meth. The "Red Ramrod" is the most common type, but also has "White Noise," "Black Thunder," and "Blue Velvet" varieties.

Nuke is extremely addictive, so much so that even a robot can't resist. Cain, the Nuke kingpin, and addict, turned kick-ass cyborg, could have won if it weren't for his addiction. He could have become the ruler of the new Delta City's drug trade. He even could have beaten Robocop. He could have had it all, but he couldn't kick that nasty Nuke habit.