The 15 Best Movies About Life In Los Angeles, According To Someone Who Lives There

Los Angeles is such a large and sprawling city, it doesn't have a singular identity. As can be seen from the wide variety of movies set here, neighborhoods in the east, south, and west of LA, from the beaches to the vast San Fernando Valley, all have extremely different flavors. LA is a city of transplants and immigrants, and I'm no exception, as I moved here 6.5 years ago from the UK. Most of the best-known LA movies were made by outsiders trying to get to grips with a city that in one sense is dominated by the movie industry but also has a rich cultural life outside of that.

One of the best ways to discover LA is through documentaries, such as "City of Gold" (2015), "Los Angeles Plays Itself" (2003), and "Dogtown and Z-Boys" (2001). Like most people, my perception of LA was entirely built by the movies I watched growing up, and I had a romantic sense of it being a destination that one reached at the end of Route 66, filled with diners in the best Googie style. Living here is of course more complex, but stereotypes such as LA's awful traffic are unfortunately true. 

I make no apology for including several movies set in the non-glamorous location of the Valley; some may say that it doesn't even count as proper LA, but it's where millions of people live out the reality of their LA lives. This city is complicated and extremely hard to define or pigeonhole, as can be seen in these 15 best movies about life in Los Angeles.

It begins in the most LA way possible; from inside a car, driving down busy city streets. "In a Lonely Place" is an example of a source novel and a film adaptation both being brilliant in very different ways — and Nicholas Ray makes Dorothy B. Hughes' book way more Hollywood. Dix Steele is the protagonist, and an undisputed serial killer in Hughes' shocking novel, but the film brings more doubt and ambiguity to his character. Making him a screenwriter in the movie is also an amusing difference, especially as he is supposed to be adapting a novel, and wants to make big changes. Within minutes of being introduced to Bogart's Steele, he is embroiled in a road rage incident and then signing autographs — this guy sure belongs in LA.

The complex where Dix and Gloria Grahame's Laurel Gray both live feels extremely Los Angeles; one-and-two-floor apartments are laid out around an attractive central courtyard. The ill-fated hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson says of the Patio Apartments, "My what a pretty place, sorta hacienda like, isn't it?" This type of structure can be seen in a range of LA movies, such as David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" and the rom-com "A Lot Like Love," and is appealing to out-of-towners. Dix Steele is one of Bogart's most intricate characters; he always has violence bubbling away under the surface, bringing a constant queasy uneasiness to the atmosphere. The movie's heart-wrenching closing line "I lived a few weeks while you loved me" demonstrates that Los Angeles really is a lonely place.

Noir and neo-noir have always been the best genres for exposing how institutions can hold cities in a stranglehold. But they are frequently rotten to the core, as seen in the police ("LA Confidential"), the car industry ("The Nice Guys"), and public transportation ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"). In "Chinatown," Los Angeles' water problem is at the heart of the mystery. The film does a superb job of conveying the desert surrounding LA — always threatening to encroach — and shows you don't have to travel far from LA's fringes (even today) to find farmers eking out a livelihood.

"Chinatown" also includes one of the best LA movie tropes, when Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is left carless for the second half of the movie, making things infinitely harder and more frustrating. We've seen in "Falling Down," "Under the Silver Lake," and "Izzy Gets the F*** Across Town" that being carless in LA renders characters impotent and they have to become inventive to get things done. The need for both cars and water are two defining features of LA, as is the thick layer of corruption and greed underpinning the "city of stars."

"Chinatown" shows many different sides to LA, from Echo Park Lake to City Hall, and, of course, to Chinatown itself, but it excels when it reaches out to more far-flung locations such as Noah Cross' ranch filmed in Rancho Palos Verdes and Catalina Island, Stone Canyon Reservoir, and the Mulwray mansion in Pasadena. It's one of the best-ever films to place LA in its geographical context.

In 1982, two movies were released a week apart, which had been filmed in the San Fernando Valley and nearby Simi Valley with the heavy involvement of Steven Spielberg. "E.T." was shot in various locations around LA, including Northridge. The Halloween scene and the bicycle chase that leads into the iconic flying Spielberg moment were both filmed in Porter Ranch. Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist," which Spielberg co-wrote and produced, had completed filming in Simi Valley exactly a month before "E.T." began shooting. 

For someone growing up in the U.K. at the time, the suburban streets depicted in these two movies represented a quintessential Americana, with the backdrop of the mountains and cypress trees making them look particularly appealing. Much more than "Valley Girl," the feeling of nostalgic comfort engendered by "E.T." and "Poltergeist" is what was foremost in my mind when we moved initially to Ventura County near Simi Valley, then to the Valley near Northridge/Porter Ranch.

During the bicycle chase, the kids traverse barren sun-scorched hills and a housing development still under construction. Once in flight, large houses with swimming pools can be seen below. Of course, the idyllic family suburban life had already been punctuated by Spielberg long before "E.T." turns into a traumatic horror movie towards the end, as this is a family with an absent father, and Dee Wallace brings huge pathos to her performance as Elliott's mom. Spielberg's LA exists on its suburban fringes, but as we saw in "The Fabelmans," he couldn't wait to get to the movie studios at its heart.

A landmark work that gave nuance and complexity to Black characters in South Central LA was written and directed by a 22-year-old fresh out of film school. Set in Inglewood and Crenshaw, "Boyz n the Hood" was an examination of what it was really like to live in an apparently lawless place ruled by drugs and gang violence. It also captures a time just before the 1992 LA riots sparked by the LAPD's beating of Rodney King. Casting was John Singleton's masterstroke, with Laurence Fishburne's "Furious" Styles and Ice Cube's Doughboy being the standouts, and Angela Bassett, Nia Long, and Regina King providing sublime support in early movie roles.

Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr) and Ricky (Morris Chestnut) are both aspiring college students, while Ricky's half-brother Doughboy accepts his fate as a member of the infamous Crips gang. He knows he's destined for jail or the grave. Ice Cube portrays Doughboy's sense of inevitability incredibly calmly; he doesn't even get particularly angry about things, he just accepts that they must be done. Similarly, Fishburne brings a steadying, quiet but determined force to "Furious," whether it's his insistence in explaining gentrification to Tre and Ricky, or authoritatively asking Tre to hand over a gun. The performances are extraordinary across the board, and Singleton's assured direction while working with these actors is exceptional for one so young. "Boyz n the Hood" was one of the most significant movies of the '90s, providing humanity to a situation that was mostly just conveyed via fearmongering stats.

A list of LA movies that doesn't include a movie focused on Latinx characters would be ridiculous, as they make up 50% of the population of the city. The Latinx community is, of course, vastly underrepresented when it comes to movies in general, and particularly LA movies, but 2001-2006 offered several low-budget independent films that centered on them. While Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" (2001) was making headway for mainstream Latinx representation, there was also "Tortilla Soup" (2001), "Quinceañera" (2006), and "Walkout" (2006). Neighborhoods including East LA, Boyle Heights, and Lincoln Heights are depicted in most of these films, including in Patricia Cardoso's "Real Women Have Curves."

America Ferrara stars as Ana, a young woman who has just left high school and wants to go to college, but her mother wants Ana to support her sister Estela's business making quinceañera and prom dresses. Ana's relationship with her mother will be familiar to many girls and women, especially if they do not fit conventional standards regarding beauty, weight, and the kind of clothes they want to wear. Ferrara is impressive in her debut role, as is Ingrid Oliu as Estela. Some of the best scenes take place in the clothing factory, where a small team of women sometimes clash and sometimes bond. "Real Women Have Curves" is a great example of a film being incredibly specific to a particular community, but somehow the themes become more universal because of that. It's an underseen gem that deserves a bigger audience.

Ambulance-chasing lawyers are very much a feature of LA, with billboards advertising their wares everywhere you look. In 2014, Dan Gilroy made a film about a different kind of ambulance chaser. These are the freelance camera crews who arrive at the scene of arrests and accidents to capture the grisliest possible footage, which will then be broadcast to a hungry public and consumed with their cornflakes; "If it bleeds, it leads." Jake Gyllenhaal gives one of his best performances in "Nightcrawler" as Lou Bloom, an ambitious young man who has learned everything he knows from self-improvement tutorials on the internet. He exploits the homeless Rick (Riz Ahmed) as his lackey. 

Bloom begins a "professional" relationship with Nina (Rene Russo), a ruthless news producer who stokes the flames of fear in her target audience and is particularly looking for examples of "urban crime creeping into the suburbs." In the case of LA, these are the "upscale and affluent neighborhoods" in the Valley, such as Porter Ranch, Granada Hills, West Hills, and Woodland Hills. A pivotal moment comes when Bloom witnesses a home invasion and triple murder in Granada Hills before the police arrive on the scene. He then withholds information so he can later capture the perpetrators' arrests, hopefully including a shootout and car chase for maximum ratings impact. "Nightcrawler" is a sensational neo-noir that features some of the most cravenly self-serving characters you'll ever meet. It covers some of LA's primary concerns; cars, crime, fame, homelessness, inequality, freelancers, and the gig economy. It's a modern masterpiece.

Most LA neo-noirs are set largely at night and rely on street lights, car lights, and neon signs to create an atmosphere. When Karyn Kusama made her twist on the genre, she and cinematographer Julie Kirkwood went the opposite route — with mostly daytime scenes emphasizing how dusty and bleached-out LA can look. "Destroyer" is a narrative split into two halves and also has a cyclical, looping sense of inevitability driving its central character Detective Bell (Nicole Kidman), and is arguably as ingeniously plotted as "Memento." Bell is a product of SoCal weather — her younger self is freckled by the sun, and her lack of sunblock has caught up with her in the present day, as her skin is as dry and cracked as the parched ground.

Kidman is extraordinary as the destroyer and the destroyed. She's been deeply wounded — both physically and emotionally — by her past, and is now passing that onto her daughter, despite her intentions. Her physicality is coyote-like, lumbering into situations where she stalks and scopes out her prey. "Destroyer" traverses a wide range of LA locations, including the Palos Verdes cliff-top home of an obnoxious lawyer (Bradley Whitford), the suburban home of Bell's ex-husband (Scoot McNairy) with Bird of Paradise on the front lawn, and the seedy apartment of Petra (Tatiana Maslany). There's also a distinctly LA bank heist that feels inspired by Kathryn Bigelow's "Point Break" with its use of masks, pump-action shotguns, and exploding dye packs. "Destroyer" is criminally underseen and deserves far more eyes, as it's one of the best modern LA noirs.