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Movies like Los Angeles Plays Itself

Key Features:
Los Angeles, Cityscape, Film history, Documentary, Meta-analysis, Urban life, Architecture, Social commentary, Cerebral, Director-driven
Tone:
serious, restrained
Target Audience:
Film buffs, Urban planning enthusiasts, Los Angeles residents
Emotional Arc:
['Curiosity → Reflection']

Los Angeles Plays Itself

2004-07-28
Los Angeles Plays Itself Poster - Find Similar Movies

From its distinctive neighborhoods to its architectural homes, Los Angeles has been the backdrop to countless movies. In this dazzling work, Andersen takes viewers on a whirlwind tour through the metropolis' real and cinematic history, investigating the myriad stories and legends that have come to define it, and meticulously, judiciously revealing the real city that lives beneath.

Genres
Documentary
Cast
Encke King, Ben Alexander, Jim Backus, Brenda Bakke, Barbara O. Jones, Gene Barry, Richard Basehart, Hugh Beaumont, William Bendix, Ann Blyth
Crew
Thom Andersen, Thom Andersen
Rating
7.6(59 votes)
Los Angeles Plays ItselfLos Angeles Plays Itself
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Urbanized
Urbanized(2011)
7.4

A documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.



LA 92
LA 92(2017)
7.714

Twenty-five years after the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked several days of protests, violence and looting in Los Angeles, LA 92 immerses viewers in that tumultuous period through stunning and rarely seen archival footage.



Attack of the Hollywood Clichés!

One-man armies, meet-cutes, casual strolls away from huge explosions — stars and industry insiders toast and roast these cinematic chestnuts and more.



L.A. Story
6.489

With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.



Earthquake
6.1

Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.



Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror

Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, this is the untold history of black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre.



Grand Canyon
6.4

Grand Canyon revolved around six residents from different backgrounds whose lives intertwine in modern-day Los Angeles. At the center of the film is the unlikely friendship of two men from different races and classes brought together when one finds himself in jeopardy in the other's rough neighborhood.



Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?



Volcano
Volcano(1997)
5.9

An earthquake shatters a peaceful Los Angeles morning and opens a fissure deep into the earth, causing lava to start bubbling up. As a volcano begins forming in the La Brea Tar Pits, the director of the city's emergency management service, working with a geologist, must then use every resource in the city to try and stop the volcano from consuming LA.



Destruction: Los Angeles

A fatal explosion and sudden earthquake rock Los Angeles, and reporter John Benson seizes his chance to cover the breaking news of increasing seismic activity.



The Decline of Western Civilization

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.



These Amazing Shadows
7.387

Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.



An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn

Filmmaker Alan Smithee finds himself the unwilling puppet of a potentially bad big budget action film, for which he proceeds to steal the reels, and leaves the cast and crew in a frenzy.



Barton Fink
7.456

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.



Street Kings
6.638

Tom Ludlow is a disillusioned L.A. Police Officer, rarely playing by the rules and haunted by the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him.



Cinemania
Cinemania(2002)
6.8

This documentary about the culture of intense cinephilia in New York City reveals the impassioned world of five obsessed movie buffs. These human encyclopedias of cinema see two to five films a day, and from 600 to 2,000 films per year. This is the story of their lives, their memories, their unbending habits and the films they love.



Woody Allen: A Documentary

An intense portrait of the iconic filmmaker, writer, actor, comedian and musician Woody Allen: his life, family and friends; his writing and directing habits, and his relationship with performers.



Playing by Heart
6.579

In a vibrant tapestry of love and longing, nine interconnected souls navigate romance and heartbreak in L.A., where passions collide and truths unfold, revealing that the heart's desires often lead us where we least expect.



The Canyons
4.4

The discovery of an illicit love affair leads two young Angelenos on a violent, sexually charged tour through the dark side of human nature.



Full Tilt Boogie
6.4

A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.



RKO 281
RKO 281(2000)
6.387

In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.



Alien from L.A.
3.4

When her archaeologist father disappears on an expedition, Wanda sets out to look for him. What she finds is a secret underground world, where no one believes in life on the surface and where she and her father are taken for spies.



Collapse
Collapse(2009)
7.2

From the acclaimed director of American Movie, the documentary follows former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter Michael Ruppert. He recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.



Skyline
Skyline(2010)
5

When strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, people are drawn outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth. Now the band of survivors must fight for their lives as the world unravels around them.



Going Down in La-La Land

A fresh face comes to Hollywood to act in movies but only the gay porn studios are eager to provide him with work.



Burning Palms
5.2

A subversive tale that interlaces five stories set in Los Angeles, where no taboo is left unexplored as each character careens toward a dark and often comic fate



10.0 Earthquake
4.9

Los Angeles is about to be hit by a devastating earthquake, and time is running out to save the city from imminent danger.



State and Main
6.3

A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.



Hollywood Homicide
5.2

Joe Gavilan and his new partner K. C. Calden, are detectives on the beat in Tinseltown. Neither one of them really wants to be a cop, Gavilan moonlights as a real estate broker, and Calden is an aspiring actor moonlighting as a yoga instructor. When the two are assigned a big case they must work out whether they want to solve the case or follow their hearts.



Crash
Crash(2005)
7.214

In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.



Entertainment
5.594

Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter.



Rubber
Rubber(2010)
5.9

A group of people gather in the California desert to watch a "film" set in the late 1990s featuring a sentient, homicidal car tire named Robert. The assembled crowd of onlookers watch as Robert becomes obsessed with a beautiful and mysterious woman and goes on a rampage through a desert town.



Battle: Los Angeles

When once distant UFOs become a terrifying threat and an alien invasion force begins attacking Earths major costal and riverside cities, a U.S Marine staff sergeant and his team are sent into battle only to find they must take it upon themselves to defeat an unknown enemy and protect what remains of Los Angeles.



La La Land
7.9

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.



Dark Blue
Dark Blue(2002)
6.2

Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.



Roma
Roma(1972)
7.2

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.



The Idiots
6.5

A group of people gather at a Copenhagen suburban home to break all the limitations and to bring out the 'inner idiot' in themselves.



The House
The House(2022)
7

Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.



Ed Wood
Ed Wood(1994)
7.5

The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.



O.J.: Made in America
8.415

A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.



Duplex
Duplex(2003)
6.1

When a young couple buys their dream home, they have no idea what the sweet little old lady upstairs is going to put them through!



Colors
Colors(1988)
6.5

A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of Los Angeles, where the gang culture is enforced by the colors the members wear.



Mulholland Drive
7.804

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.



Silent Movie
6.5

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them.



The Celluloid Closet
7.138

Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.



Nowhere
Nowhere(1997)
6.8

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.



Tokyo-Ga
Tokyo-Ga(1985)
7.021

German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.



David Lynch: The Art Life

An intimate journey through the formative years of David Lynch's life. From his idyllic upbringing in small town America to the dark streets of Philadelphia, we follow Lynch as he traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic directors.



Battle of Los Angeles

In February 1942 US forces engaged an unidentified flying object above Los Angeles. Now almost 70 years later, the alien invaders have returned.



Sunset Boulevard
8.3

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.



American Grindhouse
6.742

This documentary explores the hidden history of the American Exploitation Film. The movie digs deep into this often overlooked category of U.S. cinema and unearths the shameless and occasionally shocking origins of this popular entertainment.



Concrete Utopia
6.9

After a massive earthquake, only one apartment building is left standing in Seoul, South Korea. Survivors flock to Hwang Gung Apartments, but residents cannot cope with the increasing numbers.



V/H/S: Viral
4.8

As the streets of Los Angeles overflow with camera-wielding gawkers seeking to capture images of a bizarre police pursuit, the same people who sought to exploit the suffering of others for amusement on the Internet become the stars of a gruesome viral video from which no one gets out alive.



Pictures of Ghosts
8.036

Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.



Jimmy Hollywood
5.2

Jimmy Alto is an actor wannabe who stumbles into the role of a lifetime. He becomes a vigilante crime-fighter, aided by his sidekick William, who has suffered a head wound and has problems with short-term memory. Jimmy's vigilante alter ego soon becomes a media wonder--but Jimmy remains a total unknown and his long-suffering girl friend Lorraine is getting fed up with the whole situation.



Tales of Ordinary Madness

Poet/lecturer Charles Serking awakens from his alcoholic haze long enough to take a bus back to L.A. and plunge into an orgy of drink and sexual depravity.



And the Oscar Goes To...

The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.



Warning: Do Not Play

A struggling director makes a desperate bid to dig into the urban legend about a film shot by a ghost, at the risk of her own life.



The Five Obstructions

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.



Ragtime
Ragtime(1981)
6.994

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.



To Live and Die in L.A.

When his longtime partner on the force is killed, reckless U.S. Secret Service agent Richard Chance vows revenge, setting out to nab dangerous counterfeit artist Eric Masters.



Direct Action
5.018

Frank Gannon, a veteran cop, is being hunted by his fellow police officers after they learned he has betrayed the brotherhood and exposed to the feds wide scale corruption of the LAPD. He has one day left to prove his case and survive.



Disclosure
7.805

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.



Body Double
6.8

After losing an acting role and his girlfriend, Jake Scully finally catches a break: he gets offered a gig house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills. While peering through the beautiful home's telescope one night, he spies a gorgeous woman dancing in her window. But when he witnesses the girl's murder, it leads Scully through the netherworld of the adult entertainment industry on a search for answers—with porn actress Holly Body as his guide.



Kings
Kings(2017)
5.653

A foster family in South Central a few weeks before the city erupts in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992.



Brüno
Brüno(2009)
5.634

Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality.



Lowriders
Lowriders(2017)
6.7

A young street artist in East Los Angeles is caught between his father's obsession with lowrider car culture, his ex-felon brother and his need for self-expression.



Some Time Later
6.2

Planet Earth, 9177. The remains of humankind live in a post-apocalyptic environment divided into only two social classes: the ruling king and the oligarchs who inhabit the Representative Building and the poor of the world who hardly survive in the slums built around it.



A History of Violence
7.159

An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.



Varda by Agnès
7.9

An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.



American Fiction
7.283

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.



Kalifornia
6.579

A journalist duo go on a tour of serial killer murder sites with two companions, unaware that one of them is a serial killer himself.



Pleasure
Pleasure(2021)
6.3

19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.



Something in the Dirt

When neighbors John and Levi witness supernatural events in their LA apartment building, they realize documenting the paranormal could inject some fame and fortune into their wasted lives.



Doppelganger
4.9

After being implicated in a murder, a young woman flees New York City and moves to Los Angeles, where she rents a room from a writer. They begin an affair, but it seems she's been followed by a homicidal duplicate of herself.



The Muse
The Muse(1999)
5.2

With his career on the skids, a Hollywood screenwriter enlists the aid of a modern-day muse, who proves to test his patience.



Tokyo!
Tokyo!(2008)
6.9

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.



All That Jazz
7.5

Joe Gideon is at the top of the heap, one of the most successful directors and choreographers in musical theater. But he can feel his world slowly collapsing around him - his obsession with work has almost destroyed his personal life, and only his bottles of pills keep him going.



Blind
Blind(2014)
6.2

Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place where she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. After a while, Ingrid starts to feel the presence of her husband in the flat when he is supposed to be at work. At the same time, her lonely neighbor who has grown tired of even the most extreme pornography shifts his attention to a woman across the street. Ingrid knows about this but her real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over.



Dark Days
Dark Days(2000)
7.3

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.



Bomb City
Bomb City(2017)
7.109

An ongoing feud between punk rockers and a more affluent clique in a small Texas town leads to a hate crime.



France
France(2021)
5.213

A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.



Paris Is Us
4.3

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.



Takeshis'
Takeshis'(2005)
6.089

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.



Side by Side
7.242

Since the invention of cinema, the standard format for recording moving images has been film. Over the past two decades, a new form of digital filmmaking has emerged, creating a groundbreaking evolution in the medium. Keanu Reeves explores the development of cinema and the impact of digital filmmaking via in-depth interviews with Hollywood masters, such as James Cameron, David Fincher, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many more.



The Late Show
6.2

Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who was involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.



Ken Park
Ken Park(2003)
6.012

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.



Cigarette Burns
7.346

With a torrid past that haunts him, a movie theatre owner is hired to search for the only existing print of a film so notorious that its single screening caused the viewers to become homicidally insane.



My Dinner with Hervé
6.236

An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.



Wassup Rockers
5.6

Instead of adhering to the norms of their South Central neighborhood, a group of skater boys opt to bus into Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where they attract local rich girls - and plenty of trouble with the police, jealous boyfriends, and nervous parents.



Fat City
Fat City(1972)
7

Two men, working as professional boxers, come to blows when their careers each begin to take opposite momentum.



Amazon Women on the Moon

Centered around a television station which features a 1950s-style sci-fi movie interspersed with a series of wild commercials, wacky shorts and weird specials, this lampoon of contemporary life and pop culture skewers some of the silliest spectacles ever created in the name of entertainment.



Hi, Mom!
Hi, Mom!(1970)
6.3

Vietnam vet Jon Rubin returns to New York and rents a rundown flat in Greenwich Village. It is in this flat that he begins to film, 'Peeping Tom' style, the people in the apartment across the street. His obsession with making films leads him to fall in with a radical 'Black Power' group, which in turn leads him to carry out a bizarre act of urban terrorism.



CB4
CB4(1993)
6

A "rockumentary", covering the rise to fame of MC Gusto, Stab Master Arson, and Dead Mike: members of the rap group "CB4". We soon learn that these three are not what they seem and don't appear to know as much about rap music as they claim... but a lack of musical ability in an artist never hurts sales, does it? You've just got to play the part of a rap star...



A Self-Made Hero
6.8

Set in France at the end of World War II Albert Dehousse finds out his father wasn't a war hero and his mother is a collaborator.



L.A. Confidential
7.803

Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.



The Day of the Locust

Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her.



Tales of the Grim Sleeper

When Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010 as the suspected murderer of a string of young black women, police hailed it as the culmination of 20 years of investigations. Four years later documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield took his camera to the alleged killer’s neighborhood for another view.



Spielberg
Spielberg(2017)
7.571

A documentary on the life and career of one of the most influential film directors of all time, Steven Spielberg.

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