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4. Requiem for a Dream

I hesitated a bit before putting this movie on this list because, of the five, it is the one that lives in the grayest area of whether it should even be included on a list alongside movies about New York City. But I was convinced for a number of reasons. Darren Aronofsky’s brilliant, stunning, and harrowing masterpiece about addiction relies heavily on New York features for the story. While the story is not as much about the City as others like Home Alone are, it certainly uses it as an important backdrop.

Thus, Coney Island and other parts of Brooklyn form the backdrop, as does a notably humid, unforgiving summer outside, another New York specialty. And, more than any other movie on this list, Requiem explores the dark underbelly of the city: the lives destroyed by drugs, the rich businessmen who use it as a playground, the cutthroat nature of capsuled living. In doing so, Requiem delivers some of the best performances by any actors in the year (nay, decade) it was released (2000), one of the most stunning and memorable soundtracks of all time, and one of the most unforgiving denouements in movie history.

I know few movies that stay with you and that are as haunting as Requiem is and, if you look closely, it subtly but clearly sends the message that life in this City can be as brutal and devastating as it can be rosy.

3. West Side Story

After only a few A-List columns you will inevitably discover that West Side Story is among my favorite movies of all time, top three for sure. And, I know that a “Best Musicals” A-List is in the making. But it only makes it to number three on this particular list because, as you shall see, the two remaining movies are even more about New York than West Side Story is, and that’s saying much.

But the Best Picture winner (and winner of nine other Oscars; only three movies have more) is no slouch. It features an award-winning cast, and a simply stunning use of New York City neighborhoods. Indeed, the opening sequence is a panoramic view of the city that is stoic as it is illuminating. Better yet, the movie captures in time moments that are now lost to the ages in New York’s West Side. The once rundown neighborhoods featured in this film are no more, gentrified beyond recognition. But the powerful love story West Side Story tells, timeless yet recognizable as it is, takes on a new and powerful twist unique to New York in the 1950s and 1960s - the beginning of class and economic struggle between different immigrant groups, old and new. This struggle remains a landscape in the city today in different ways.

Thus, West Side Story is both timeless and aged regarding the City it portrays. The sequences through neighborhoods, streets, playgrounds, and rooftops feel and are real. Most exist today. And the movie is a fantastic flick to boot.

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