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The 1980s are not far behind in terms of Los Angeles crime movies, of course. I’ve already expressed admiration for To Live and Die in L.A. in the column about best car chase scenes. And any list about L.A. movies would be incomplete without remembering Die Hard. Back then, it seems, having Germans as the main antagonists in a non-war movie was still a thing - a thing that I had not seen since the 1980s until the creators of Pitch Perfect 2 decided to go that route in the movie released last month.

There are two other guilty pleasures I should mention: Volcano, a ridiculous movie about a volcano emerging in the middle of the La Brea tar pits, and where Tommy Lee Jones brilliantly directs the lava into the Pacific Ocean; and Clueless, the 1990s cult classic about life in Beverly Hills, also stands out. When Alicia Silverstone declared that Ren and Stimpy were “way existential,” she cemented the stereotype many of us have of Beverly Hills and the opulence of the City of Angels.

Finally, I would be remiss without mentioning Crash. Now infamous for its upset of Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars (in a twist that only an L.A. producer could concoct), when viewed as a movie about race relations and urban demographic problems in Los Angeles, Crash is pretty solid. The melting pot of the Big Orange boils to a breaking point as the challenges of urban living in the harsh environment of a megalopolis affect rich and poor, black and white, women and men.

On to the final five, at long last.

5. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1989)

Sexy women, crime, and Hollywood collide in the 1980s cartoon meets real-life hit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Featuring a memorable and rare villainous turn by Christopher Lloyd, Roger Rabbit embodies in an accessible and crowd-pleasing way a lot of what we like about Los Angeles movies. The film noir references, the critical but indulgent self-analysis of the Hollywood creators, and the thankless and somewhat ambiguous ending for at least some of the heroes. It’s a rare movie about Los Angeles that also provides comedic value while furthering an actually gripping plot. The genre spanned a number of unfortunate spinoffs (think Kim Basinger’s Cool World disaster), but that, of course, is exactly what Hollywood is all about.

4. L.A. Confidential (1997)

Cool World didn’t derail her in the 1990s, though. Basinger would have her redemption still. In the 1997 critically acclaimed L.A. Confidential, Basinger is one cog in a wheel (a complex web, really) of crime, love, deception, and murder. The film noir themes are overt here, the acting is superb, and the settings are impeccable, beautifully colored, and correctly melancholic.

The theme is once more police corruption, with great performances by Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, and James Cromwell weaving the complicated if accessible story. Curtis Hanson is a brilliant director (with a remarkable history that includes other pieces like 8 Mile) but it is his award-winning L.A. Confidential that will surely be remembered as his masterpiece to date, as unforgiving and heartless as any of the best movies about L.A. ever made. The city is a character more than in any of the other movies in this list - unforgiving, tough, sexy, beautiful, and dirty. Above all, however, it is dark. The sun rarely rises in this film, a telling symbol for the creators’ view of their title metropolis. Falling for the city’s temptations, like falling for Basinger’s, is one’s own undoing.

The sexual temptation theme as a part of Los Angele’s identity was also explored in depth in the next movie on the list…

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