The mostly forgotten, supposedly lesser Ghostbusters sequel just happens to be a great New York movie. Photo: RGR Collection / Alamy Stock Photo/ This film is a dream of New York, so beautiful that even tragedy can’t break the spell. Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics are the air that the story breathes and that the dancers walk on. But Wise goes for Technicolor expressionism and deliberately theatrical sets whenever he’s focusing on the Romeo and Juliet–style love story between Polish American ex–gang member Tony (Richard Beymer) and his Puerto Rico–born true love, Maria (Natalie Wood). The opening aerial views of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for example, memorialize the time before a large part of the area, then known as San Juan Hill, was bulldozed in the name of urban renewal. Photo: Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo/Ī commercial smash that swept that year’s Oscars, Robert Wise’s film adaptation of the racial-tolerance fable West Side Story feels dated in some ways (the earnest yet stereotypical portrayal of Puerto Rican characters with brownface) and bracingly modern in others, poised between Hollywood backlot fantasy and shot-on-location immediacy.

In assembling this list of the greatest New York movies, we laid down a few ground rules: in the interest of fairness, a director could only be represented twice on the list any selection had to take place mostly in New York City (even if it wasn’t shot in New York City) and, most important, it had to feel deliberately set in one of the five boroughs. Many reflect the perilous reality of living in Brooklyn today and the Bronx yesterday others, the urbane fantasy. Great New York City movies find beauty in the rot of Times Square and ugliness in the penthouses of Central Park West. The anxious pace of a weekday commute, the philharmonic overlapping of sidewalk talk, the sweaty jockeying for position on any square foot. We’re talking about a great New York City movie that transcends establishing shots and dodgy accents to immortalize something distinct about this place. What makes a great New York City movie? Not just a movie set in New York - there are plenty of those.

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