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06/24/06
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2004)
94 %
Reviews Counted: 36 Fresh: 34 Rotten:2 Average Rating: 8.2/10
Consensus:
A treat for cinephiles, this documentary is a comprehensive, academic, and enlightening film essay concerning Los Angeles and its depiction in the movies.
Rated: NC
Runtime: 2 hrs 49 mins
Theatrical Release: 10-12-2004
Synopsis: Thom Andersen is a film teacher, Los Angeles resident, and film fanatic. He believes that his city--the most photographed in the world--gets short shrift on the silver screen. To illustrate this point, Andersen has stitched together a montage of scenes from hundreds of different movies,... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Reviews
Top Critic
Top Critic
An intellectually rigorous but enjoyable essay on the way the city of angels has become Hollywood's favourite location.
12/14/04
Top Critic
The sheer scope is astonishing, as is the fact that even after nearly three hours we don't want it to end!
11/08/04
Using well-chosen clips from roughly 200 films, many of them obscure, Andersen makes a powerful and impassioned case for reassessing his beloved city.
10/14/05
An ultimate movie clip junkie film, a video store fantasy with a pulse and a brain.
10/14/05
An ingenious, if somewhat dry and overlong, account of how the movies have depicted the various textures, tensions and ambiguities that make up the City of Angels.
06/17/05
It's like being squired through town by a wisecracking cabbie with a PhD in semiotics.
05/27/05
[A] passionate call for a more accurate account of the diverse struggles, hopes, and joys to be found throughout the city of angels.
05/08/05
Its formidable intellectual heft aside, there's great pleasure to be had in just looking at this guided tour of L.A, fact and fiction.
05/05/05
Brilliantly discursive, filled with intriguing detours that follow connections only the director's mind could make, Los Angeles Plays Itself, will please natives of this city more than any other.
05/05/05
Top Critic
Three words of advice to those who haven’t yet seen it: Run, don’t walk.
05/05/05
Watching this film is like spending an evening with a prickly, opinionated, thoughtful cineaste friend -- one who has a vast stock of DVDs at the ready.
04/01/05
The commentary alternates between witty insight and opinionated bunk, but it's always fun -- and a must-see for movie buffs.
03/31/05
The film creates a revolutionary lens through which the movies' relationship to Los Angeles will never look the same.
03/25/05
I will dispense with my objections by saying that, with so much on his mind, Andersen sometimes organizes the work in the manner of a saloon orator: 'And another thing.' Apart from that, though, I like pretty much everything he's done.
03/03/05
It qualifies as film criticism on the highest level -- analytical, transformative, and political.
10/06/04
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