New York: 30 Films That Defined the Soul of the City

New York is not a city; it is a living movie set. It is the global icon, the “Big Apple” that cinema has transformed into a myth. It is Audrey Hepburn’s glamour at Tiffany’s, the blinding lights of Times Square, the skyscrapers that promise dreams, and the streets where heroes and superheroes roam. But this is only one side of the coin, the glossy New York that serves as a backdrop for grand aspirations.

Another New York exists, a darker, rawer, more complex soul. It is the city of steam rising from manholes, of loneliness in the crowd, of alienation and hope. It is the unforgettable New York of Taxi Driver, The Godfather, or Mean Streets, a crucible that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants on the margins. It is a living, breathing entity, both an open-air prison and a promised land.

Cinema has captured both of these souls. From the pioneers in the ’50s and ’60s who took to the streets with 16mm cameras, rejecting the artifice of the studios, a powerful visual counter-narrative was born. This guide is a journey through the entire metropolis. It is a path that unites the great Hollywood masterpieces with the rawest independent films. We will explore the asphalt that generated the “independent look” and the stories the studios didn’t tell, for a complete, complex, and authentic portrait of the city that never sleeps.

Part I: The Birth of Independence (1950s – ’60s)

The foundations of American independent cinema were laid on the asphalt of New York. In this era, pioneering directors rejected the artifice of Hollywood studios, embracing an almost documentary-like immediacy made possible by new, lightweight 16mm cameras. This technological and, above all, economic freedom was not a simple stylistic choice, but a necessity that became a virtue. The inability to afford expensive film sets forced these authors to take to the streets, to shoot “guerrilla” style, capturing the authentic grain of urban life. It was precisely this economic constraint that generated a radical aesthetic innovation: the “independent look,” with its rawness and imperfections, was born as a direct consequence of exclusion from the Hollywood system, creating a powerful visual counter-narrative.

Shadows (1959)

This largely improvised work follows the lives of three African-American siblings in Beat-era New York for two weeks. The story centers on the relationship between Lelia, the light-skinned sister, and Tony, a white man. Their relationship crises when he discovers her racial heritage upon meeting her darker-skinned brother, a jazz singer.

Considered the watershed film of American independent cinema, Shadows captured the neurotic and free energy of the Beat Generation. John Cassavetes‘ use of improvisation and location shooting in Manhattan transforms the city into an active participant. Its smoky nightclubs and anonymous streets become the stage for a raw and unprecedented exploration of racial tensions and the phenomenon of “passing,” in a way that Hollywood would never have dared. The film’s supposed “technical imperfections” become virtues here, a testament to an expressive freedom that gave birth to a new cinematic movement.

Blast of Silence (1961)

A bleak, low-budget film noir that follows Frankie Bono, a hitman from Cleveland, who arrives in New York during the Christmas holidays for a job. The narrative traces his deep alienation and psychological breakdown as he stalks his target through a city that should be festive but instead amplifies his loneliness.

This film is an emblematic example of the “Holiday Noir” subgenre, which uses the festive backdrop of New York at Christmas to heighten the protagonist’s profound isolation. The second-person narration, voiced by a then-blacklisted Lionel Stander, is a brilliant device that traps the viewer in the assassin’s paranoid mind. The city itself is portrayed as a menacing and hostile character; its endless avenues and iconic structures, like the Brooklyn Bridge, become elements of a hostile landscape, in stark contrast to the cheerful facade of the holidays.

The Cool World (1963)

The story of Duke, a fifteen-year-old member of the “Royal Pythons” gang in Harlem, whose obsession is to get a gun to become the gang’s leader. The film documents the brutal reality of street life, gang wars, and the desperate search for status in a ruthless environment.

This film is a milestone for its uncompromising realism and for being the first feature film shot entirely in Harlem. Director Shirley Clarke, a central figure in the New York independent scene of the ’60s, used non-professional actors and “real ghettos as scenery” to achieve a raw authenticity. The film’s analysis goes beyond a simple gang narrative to become a vivid, almost documentary-like portrait of life in the slums, capturing a world of systemic poverty and youthful desperation completely absent from mainstream screens. Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz score is a crucial element that underscores the frantic and tragic rhythm of the city’s forgotten corners.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

In this experimental film, director William Greaves directs a crew in Central Park. As they repeatedly film a couple’s breakup scene, the crew members, confused and frustrated by the director’s methods, begin to secretly film their own discussions, creating a complex game of nested realities and multiple layers of truth.

This is the quintessential New York “meta-film,” a radical experiment in reflexivity that turns the filmmaking process itself into its subject. Central Park becomes an unpredictable stage where the boundaries between fiction, documentary, and reality blur. The film captures the chaotic and democratic energy of late ’60s New York, where passersby, including a homeless alcoholic, casually enter the frame and become part of the narrative. It is a deconstruction of directorial authority and a time capsule of a city on the verge of cultural revolution.

Part II: The Dark Heart of the Metropolis (1970s – ’80s)

This chapter delves into the era when New York was synonymous with decay, danger, and creative ferment. The city’s physical and economic decline was not just a backdrop but the active catalyst for an aesthetic of transgression. Movements like No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression, emerging from the punk and avant-garde scenes of the Lower East Side, mirrored the grimy, nihilistic atmosphere of the metropolis. The low-budget, “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of these films, often shot on Super 8, was not just a choice but a direct reflection of the crumbling infrastructure and social collapse. The visceral violence and urban paranoia were not mere narrative elements; they were the city’s latent hostility made manifest. These films are not about decay; they are artifacts of decay.

The Driller Killer (1979)

Reno Miller, a struggling artist living in a dilapidated Union Square neighborhood, is driven to madness by economic pressures and the incessant noise of a No Wave band rehearsing in his building. Driven insane, he begins to murder the city’s homeless with a power drill, in a spiral of violence and degradation.

Abel Ferrara’s debut is the quintessential portrait of artistic madness fueled by urban collapse. The film uses the specific environment of late ’70s Union Square, a place of squalor and social friction, as a pressure cooker for the protagonist’s psychosis. The film’s “shabby” and “tacky” look is not a flaw but a feature that mirrors Reno’s fragmented mental state and the city’s own decay. It is a No Wave horror film, where the cacophony of the metropolis becomes the literal soundtrack to a descent into madness.

Permanent Vacation (1980)

Allie Parker, a disillusioned young drifter and Charlie Parker fan, wanders through the almost bombed-out landscapes of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His aimless journey is punctuated by a series of encounters with equally strange and alienated characters, before his final decision to leave the city.

Jim Jarmusch’s debut film is a “vivid time capsule of a hollowed-out, pre-gentrification Soho.” The New York portrayed is a post-apocalyptic “no-man’s-land.” Allie’s definition of his life, a “permanent vacation,” is deeply ironic; he is trapped in a state of perpetual wandering, and the city, with its abandoned buildings and crumbling tenements, is his prison. The film establishes Jarmusch’s distinctive style: a focus on the “little moments of nothing” and on outsiders, using the desolate city streets as a canvas for existential drift.

Ms. 45 (1981)

Thana, a mute seamstress in New York’s Garment District, suffers two brutal rapes on the same day. The event causes her to snap. Wielding the.45 caliber pistol of one of her assailants, she transforms into a nocturnal vigilante, unleashing a bloody revenge against the men of the city.

A milestone of the “rape-revenge” subgenre, Ms. 45 is a fierce feminist response to the predatory atmosphere of early ’80s New York. Ferrara uses the “seedy streets” and “cesspool” environment of the city not just as a location, but as the source of the systemic misogyny that pushes Thana over the edge. Her transformation into an armed “angel of death” is a violent reappropriation of power in a city that fails to protect its women. The film’s controversial and “exploitation-scuzz” aesthetic makes it a raw and unforgettable document of urban paranoia and female rage.

Smithereens (1982)

Wren, a young, narcissistic, and manipulative woman from New Jersey, moves to New York hoping to break into the fading punk scene. She engages in a series of parasitic relationships, particularly with a meek artist living in his van and a washed-up punk musician, in a desperate attempt to achieve fame.

Susan Seidelman’s debut is a “vibrant time capsule of the gritty East Village” and its punk subculture. The film captures the specific moment when the punk movement was dying, leaving characters like Wren adrift and desperate. The city is a landscape of broken dreams, from the Peppermint Lounge to the grimy copy shops. Wren’s self-promotional flyers, bearing the words “WHO IS THIS?”, plastered all over the city, are a perfect metaphor for her desperate and empty search for identity in a metropolis that is fundamentally indifferent to her.

Liquid Sky (1982)

In this bizarre sci-fi fable, tiny aliens in a flying saucer land on a New York penthouse inhabited by Margaret, an androgynous model from the New Wave scene, and her drug-dealer lover. The aliens discover they can feed on the endorphins released during human orgasm, causing the mysterious deaths of Margaret’s sexual partners.

This film is the apotheosis of the New Wave aesthetic, a “neon-drenched and nasty sci-fi fairy tale.” Director Slava Tsukerman, a Russian émigré, captures the downtown New York art scene with an alien’s eye, portraying it as a hedonistic, amoral, and profoundly strange world. The film’s unique visual style, innovative electronic score, and themes of addiction, gender fluidity, and alienation make it a definitive cult document of the era’s vibrant but dehumanizing subculture.

Variety (1983)

Christine, a young woman, takes a job as a ticket-taker at an adult movie theater in Times Square. Initially detached, she becomes fascinated by the customers and the films, developing an obsession with a mysterious businessman whom she begins to stalk through the city’s male spaces, transforming from the object to the subject of the gaze.

Bette Gordon’s “proto-feminist film noir” is a crucial text of feminist film theory, shot in a grimy, not-yet-“cleaned-up” Times Square. The film inverts the male gaze: Christine, the ticket-taker, becomes the voyeur, and New York’s underbelly, from porn theaters to the Fulton Fish Market, becomes her hunting ground. The film uses its New York locations to explore female desire, agency, and the transgression of gendered spaces, turning the city into the landscape of a female psycho-sexual exploration.

Street Trash (1987)

Set in a Brooklyn junkyard populated by homeless people, this grotesque horror-comedy follows their misadventures after a liquor store owner sells them a batch of expired whiskey called “Tenafly Viper.” Those who drink it begin to melt in colorful and gruesome ways, setting off a series of bizarre and violent events.

This film is the pinnacle of ’80s “bad taste” cinema, a cheerful, offensive, and gory satire born from the realities of Reagan-era New York, particularly its massive homeless problem. The film is not a realistic portrayal but a grotesque fantasy that pushes social anxieties to their most absurd extremes. The junkyard setting becomes a self-contained universe of depravity. The “melting body” special effects are a literal visualization of social decay and the dehumanization of the city’s most vulnerable population.

Part III: The Indie Renaissance (1990s)

The 1990s saw American independent cinema explode into the mainstream consciousness, with New York as its epicenter. This era, however, is distinguished by a specific trend: the documentation of specific subcultures. Unlike the more generic narratives of urban decay in the ’80s, independent directors of the ’90s turned their cameras inward, exploring the rules, languages, and struggles of the city’s countless tribes. The metropolis, beginning its process of “cleanup,” ceased to be a monolithic antagonist and became a complex ecosystem of competing worlds, from the drawing rooms of the Upper East Side to the ballroom culture of Harlem, to the downtown skate parks.

Metropolitan (1990)

Tom Townsend, a middle-class Princeton student, is accidentally introduced to the exclusive world of Manhattan’s debutante season. He joins a group of young, wealthy socialites for their after-parties, engaging in philosophical debates about their own “doomed” social class and the impending obsolescence of their world.

Whit Stillman’s debut is a comedy of manners that offers a witty and surprisingly touching look at New York’s “urban haute bourgeoisie.” The film’s geography, confined to Upper East Side apartments, creates a claustrophobic bubble in which the characters analyze their own demise. The film’s literary and dialogue-heavy style captures a rarely seen side of New York, defined by social codes and intellectual anxiety rather than street grit. It is a film about a very particular New York, one that feels both timeless and on the verge of extinction.

Paris Is Burning (1990)

Jennie Livingston’s seminal documentary chronicles the African-American and Latino drag “ball” culture of Harlem in the late 1980s. The film explores the elaborate competitions, the “houses” that serve as surrogate families, and the dreams, struggles, and lives of its iconic protagonists, including Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, and Venus Xtravaganza.

More than just a film set in New York, Paris Is Burning is a vital document of a subculture that redefined concepts of identity, family, and performance within the city’s marginalized queer and communities of color. The ballrooms of Harlem become spaces of radical self-affirmation in a society that ostracizes the film’s subjects. “Voguing,” “realness,” and “shade” are not just performance styles but survival mechanisms, born from the specific social pressures of being poor, queer, and non-white in New York.

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

A corrupt, unnamed NYPD lieutenant spirals into self-destruction. Addicted to drugs, gambling, and sex, his life is a living hell until he becomes obsessed with the case of a brutally raped nun. In the nun’s plea for forgiveness for her attackers, the lieutenant sees a twisted path to his own redemption.

This is Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel’s masterpiece of urban degradation, a film that uses New York as a reflection of its protagonist’s “fractured soul.” The film is steeped in a deep sense of Catholic guilt and an unflinching, neo-realist portrayal of addiction and corruption. The city is not a backdrop but an accomplice in the lieutenant’s damnation, with its dark alleys and squalid bars being the physical manifestation of his inner hell. It is a spiritual crisis staged on the grimiest possible stage.

Party Girl (1995)

Mary is the queen of the 1990s New York club scene. After being arrested for organizing an illegal rave, her librarian godmother bails her out and forces her to work as a library clerk. Initially reluctant, Mary unexpectedly discovers her calling among the shelves and the Dewey Decimal System.

This film is a vibrant celebration of 1990s Lower Manhattan club culture and the vehicle that established Parker Posey as the “queen of the indies.” The film stages the fascinating collision of two opposing New York worlds: the chaotic, fashionable nightlife and the quiet, orderly world of the public library. It authentically captures the energy, fashion, and music of the era, telling a surprisingly sweet story about finding one’s purpose in the most unexpected corners of the city.

Kids (1995)

The film follows a single, shocking day in the lives of a group of Manhattan teenagers. The narrative focuses on Telly, an HIV-positive and amoral skater, on his mission to seduce virgin girls. Meanwhile, Jennie, one of his previous conquests, desperately searches for him to warn him of his condition.

Larry Clark’s controversial film is an “unfiltered portrait of teenage despair” that functions as a raw, verité-style document of downtown New York’s skate culture. The film uses the setting of Washington Square Park and non-professional actors to achieve a “painful authenticity.” The city is presented not as a place of opportunity, but as a feral playground where adults are absent and consequences are ignored. It is a crucial, though deeply disturbing, artifact of the anxieties surrounding the AIDS crisis and youth culture in mid-’90s New York.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

Based on the true story of Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist and author of the “SCUM Manifesto.” The film traces her life in 1960s New York, her involvement with Andy Warhol’s Factory, and the events that led her to shoot the famous artist, severely wounding him.

Mary Harron’s film is a complex portrait of a brilliant but troubled mind, set in one of New York’s most legendary cultural scenes: the Factory. The work offers a nuanced view of both Solanas and Warhol, avoiding easy demonization to describe an “unfortunate collision of different worlds.” It captures the stark contrast between Solanas’s radical, intellectual politics and the apolitical, coolly detached world of the Factory, using this friction to explore themes of art, madness, and feminist rage in the heart of the ’60s art world.

Basquiat (1996)

The film chronicles the life of Jean-Michel Basquiat, from his beginnings as a homeless graffiti artist (under the tag SAMO) to his meteoric rise in the 1980s art world. His complex friendship with Andy Warhol and his tragic end, dying of a heroin overdose at just 27, are explored.

Directed by fellow painter Julian Schnabel, the film is a poetic and dreamlike tribute to a New York icon. The SoHo art scene of the 1980s is portrayed as both a fertile ground for genius and a predatory machine that consumes its young talents. The city is a canvas for Basquiat’s ambition, but also the site of his exploitation and isolation. The film addresses the complex intersection of race, fame, and art in a city that elevates its heroes only to watch them fall.

Pi (1998)

Max Cohen, a reclusive and paranoid number theorist living in Chinatown, Manhattan, searches for a key numerical pattern in the stock market using a homemade supercomputer. His research attracts the attention of both a powerful Wall Street firm and a sect of Kabbalistic Jews, who believe he has discovered the true name of God.

Darren Aronofsky’s debut is a masterpiece of paranoid, conceptual science fiction, shot in high-contrast black and white. The “claustrophobic nature of New York City itself”—its cramped apartments, narrow streets, and subterranean subway system—becomes a physical manifestation of Max’s growing obsession and mental anguish. The city is a labyrinth that mirrors the mathematical and spiritual maze in which Max is trapped, making it a quintessential New York psychological thriller.

Buffalo ’66 (1998)

Just released from prison, Billy Brown kidnaps a young tap dancer named Layla and forces her to pose as his wife during a visit to his dysfunctional parents in Buffalo, New York. The film follows their bizarre and uncomfortable road trip and the unexpected bond that forms between them.

Although set primarily in Buffalo, the film is born from a distinctly New York indie sensibility, directed by and starring the city’s underground scene icon, Vincent Gallo. It is a portrait of pathological immaturity and toxic masculinity, filtered through a unique and often uncomfortably funny aesthetic. Its ability to generate empathy for a deeply unlikable protagonist is a hallmark of the character-driven dramas that defined the ’90s independent scene.

Part IV: Visions of the New Millennium (2000s)

The first decade of the 21st century, marked by the aftermath of 9/11 and the democratization of cinema through digital technology, saw the emergence of a new kind of realism. Abandoning the idea of capturing the “grand story of New York,” filmmakers focused on “micro-realism.” Thanks to the reduced costs of digital video, storytelling fragmented into millions of tiny, intensely personal, and often anti-dramatic stories. The focus shifted from documenting “the city” to capturing “a life” within the city, moving from a sociological analysis to a more intimate and psychological portrait, as seen in the daily routines of immigrants on the margins or the awkward conversations of the Mumblecore movement.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Darren Aronofsky’s harrowing adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel follows four interconnected characters from Coney Island: a lonely widow, her drug-dealing son, his girlfriend, and his best friend. Their lives and dreams are systematically destroyed by their growing addictions.

This film is a visceral and hallucinatory experience that uses a kinetic, hip-hop-influenced editing style to immerse the viewer in the subjective state of addiction. The setting of Coney Island and Brighton Beach is not that of a nostalgic summer playground, but a faded and desolate landscape of broken promises, mirroring the characters’ shattered hopes. The film is a brutal elegy to the American Dream, staged in one of New York’s most iconic and melancholic locations.

Raising Victor Vargas (2002)

Victor, a cocky Dominican teenager from the Lower East Side, to save his reputation after an embarrassing rumor spreads, courts the neighborhood beauty, Judy. This begins a charming and awkward courtship that forces him to confront the difference between his playboy persona and his true self.

Peter Sollett’s film is a milestone in authentic community representation, using non-professional actors from the predominantly Dominican neighborhood it portrays. The film captures the specific language, culture, and environment of the Lower East Side with warmth and humor, avoiding the clichés of “ghetto tales.” Here, the city is not a place of violence and danger, but a vibrant and close-knit community, a powerful example of how independent cinema can provide a relatable and humanizing context to lives rarely seen on screen.

Man Push Cart (2005)

Ahmad, once a rock star in Pakistan, now lives a solitary existence in New York, selling coffee and bagels from a cart in Manhattan. The film follows his grueling daily routine and his silent struggle to find human connection and a better life in a city that is largely indifferent to him.

Ramin Bahrani’s film is a masterpiece of post-9/11 neorealism, ennobling the hard work of the city’s invisible immigrant laborers. The work explores the theme of Camus’s “Myth of Sisyphus,” with Ahmad’s daily act of pulling his heavy cart through the streets serving as a powerful metaphor for his struggle. The film presents a New York that is both beautiful and “coldly indifferent,” a city of lonely souls whose stories are rarely told.

Mutual Appreciation (2005)

Alan, a musician, moves to New York after his band breaks up. He moves in with his friend Lawrence and his girlfriend Ellie. The film chronicles the awkward pauses, stilted conversations, and unspoken romantic tensions that develop between the three, against the backdrop of the city’s independent music scene.

Andrew Bujalski’s film is a key text of the Mumblecore movement, shot in grainy black and white and set in the “hip Brooklyn” of the mid-2000s. The film captures the specific milieu of creative twenty-something life, avoiding dramatic plot to focus on the “texture” of daily interactions. The New York setting—shabby apartments, basement clubs—is not at all glamorous, but presented as the authentic backdrop for a generation’s search for connection and artistic purpose.

Daddy Longlegs (2009)

The film follows two chaotic weeks in the life of Lenny, a manic and irresponsible Manhattan movie projectionist, who has custody of his two young sons. The narrative follows his well-intentioned but often disastrous attempts at fatherhood, blurring the line between fierce love and parental neglect.

The Safdie brothers’ semi-autobiographical film is a disturbing and empathetic portrait of dysfunctional fatherhood. Its “New York neorealism truth” and handheld Super 16mm photography create an intimate, almost uncomfortably close perspective on Lenny’s chaotic life. It is a film that captures the anxiety of raising children in the relentless and unforgiving environment of New York, finding unexpected humanity in a seemingly irredeemable father.

Part V: Contemporary Cartographies (2010s)

The last decade has seen New York independent cinema internalize the city, transforming it into a psychological state. The urban environment is no longer just a physical space or a social ecosystem but becomes a direct extension of the characters’ minds. The sleek, sterile New York of Shame mirrors its protagonist’s emotional emptiness; the black-and-white city of Frances Ha is a Nouvelle Vague dreamscape reflecting its heroine’s idealism; and the nocturnal, neon-drenched Queens of Good Time is an adrenaline-fueled projection of its anti-hero’s desperation. The style of each film is designed to render a subjective, psychological version of New York: the city is what the character feels.

Tiny Furniture (2010)

Aura, a recent college graduate, moves back into her successful artist mother’s large Tribeca loft. Feeling adrift, she navigates awkward romantic encounters, a dead-end job, and a strained relationship with her successful mother and precocious sister, trying to find her place in the world.

The film that launched Lena Dunham is a sharply observed semi-autobiographical comedy that announced the arrival of a major voice for the Millennial generation. The film focuses on a very specific and privileged corner of New York, the Tribeca art world, and its frank, unglamorous portrayal of post-college malaise. The film’s “narrow vision” is its own subject, capturing the anxieties and sense of entitlement of a generation raised in a bubble of creative and economic privilege.

Shame (2011)

Brandon is a successful man in New York who secretly battles a crippling sex addiction. His meticulously controlled and isolated life is upended by the unexpected arrival of his unstable and needy sister, Sissy, forcing him to confront his inner demons.

Steve McQueen’s film is a raw, clinical, and visually stunning portrait of addiction and loneliness in the modern metropolis. The New York setting—gleaming offices, sterile luxury apartments, anonymous hotel rooms—reflects Brandon’s emotional emptiness. The city is a playground for his compulsions but offers no real connection. It is a cold, beautiful, and isolating landscape, a perfect visual metaphor for the protagonist’s inner “shame.

Frances Ha (2012)

Frances, a 27-year-old apprentice dancer, sees her life fall apart when her best friend and roommate, Sophie, decides to move out. The film follows Frances’s clumsy, charming, and often lonely journey as she moves between apartments, jobs, and friendships, trying to find her footing.

A collaboration between Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, this film is a love letter to female friendship, youthful ambition, and New York itself, shot in luminous black and white. Its explicit references to the French New Wave and Woody Allen’s Manhattan position it as a modern “soromance” (a romance between friends). The city is a romantic playground, and Frances’s dancing run through the streets, set to a David Bowie song, is an iconic expression of the joy and struggle of being young and “undateable” in New York.

Heaven Knows What (2014)

The film immerses us in the life of Harley, a young heroin addict on the streets of New York, and her all-consuming, destructive love for the equally self-destructive Ilya. It is a raw and uncompromising look at the daily cycle of scoring, shooting up, and surviving in the city’s underbelly.

The Safdie brothers’ film is a work of radical verisimilitude, based on the real-life experiences of its lead actress, Arielle Holmes. Its “neorealist, documentary-style approach,” using telephoto lenses to capture the characters from a distance, makes the viewer feel like a voyeur on the actual streets of the Upper West Side. New York is portrayed as a relentless and unforgiving environment, where the struggle for the next fix eclipses everything else. It is a contemporary update to the gritty New York films of the ’70s, but with a new level of raw, lived-in authenticity.

Good Time (2017)

In a single, adrenaline-fueled night, Connie Nikas, a small-time criminal, embarks on a twisted and desperate odyssey through the Queens underworld to free his developmentally disabled brother, arrested after a botched bank robbery.

This film is a pulsating, neon-drenched thriller that evokes the best of ’70s and ’80s New York crime cinema, but with a decidedly modern and frantic energy. The Safdie brothers use Queens—a part of New York rarely seen in this light—as a sprawling and disorienting labyrinth. The electronic score and the claustrophobic, relentless close-ups create a subjective experience of pure panic, turning a night in the city into a descent into a neon-lit hell.