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Whatever your go-to genre—musicals, thrillers, crime dramas, romantic comedies—here’s a roundup of movies to remind you why there’s simply no place like New York.
At the best of times, life in New York can be disarmingly cinematic, whether you’re walking through the park (any park!) on a perfect fall day, jammed into a booth at a gorgeous old-style restaurant, or riding the Q train over the East River. The hum and thrum of the city is filled with grace notes—which is why, for decades and decades, its boroughs have been a backdrop for some of film’s most hilarious, romantic, and deeply moving moments.
Whatever your go-to genre—musicals, thrillers, crime dramas, romantic comedies—here’s a roundup of movies to remind you why there’s simply no place like New York.
On the Town (1949)
“New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!” So begins the opening number of this golden age romp, adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name (and, before that, Jerome Robbins’s 1944 ballet Fancy Free). Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, On the Town stars Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin as Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie, three Navy men spending their shore leave in the Big Apple.
How to Watch: Stream on HBO Max.
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
One of the most enduring images of Manhattan is of Marilyn Monroe in a white dress as steam rises from a New York subway vent. The iconic scene—which took place on the corner of 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue—is from the 1955 comedy The Seven Year Itch, which sees a restless husband (Tom Ewell) ensorcelled by a neighboring blond.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
West Side Story (1961)
From its artful prologue (the colorblocked Saul Bass graphics, those bird’s-eye views, that utterly irresistible Leonard Bernstein score!) to its lacerating finale, West Side Story set a high watermark for New York movies. Under the direction of Robert Wise and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins (who also commandeered the original stage production), the playgrounds and fire escapes of the Upper West Side framed an epic—and enduringly compelling—urban love story.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Based on the 1958 novella by Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s draws its name from its main character, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) and her habit for taking breakfast to-go while window shopping at Tiffany’s. A trip to the famed jeweler is also her solution whenever she feels sad or lonely. “The only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's,” Holly says. “Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.”
How to Watch: Stream on Apple TV.
The Group (1966)
Born in Philadelphia but raised in Manhattan, director Sidney Lumet made nearly all of his films in New York—from 1957’s 12 Angry Men to 2007’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Early in The Group, his delightfully soapy adaptation of the 1963 novel by Mary McCarthy, wedding guests lunch at the elegant old Brevoort Hotel before trailing the happy couple to the subway and blissfully throwing rice down the stairs after them. All told, it was the city’s biggest film production to date, budgeted at $2.6 million and calling for—according to Maura Spiegel’s Sidney Lumet: A Life —“thirty-five locations, more than fifty sets on sound stages, and more than a thousand costumes.”
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
Filmed one summer in Central Park, with cameos from a mounted policeman, a gaggle of teens, and other random passersby, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is ostensibly about the making of a romantic drama—we see the same marital squabble performed again and again—which soon begins to fall apart. The crew, we learn, is working without any real sense of the movie’s story, structure, or even its cast, and they debate whether the director (Greaves, seemingly playing himself) actually knows what he’s doing. It’s little wonder, in the end, that the working title for their project is “Over the Cliff.”
How to Watch: Stream on HBO Max.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway star in this stylish espionage thriller from director Sydney Pollack. Between coded calls from phone booths and run-ins with mustachioed assassins (see the late, great Max von Sydow), this is Redford in his mid-1970s prime, sprinting around New York as a herringbone-blazer-wearing CIA researcher who finds his colleagues dead. (A bit dark for your taste? Redford also takes Manhattan in 1967’s Barefoot in the Park, based on the delightful Neil Simon play, with Jane Fonda; and in 1973’s The Way We Were, also directed by Pollack, with Barbra Streisand.)
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
An Unmarried Woman (1978)
There’s an interesting uptown/downtown dichotomy at work in Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman, which sees a well-to-do woman (Jill Clayburgh) get together with an artist (Alan Bates) when her white-collar husband (Michael Murphy) moves out. From ice-skating in Rockefeller Center to sneaking in a make-out on an empty SoHo side street, Clayburgh’s character, Erica, slowly carves out a life in a Manhattan of her own—one that exists quite apart from her glassy, East-60s aerie.
How to Watch: Buy on Amazon.
Moonstruck (1987)
Moonstruck, directed by Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof) has everything you’d want from a New York movie: A large Italian family in Brooklyn Heights; Cher, playing the bookkeeper for a funeral home; Nicolas Cage without a hand; dogs howling at the moon over the East River; an emotional night at the opera; a lovely dinner between Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney; and lots of crying, slapping, and unsentimental wisdom (“When you love them, they drive you crazy because they know they can”).
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Crossing Delancey (1988)
In Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, based on the play by Susan Sandler, Amy Irving is Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman, a single woman in love with a dashing European author (Jeroen Krabbé)—but being nudged toward the owner of a local pickle shop (Peter Riegert) by her meddling grandmother. One of the rare (explicitly) Jewish rom-coms of the period, it followed Claudia Weill’s small but significant Girlfriends by a decade, and anticipated Charles Herman-Wurmfeld’s wonderful Kissing Jessica Stein, from 2001.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Working Girl (1988)
Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver star in this quintessential workplace comedy about a secretary making her way up the corporate ladder. Come for Griffith’s iconic transformation from Staten Island naif to Manhattan man-eater (“I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?”), stay for the outrageous, proto-Balenciaga padded-shoulder jackets.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Spike Lee directed and starred in this iconic Brooklyn film, which was shot entirely on Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood. Set over the course of one of the hottest days of summer, the film chronicles the long-simmering racial tensions in the neighborhood. Do the Right Thing was a commercial and critical hit, earning Academy Award nods for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
As a chronicler of city life, Nora Ephron had a flair for both the comically specific and the sweepingly romantic—her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally being the obvious example. A Manhattan movie par excellence, it made Katz’s Deli into a veritable pilgrimage site, besides playing up the almost shocking beauty of autumn in New York. (A year and a half before her death, in June 2012, Ephron compiled a list of the things she’d miss most, among them “fall,” “a walk in the park,” “the idea of a walk in the park,” and “the park.”)
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Goodfellas (1990)
From Mean Streets and Taxi Driver to The Age of Innocence and The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s best-loved films have seldom strayed far from the New York metropolitan area. Among them is Goodfellas, that canonical crime drama starring Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro, Lorraine Bracco, and Ray Liotta (“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster...”). Focused on a mobster and his vast web of family and friends, much of the film was shot in Astoria, Queens. (Scorsese himself was born in Flushing.)
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Metropolitan (1990)
Whit Stillman’s wryly funny indie—set “not so long ago,” according to a title card—centers on a set of wealthy, New York City coeds (and one red-headed, Upper West Side outsider) during debutante ball season, over their winter break. What could easily be a send-up of the insular uptown rich, however, turns out to be a very charming study of identity politics, teenage angst, strip poker, and love across the aisle on snow-dusted Park Avenue. (As a follow-up to this, watch The Last Days of Disco—Stillman’s paean to the downtown club scene and its hapless adherents—from 1998, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale.)
How to Watch: Stream on HBO Max.
The Prince of Tides (1991)
It helps that in The Prince of Tides, adapted from Pat Conroy’s popular 1986 novel, the protagonist—Nick Nolte’s ornery, South Carolina–born Tom Wingo—arrives in New York determined to hate it. Without giving too much of the drama away, his sister’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein (Barbra Streisand, who also directs), eventually changes his mind—and as he falls in love with her, so too does he fall for her loud, unfriendly city. Soon, we see Wingo playing football in the park, strolling past the Corner Bookstore on 93rd and Madison, bidding a fond farewell in bustling Grand Central Station, and slow-dancing in the Rainbow Room.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
The 1992 blockbuster Home Alone 2 brings Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) to New York City. While in town, he visits Rockefeller Center and stays the night at the Plaza Hotel, orders a stretch limo and a large cheese pizza for one (and also bests those pesky bandits who also happen to be in town). Fans of the 90s favorite can visit the Big Apple, Kevin-style, courtesy of The Plaza’s Home Alone 2–themed experience, which includes a private limo and an ice-cream sundae delivered to your suite.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
The Empire State Building has a starring role in this classic romcom: The skyscraper served as the meeting point for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’s characters in Sleepless in Seattle, a reference to scene in another New York movie, An Affair to Remember (1957).
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Crooklyn (1994)
Crooklyn was a deeply personal and bittersweet film for Spike Lee, inspired by the director’s own Brooklyn childhood (and co-written by his sister, Joie, and brother Cinqué). Set in the early 1970s, the film follows Troy (Zelda Harris), a young girl growing up in colorful do-or-die Bed-Stuy with her parents (Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo) and four brothers.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
It was a delightful concept: Over several years in the early ’90s, a group of actors, including Julianne Moore, Wallace Shawn, and Lynn Cohen, met for periodic rehearsals of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, overseen by director Andre Gregory, without intending to actually stage it (l’art pour l’art, indeed). When, after a time, this pseudo-production was opened to tiny pockets of friends and family, Gregory had the idea to record the action, eventually getting the filmmaker Louis Malle (who had directed Shawn and Gregory in another Manhattan masterpiece, 1981’s My Dinner With Andre) onboard. Malle would capture the players at work at the grand but crumbling New Amsterdam Theatre on West 42nd Street, sans costumes or any real set—a perfect confluence of art and life.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Uptown Girls (2003)
Among the many familiar sights in Uptown Girls, with Dakota Fanning and Brittany Murphy, are the old Bendel’s storefront, Christie’s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum (masquerading, in this case, as a girls school); Sheep’s Meadow and Bow Bridge in Central Park; and the Tea Party ride on Coney Island. That said, a fair warning: Ray’s hypochondria hits a little differently now.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Saving Face (2004)
In Saving Face, software engineer turned filmmaker Alice Wu’s feature-length debut, Michelle Krusiec plays Wilhelmina “Wil” Pang, a New York City surgeon negotiating two challenging relationships: one with her conservative mother (Joan Chen), who becomes pregnant out of wedlock and moves in with her; the other with her girlfriend, Vivian (Lynn Chen), whom she’s afraid to kiss in public. Filmed on location in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, the film offers an affecting look at the queer Chinese-American experience—not to mention lots of lovely streetscapes.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Rent (2005)
Adapted from a Broadway musical based on Puccini’s La Bohème, Rent joyfully (and tragically) spotlights a ragtag group of artists, vagabonds, heroin addicts, and people living with HIV/AIDS in Alphabet City at the “end of the millennium.” If songs like “Seasons of Love” and “I’ll Cover You” feel like fairly standard musical-theater fare now (and, indeed, the show was broadcast live-ish across the country in 2019), there remains something distinctly and grittily New York about the film, which reunited much of the stage production’s original cast.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Enchanted (2007)
The premise is (fairly) simple. Edward (James Marsden), prince of the animated kingdom of Andalasia, falls in love with a woman named Giselle (Amy Adams)—but because his marriage would force his evil stepmother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), to cede her throne, the latter tries to keep the young lovers apart, pushing Giselle into a well that lands her in Times Square. Lots of hijinks ensue, and the idea is that, to quote the trailer, no other Disney tale “has ever taken you to a land as strange and terrifying as ours,” but then you see a full-scale musical number unfold near Bethesda Fountain, and the pretty architecture in Morningside Heights, and New York doesn’t seem all that different from a magical, faraway land.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
Frances Ha (2013)
Shot in black and white, Noah Baumbach’s endlessly endearing film, starring and co-written by Greta Gerwig, renders the city with all of the intimacy, romance, and mystery that comes with finding your way there after college.
How to Watch: Buy on Amazon.
Oceans 8 (2018)
For the 2018 all-female revamp of the Oceans series, the film unfolds at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. A sophisticated (and glamorous!) band of thieves attempts to pull off an elaborate heist at the museum’s annual Costume Institute Gala (fittingly, the red-carpet event is also billed as the “the Oscars of fashion”).
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
From Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk—based on James Baldwin’s eponymous 1974 novel—paints midcentury Harlem in lush, painterly colors. It’s led by Stephan James and newcomer Kiki Layne, with Brian Tyree Henry and Regina King (in an Oscar-winning turn) supporting.
How to Watch: Stream on Amazon.
On the Rocks (2020)
For On the Rocks, director Sofia Coppola once again teamed up with Bill Murray for a father-daughter com-dram set in some of Manhattan’s most beautiful hangouts: The Carlyle’s Bemelmans Bar, Indochine, 21 Club…the list goes on. (Released in the fall of 2020, when indoor dining was still verboten due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film seemed, for a time, as romantic and remote as a period drama.) Rashida Jones stars as Laura Keane, a blocked novelist who, suspecting her husband (Marlon Wayans) may be having an affair, gets swept into a reconnaissance mission spearheaded by her caddish father (Murray).
How to Watch: Stream on Apple TV+.
In the Heights (2021)
Adapted from Lin-Manuel Miranda and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Tony-winning musical, In the Heights pays loving tribute to the largely Dominican enclave of Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. As such, its filming locations include spots like J. Hood Wright Park, Highbridge Pool, the corner of 175th Street and Audubon Avenue, and the 191st Street subway station.
How to Watch: Stream on HBO Max.
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