Interesting in places, but let down by a narrator/director who is as dull as dishwater.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 22, 2024

Its first half a sensuous nature idyll, it then gives way to an experimental-cinema bad trip whose fragmented domination interlude is redolent of LSD and Kenneth Anger.

| Aug 26, 2022

Ultimately, Los Angeles Plays Itself plays out as a document of the conflict between Anderson's love of movies and his distrust of mass media.

| Oct 17, 2018

A definitive statement about how the movies have distorted our perceptions of this city's architectural, cultural and historical identity ..

| Sep 1, 2016

Blends a complex kaleidoscopic portrait of the city and a powerful work of film criticism with Andersen's personal story of living in Los Angeles.

| Apr 4, 2016

This unusual brainy pic acts to show, in a provocative way, how Hollywood transforms a fiction film into a documentary.

| Original Score: A- | May 21, 2015

Andersen's inspired ruminations about his city as a filming location and as a repository for other filmmakers' daydreams and nightmares.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 18, 2014

Ten years on, we can finally call this film a classic. It's an unparalleled work of social and cultural study. The new, remastered cut means it looks better than ever.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 30, 2014

One of the great films of the century to date, poignant and affecting.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2014

CalArts professor Thom Andersen poured a lifetime of moviegoing (and his own complex affection for the city he calls home) into this revelatory two-part documentary, a film that trains you to look at things askew.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 31, 2013

The doc bears repeated viewing, even when one winces at some of Andersen's assertions.

| May 5, 2010

Arguably the best movie about movies ever made.

| Original Score: A | Apr 26, 2006

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Using well-chosen clips from roughly 200 films, many of them obscure, Andersen makes a powerful and impassioned case for reassessing his beloved city.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 14, 2005

An ultimate movie clip junkie film, a video store fantasy with a pulse and a brain.

| Oct 14, 2005

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.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 17, 2005

It's like being squired through town by a wisecracking cabbie with a PhD in semiotics.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 27, 2005

... as provocative a movie as I've seen in the last couple years...

Full Review | May 8, 2005

[A] passionate call for a more accurate account of the diverse struggles, hopes, and joys to be found throughout the city of angels.

| May 8, 2005

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 5, 2005