Los Angeles Plays Itself

I'm not pleased with the other reviews. Here this film is in a nutshell: Thom Andersen has intercut somewhere close to 500 clips from films shot, or set, in Los Angeles and environs. If you are interested in film, film history, Los Angeles, Architecture, and documentaries that are narrated - this is your film. Everybody else: not your film. I'm amazed that this film could be made. The work required to obtain the clips from nearly 80 years of commercial film (let alone the copyright permissions) is incredible. Andersen's assembly of the clips is cogent - itself a huge accomplishment. If some don't like Thom's analysis - then substitute your own. You have the clips thanks to Thom Andersen's incredible work - now, come up with your own analysis.

Enjoyed seeing some great historical clips of Los Angeles, but the film’s narrator is an angry guy with some Stone Age political opinions who speaks in a monotone. Watching with the sound off might be a good option.

I always finish films. But I could not finish this one. I made it through an hour before the monotone, disgruntled narration did me in. I like the idea of this documentary, but the execution is unfocused and ineffective. I had not seen or heard of a huge portion of the films cited, and it mostly sounded like the filmmaker wanted to spend 3 very long hours airing his many, many, many grievances to a pained audience. I wish someone would pick up the idea for this film and do in properly… and concisely!

This doc received rave reviews by the LA Times and KCRW so I put it on my list. The clips are fun, the narration not so much. I’ll finish my review when I finish watching this 2hr50min, repetitive, conflicted film.

This movie has a lot of good clips and information for Hollywood and film buffs. But the narration is really, really flat in tone. I wasn't able to stick with it to the end.

parts of it were informative…..parts of it i wanted to shoot myself….and i had an issue with the fact that if it was a throw away fact for him he didn’t care if he got it right…..ie. Valley Girl did not come out in 1993 but 1983…..seems silly…but if you are doing a documentary then get all your facts straight……since it’s not that hard to check…… but a three hour doc seems silly…..then it made me wish that Ken Burns would do something like this……

This movie is unique, informative, and unexpected. This will be included in the canon of any literature or cinema relating to the city of Los Angeles. Really, it could represent a history of any city, it just so happens that cinema has documented Los Angeles so completely and that this filmmaker is from there. I am not a cinemophile and am from the East Coast, and I still found this movie enthralling.

I made it through 20 minutes before I had to shut it off. As a working Production Designer in Hollywood I was really looking forward to viewing this documentary! But instead, you get B film clips narrated over by a bitter monotone narrator who sounds like he finally got his platform to spew his bitter grapes about Hollywood. Instead of showing locations and talking about how they were used, he talked, rather snidely, I might add about how a location was used for various films..well duh! That is what we do...we take the ordinary and make it amazing. It is the craft of Production Design after all. I truly did not get why he was even talking about the locations after a while, since all I could hear was the subtext, can you believe it? I guess he is being ironic in the title of this...who knows, but all I can say is "I'm sorry no one bought your script, and you now feel the need to denigrate our craft of film making." Good luck!

Couldn’t make it all the way through. Andersen has a real chip on his shoulder when it comes to “Hollywood.”