L.A. Stories

L.A. Stories

Leaving January 1

So often we see Los Angeles and its surrounds masquerading on screen as other places, but the films in this decades-spanning collection, going from Raymond Chandler to Gregg Araki and beyond, root themselves in the sun-drenched, smoggy sprawl of this most postmodern city—home not just to movie folk but also conspiracy theorists and bronzed burn-outs, rebel punk rockers and world-weary detectives.

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L.A. Stories
  • Totally F***ed Up

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Gregg Araki | 79 mins | 1993
    The first film of Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse” trilogy, which the director once described as a “cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick,” "Totally F***ed Up" focuses on six gay adolescents who, rejecte...

  • The Living End

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Gregg Araki | 85 mins | 1992
    A raw, raucous, and at times brutally violent road movie, in which the reckless drifter Luke (mixed martial artist Mike Dytri) links up with cynical film critic Jon (Craig Gilmore), and the duo—both HIV positive, and both in kamikaze mod...

  • The Exiles

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Kent Mackenzie | 72 mins | 1961
    The result of an extended collaboration between MacKenzie and his subjects, young Native Americans living in the crumbling slums of Bunker Hill, The Exiles seems to unfold over the course of one bibulous night, by turns melancholy, an...

  • Los Angeles Plays Itself

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Thom Andersen | 173 mins | 2003
    Los Angeles, so the story goes, became the nation’s movie capital in part because of its proximity to a variety of different landscapes, easily re-cast as other, far-flung places. But how has the city represented itself on screen? Tho...

  • Actress

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Sebastian Pardo | 11 mins | 2015
    An aspiring actress moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream, and finds herself orbiting the periphery of show business, while everyday life muddies what exactly her path might be. Ana Coto, star of horror blockbuster "OUIJA", leads ...

  • Assault on Precinct 13

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by John Carpenter | 91 mins | 1976
    As lean and brooding as its skeletal synth theme music, possessed from the first frame with an inimitable sense of ambient menace, Carpenter’s second feature is a marvel of action filmmaking economy. Its siege-on-an-LA-police-station ...

  • Rock 'n' Roll High School

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante | 93 mins | 1979
    The moptop Ramones liberate a school from killjoy Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) in this sweetly rambunctious romp starring P.J. Soles (Halloween) as lead rebel of the student body. The innocent music-fueled anarchy (direc...