Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #7
Sidewalks of New York (dir. Edward Burns, 2001)
Actor-director Edward Burns’ best film is sadly his least famous as well. This valentine to our city is told through six equally important lead characters; five natives, one born in each of the five boroughs, and one transplant from the Midwest who may be the most exemplary representative of all the city’s inhabitants. Each one has a different take on how the city affects life and love. The debate between Burns and Heather Graham’s characters about who is the truer New Yorker (a Manhattanite or a native of Queens) is priceless.
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #8
Serpico (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1973)
The New York City police officer may be an iconic figure. But the most famous member of the NYPD was also something intrinsic to the Big Apple: a nonconformist. And Lumet’s movie about his struggles with the gap between law and justice takes him – and us – all over the city. Frank Serpico’s odyssey goes through three boroughs and the location footage in each one is so distinctively vivid, the audience never needs to be told whether the characters are in The Bronx, Brooklyn, or Manhattan in any given scene. You can always tell on sight, in spite of the fact that Lumet resists the temptation to photograph telltale iconic landmarks that are obvious to the location. Each borough’s unique vibe resonates intangibly through the camera.
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #9
She’s Gotta Have It (dir. Spike Lee, 1986)
Lee’s debut feature is still his most beautiful love letter to the city and the borough that raised him. She’s Gotta Have It taps into the romantic, artistic pulse of New York’s most populous borough. Before the gentrification of DUMBO, we see these struggling young people making sense of their lives in a neighborhood that feels genuinely neighborly. And the wonderful dance sequence in front of a graffiti-covered Fort Greene Column enhances its time capsule status. This was Brooklyn before it was cool. It was still occupied by the people who made it cool.
ANSWER:
Hoffman and Swinburne Islands
Congratulations to Marie France Lefebvre for getting the correct answer first!
National Aviation Day
In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared August 19 National Aviation Day, in honor of the birthday of Orville Wright, co-inventor of the airplane. Here in New York, Orville’s brother, Wilbur, had piloted the first flight over water, 30 years earlier. Strapping a canoe to the bottom of the plane, he took off from Governors Island and circled the Statue of Liberty, before landing safely. Since then, New York has become one of the busiest air traffic hubs in the world, with two airports in the city – LaGuardia and JFK – and two others serving the metro area – Islip and Newark.
QUESTION:
Built in the early 1870’s these two manmade New York Harbor islands were used to quarantine immigrants who were suspected of carrying contagious diseases and, later, as training stations for U.S. Merchant Marines. What are the islands’ names?
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #10
Midnight Cowboy (dir. John Schlesinger, 1969)
A country boy must learn fast how to live like a metropolitan if he doesn’t want the Metropolis to eat him. And, as this is a city in which one can always re-invent oneself, it makes sense that our hero’s journey takes him from Park Avenue, to Times Square at its seediest, to Andy Warhol’s Factory. The famous shot of Jon Voight staring in shock at the homeless man lying face-down in front of Tiffany’s while the rest of the city walks on as though nothing is happening splendidly represents the movie as a whole. It also represents the path of many a newly settled New Yorker.
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #11
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
To the thundering tones of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue Gordon Willis’ black and white montage opens on some of the greatest metropolitan landmarks we have ever known, as the opening narration states “He adored New York City.” What else do you need? Well, how about a benefit at MoMA, a carriage ride through Central Park, a hilarious boat ride on the lake, a pizza at John’s of Bleecker, an argument at the Museum of Natural History, and of course sunrise under the Queensboro Bridge.
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #12
Annie Hall (dir. Woody Allen, 1977)
During a decade when nearly all notable NYC movies were about grit and grime, thugs and crime, political volatility and vice, Annie Hall came along and rescued the city’s image, reminding everyone why 8-million people would want to live here in the first place. A jazzy hymn to love and laughter, Allen’s Oscar-winning charmer is about New York as a city in which to live. It’s not about visitors or transients, but natives who love the place as their home. Notable is how much of the film is set in apartments. The small rooms, the thin corridors, the passageways to the street, all echo the maze of the human heart that the characters navigate in their city of dreams.
Top 50 Greatest NYC Movies — #13
An Unmarried Woman (dir. Paul Mazursky, 1978)
Set in Soho during its Bohemian early days as an art colony, this classic character study of a newly independent woman finding her feet in the modern world is a splendid look at a city and a neighborhood in transition, mirroring the transition in her life. Alan Bates gives the sexiest and most romantic performance of his career as an artist whose vivid paintings echo the colorful, explosive, vibrant lifestyles of the crowd in which he mingles, and into which the heroine (and, by extension, the audience) is invited.
Beautiful New York 
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