Los Angeles Plays Itself

Thom Andersen's magnum opus, Los Angeles Plays Itself, is a thoughtful, methodical consideration of Los Angeles as a city of the movies — not only as the city where the movies are made, but the city that appears onscreen in those movies, the most photographed city in the world if not always the most photogenic. It's a fantastic, wide-ranging work of criticism, a film that hones in on specific