THE BEST NEW YORK CITY MOVIES

Best New York movies? Fuggeddaboudit -- we got your New York movies right here. There are so many great ones to list that narrowing it down to 10 or 12 seems as criminal as eating your pizza with a knife and fork.

I'll tell you one thing: Filmmakers like to wreck New York as often as they like to work here. Aside from a brief, post-Sept. 11 lull, New York has been ravaged by a giant ape ("King Kong" -- three times!), asteroids ("When Worlds Collide," "Deep Impact"), aliens ("Independence Day") and other assorted natural and unnatural catastrophes. So if you think some gigantic monster crawling out of the sea to take down Manhattan -- as in the new, J.J. Abrams-produced "Cloverfield" -- is gonna bring this town to its knees, you've got another thing coming.

New York ain't just about mayhem, although you get plenty of that in Times Square any day of the week. Nope, it's about love, drama, danger, crime, heroism, scams, adventure and breathtaking scenery ... all the good stuff that the best movies are made of.

Here's a rundown of some of the finest New York movies around, and, believe you me, I tried to overstuff this thing like a Carnegie Deli sandwich. In fact, this could be the start of a series -- we're always working all the angles in this town. Got any complaints about the list? Hey, this is New York -- you know what you can do with 'em.

15. "Rosemary's Baby"
We don't know what's more horrifying in "Rosemary's Baby" -- the rent on Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse's Upper West Side apartment, their irritatingly nosy neighbors, or that Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is pregnant with Satan's son. We do know that this was perhaps the creepiest and classiest of a long line of New York-based horror movies, where the sense of urban paranoia is often as terrifying as the Devil himself.

See also: "The Devil's Advocate," "The Seventh Victim," "The Sentinel"

14. "Escape From New York"
The poster for this 1981 John Carpenter yarn -- the head of the Statue of Liberty lying on the ground -- directly influenced a key image from the upcoming "Cloverfield." New York had been blown to smithereens in previous films, but sealing it off and making it the world's biggest prison felt somehow right -- especially after those rough-and-tumble 1970s. Forget that proposed remake: "Escape" remains one of the most clever postapocalyptic New York flicks around.

See also: "I Am Legend," "Beneath the Planet of the Apes"

13. "Serpico"
Being a New York cop is one of the toughest jobs around -- and that's before you even catch any crooks. The saga of the lone officer battling widespread corruption has been told many times, but perhaps not as brilliantly as in the true story of Frank Serpico, with Al Pacino giving one of his best performances. Director Sidney Lumet expanded on the same theme in 1981's "Prince of the City" and 1990's "Q & A," but "Serpico" remains the original and most bad-ass.

See also: "The Seven-Ups," "Prince of the City," "Q & A"

12. "Working Girl"
"Let the river run/let all the dreamers wake the nation/Come, the new Jerusalem" -- only New York's working class could inspire a metaphor of Biblical proportions (from Carly Simon's Oscar-winning theme song). Melanie Griffith's Tess McGill is the face of female empowerment, battling obstacles at home and work in her armor of shoulder pads and towering hair. Points also for setting the movie partially in Staten Island, the city's most underrepresented borough.

See also: "The Devil Wears Prada," "Baby Boom"

11. "Superman"
Sure it was called Metropolis, but did anyone not think for a minute that Superman lived and worked in New York? Just recall the scene of veteran New York film critic Rex Reed entering the "Daily Planet" (i.e. Daily News) building. Or better yet, think back to Superman (Christopher Reeve) and Lois Lane's (Margot Kidder) heart-stopping flight over the city's skyscrapers. This town can fend for itself, thank you, but having a superhero or two around ain't a bad thing either.

See also: "Spider-Man," "Spider-Man 2"

10. "West Side Story"
Although filmed mostly on Los Angeles soundstages, this remains the greatest musical ever made about New York. Many other New York-based musicals focus on Broadway and show business -- "West Side Story" took utterly different issues (ethnic tensions and Upper West Side youth) and grafted the basic plot of "Romeo and Juliet" to them. Add brilliant music, unforgettable choreography and Robert Wise's inspired direction, and the results are pure magic.

See also: "42nd Street," "All That Jazz"

9. "Do the Right Thing"
New York is often called the biggest melting pot in the world, but it's sadly true that once in a while that pot boils over. Spike Lee's third film poured all the city's racial tensions into one small Brooklyn block, added heat and stirred. The result was one of the most provocative and controversial films of its time, if only because Lee makes each viewer question his or her own feelings on what "doing the right thing" actually means. Perhaps the best movie about racial relations ever made.

See also: "Jungle Fever," "The Landlord," "The Siege"

8. "Wall Street"
The New York financial industry can bring a person to dizzying heights and crushing lows. Just ask Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who is corrupted by all that power and money as he works his way into the web of corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Director Oliver Stone captured the electricity of the New York Stock Exchange and gave us a peek at how wealth changes hands in the city, where tens of millions of dollars can disappear just like that -- and often do.

See also: "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Boiler Room"

7. "Saturday Night Fever"
Not every great New York movie takes place in Manhattan. In director John Badham's 1977 film, Brooklyn boy Tony Manero (John Travolta) and his pals escape their dead-end jobs and lives every weekend by dancing at the local discotheque. The movie put disco, the Bee Gees and Bay Ridge club 2001 Odyssey on the map. For Tony, Manhattan might as well be Mars -- a dream land of opportunity that's just a bridge too far for many in the outer boroughs.

See also: "A Bronx Tale," "Queens Logic"

6. "King Kong"
Yes, only the last 20 or so minutes of the original 1933 "King Kong" take place in New York, but the movie's third act is still the gold standard for a giant beast rampaging through the city streets. Aside from an apocalyptic tidal wave film called "Deluge" released the same year, "Kong" was the first in a long line of movies that featured destruction in the streets of New York as a plot point. The final images of Kong climbing the Empire State Building, both haunting and beautiful, elevated the building's iconic stature.

See also: "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," "Q -- The Winged Serpent"

5. "When Harry Met Sally ..."
Enough with the crime already! Sure, New York is tough, but it's also got a streak of romance as wide as the Hudson River. To paraphrase the Beatles, I don't know where all the lonely people come from, but a lot of them end up in the Big Apple. Two of them found their way into this 1989 Rob Reiner comedy in the form of Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, both at the top of their games. For modern love among neurotic New Yorkers, this one's hard to beat. And New York diners were never the same after the famous "I'll have what she's having" scene.

See also: "An Affair to Remember," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "The Goodbye Girl"

4. "The Godfather" and "The Godfather: Part II"
The first movie is, of course, a classic look at New York mob life in the 1950s and its infiltration into every aspect of the city, from its wealthiest to its most working-class environs. The second film, with its flashbacks to Don Vito Corleone's early days in Little Italy, is a still-stunning re-creation of the immigrant experience in the United States during the early part of the 20th century. There had been great gangster films before and there were some after, but until "The Godfather" came along, there was no such thing as a gangster epic.

See also: "Once Upon a Time in America," "King of New York," "The Pope of Greenwich Village"

3. "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three"
This funky, edgy, cynical saga of a subway hijacking is another great slice of New York life in the 1970s, embodied by cranky Transit Authority cop Walter Matthau, whose daily routine is shot to hell when four men take over a Lexington Avenue train and demand $1 million in ransom. Matthau is dead perfect, and New York's hustle and bustle is effectively captured in Joseph Sargent's no-nonsense direction and David Shire's groovy score. New York's subways have never seemed so ominous, and the city's ongoing dance with crime never so pervasive.

See also: "The French Connection," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Warriors"

2. "Taxi Driver" / "Mean Streets"
These are two of Martin Scorsese's earliest and best, which set the template for so much that came afterward. "Mean Streets" (1973) was a perfect snapshot of life in Little Italy and the low-level hoodlums trying to make a name there, while "Taxi Driver" caught the alienation, loneliness and danger of New York life in the 1970s. It doesn't get any grittier than these.

See also: "Goodfellas," "After Hours"

1. Woody Allen
So that's not a title, exactly, but has any filmmaker had a longer love affair with New York than Woody? From the early 1970s right up until 2005, nearly every film he shot was set in the city -- or least Woody's idealized version of it. And while 1979's "Manhattan" itself might be the obvious choice, that film doesn't feel quite like New York despite its breathtaking opening and closing shots. No, we'll go with "Annie Hall" (1977) and "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986) -- the former for its attitude (not to mention the compare-and-contrast with Los Angeles) and the latter for its sprawling look at a wonderfully dysfunctional New York family.