Save 50% on the Criterion Collection at Amazon

The latest Criterion Collection sale is a cinephile’s dream, especially for lovers of New York City on film.

For a limited time, Amazon is price-matching the annual Barnes & Noble sale on Criterion Collection titles, slashing the prices on all available titles by 50%.

The Criterion Collection, currently sitting at over 1,200 titles strong, is a film distribution company that focuses on restoring and distributing “important classic and contemporary films” for the masses.

These repackaged Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs come with loads of extras in addition to the feature film (that’s often restored or remastered), including commentaries, behind-the-scenes documentaries, supplementary television material, interviews, trailers, and essays.

Basically, it’s a film lover’s dream.

You might be thinking: people still buy physical movies? Well, yes! Some prefer a physical alternative to owning movies digitally, where there’s always the chance that rights may be revoked and you’ll lose that digital access. Additionally, older movies can be hard to find on streaming. These physical discs are tangible proof that, as long as you have a player to play it, you’ll be able to watch the movie you own.

It’s never too late to begin collecting, and this curated list of Criterion’s best NYC films is a great place to start.

Set in the insular Little Italy neighborhood of Martin Scorsese’s youth, “Mean Streets” follows guilt-ridden small-time ringleader Charlie (Harvey Keitel) as he deals with the debts owed by his dangerously volatile best pal, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), and pressure from his headstrong girlfriend, Teresa (Amy Robinson). As Charlie and Johnny Boy’s intertwined lives spiral out of control, Scorsese creates an electrifying vision of sin and redemption.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Cast: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Amy Robinson

Over the course of a single day on one block of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy Do or Die neighborhood during the Summer of 1989, the easygoing interactions of a cast of unforgettable characters—Da Mayor, Mother Sister, Mister Señor Love Daddy, Tina, Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, Sal, Pino, Vito, and Mookie among them—give way to heated confrontations as tensions rise along racial fault lines, ultimately exploding into violence.

Directed by: Spike Lee | Cast: Ossie Davis, Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, Rosie Perez

A quintessential New York documentary, “Paris Is Burning” offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty.

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene.

Director: Jennie Livingston | Cast: Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza

This New York-set drama follows Joe Buck, a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy city women finding a companion in Enrico ‘Ratso’ Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida. “Midnight Cowboy” is notable for being the first movie with an MPAA X rating to win Best Picture at the Academy awards.

Director: John Schlesinger | Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight

Another major New York movie genre is the rom-com; Cher’s Oscar-winning turn in “Moonstruck” is the central performance in a film that looks at a multigenerational Italian American family in Brooklyn, wrestling with the complexities of love and marriage at every stage of life.

Director: Norman Jewison | Cast: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Olympia Dukakis

The reigning Best Picture winner (which also counts Best Actress and Best Director among its trophies) is Brooklyn through-and-through. Shot on location all over the borough, “Anora” is an audacious anti-Cinderella story that follows sex worker Ani, who thinks she found her ticket out of the life she’s currently when she impulsively marries the wild-child son of a Russian oligarch.

Director: Sean Baker | Cast: Mikey Madison, Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn

Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, alongside artist Nan Goldin, made this documentary that charts Goldin’s life, from her years in the NYC underground arts scene to her personal experiences with addiction and the AIDS epidemic — all while raising awareness about the Sackler family’s integral role in the ongoing opioid crisis.

Director: Laura Poitras | Cast: Nan Goldin, Patrick Radden Keefe

Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary, but virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father’s fault. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is the story of the family’s sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter in New York City.

Director: Wes Anderson | Cast: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson

Frances is a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sophie. The wry and sparkling city romance gets at both the frustrations and the joys of being young and unsure of where to go next.

Director: Noah Baumbach | Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner

It’s 1961 in New York City and folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is at a crossroads. Guitar in hand, he struggles to make a name for himself in the music world; so far, success remains elusive. Relying on the kindness of both friends and strangers, Llewyn embarks on an odyssey that takes him from the streets of Greenwich Village to a Chicago club, where he meets a music mogul who could give him the big break that he desperately needs.

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen | Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, Adam Driver

John Shaft is a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. Shft

Director: Gordon Parks | Cast: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn

Another classic “love letter to NYC” rom-com is Joan Micklin Silver’s “Crossing Delancey,” which follows happily independent bookstore manager Izzy isn’t looking for love, but she’s forced to reevaluate her desires when she catches the eye of two very different men: a self-centered novelist and the mild-mannered Lower East Side pickle seller with whom her old-fashioned bubbie sets her up.

Director: Joan Micklin Silver | Cast: Amy Irving, Jeroen Krabbé, Peter Riegert, Reizl Bozyk

Revisit New York’s 1960s underground culture with this documentary on the Velvet Underground, a band that redefined music with its at once raw and exalted blend of experimentation and art-damaged rock and roll.

Todd Haynes vividly evokes the band’s world: the creative origins of the twin visionaries Lou Reed and John Cale, Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, and the explosive tension between pop and the avant-garde that propelled the group and ultimately consumed it. Never-before-seen performances, interviews, and rare recordings come together in an ecstatic swirl of sound and image that is to the traditional music documentary what the Velvets were to rock: utterly revolutionary.

Director: Todd Haynes

“The Age of Innocence” is set in a much older, Gilded Age-era New York City and tells the story of Newland Archer, whose engagement to an innocent socialite binds him to the codes and rituals of his upbringing. When her cousin arrives in town on a wave of scandal after separating from her husband, she ignites passions in Newland he never knew existed.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

It wouldn’t be a NYC collection without Broadway. Bob Fosse co-wrote and directed this musical based on his own life. Roy Scheider is Joe Gideon (the Fosse self-insert), a demanding musical director trying to balance his work on a Broadway production with his hectic personal life and a consuming drug habit. Dazzling dance numbers include appearances by Ben Vereen, Jessica Lange, and Ann Reinking.

Director: Bob Fosse | Cast: Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, Jessica Lange

Built around an extraordinary performance from Denzel Washington, “Malcolm X” draws on the iconic civil rights leader’s autobiography to trace his journey of empowerment, from a childhood riven by white-supremacist violence to a life of petty crime to his conversion to Islam and rebirth as a fearless fighter for Black liberation, whose courage and eloquence inspired oppressed communities the world over.

Director: Spike Lee | Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., Delroy Lindo

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