Cities in movies

Stranger than Paradise = Cleveland

 

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil/Savannah.

 

Yes. The home game scenes for Hickory High were filmed in Knightstown, IN.

Some of the exterior Hickory scenes were shot in Milan.

 

The entirety of it was. New Richmond, Ind., was Hickory. I'm not sure the school's location. Hinkle is Hinkle, though they did have to repaint the lane to 1951 width. I've hooped it up in the Knightstown gym that serves as Hickory's home gym (you can rent the place -- and, yes, it has the 1951-52 state champion Hickory picture right where you see it in the movie). The stairs you see them running up now lead down to a preschool. It's a tribute to the filmmakers and the affection for their home state that the opening scene of Gene Hackman driving his truck through empty county roads makes gray, barren farm fields the most beautiful they've ever looked.

 

I really can't think of a better one than one that's been mentioned. Bruges in In Bruges. The main reason being that the screenplay was written after the writer took a trip to Bruges and the two characters are supposed to represent it's two different aspects: that of the amazing architecture and beauty and that once you get past that it's pretty sleepy and boring.

 

Nashville starred Nashville.

As for my adopted hometown, IMO the Italian Job remake and Falling Down show Los Angeles in cool ways, while 500 Days of Summer shows off my 'hood, downtown LA.

 

There is a scene in a Jennifer Lopez film called Angel Eyes, which is supposed to take place in Chicago, where J-Lo is walking up a street and the CN Tower is visible in the background.

As for me, the Bourne films make use of some very cool settings in Europe and elsewhere. Bourne Identity had Paris, Supremacy had Berlin, Goa, India and Moscow, Ultimatum had London, NYC and Tangiers.

 

Ferris Bueller's home is in Virginia Country Club Estates in North Long Beach, Calif.

 

Lakeshore Drive, not Jeff. This is the Pointe, not the 'hood. Yes, the overhead at the beginning was the Farms and Shores run along Lake St. Clair.

The start of the paintball scene in 8 Mile (White Sun Chop Suey) was about four blocks from where I grew up and a block from my elementary school. Where they hid from the cops when the car died isn't far from where I worked for almost four years.

 

I'm a sucker for movies set in Washington D.C. - I must have spent 30 minutes walking along the tidal basin near the Jefferson Memorial looking for two people engaged in spilling some top secret-type talk. The National Treasure movies might be the best at making the locales active parts in the plots.
Just saw the Proposal and though it was set in Sitka, Alaska, it was filmed in Rockport, Mass. I think I want to move there.

But when I think of movies that really capture a city - its those movies that don't just set scenes in the postcard locales, but hit the backstreets as well.
I liked Striking Distance, set in Pittsburgh, Chinatown really captured L.A., and Heaven's Prisoners in New Orleans and The Firm and Hustle and Flow in Memphis.

 

Memphis in the movies ...

Hustle and Flow
The Rainmaker
The Firm
The Client
Forty Shades of Blue
Rattle and Hum (U2 recording at Sun Records)
Cast Away (the Tom Hanks returning home scene at FedEx, complete with CEO Fred Smith).

One notable locale in the Memphis flicks was Danny's strip club, seen at :27 and 1:55 of "The Rainmaker" trailer:

It's funny -- Danny DeVito sharing screen time with Danny's. The club's namesake is the ruthless Danny Owens, now a guest of the government at one of its fine correctional facilities. Danny's, which was located on the corner of Winchester and Airways, has since been demolished.