Jonathan Levine’s crowd-pleasing (in terms of audience awards at festivals, not in terms of uplifting Hollywood endings) film The Wackness opens in limited release tomorrow. In case you haven’t noticed from the ads and the soundtrack, it takes place in the New York City of 1994, a special time for the place because Rudy Giuliani had just become mayor and was beginning to clean up the city, Goldie Wilson-stylee (OK, not really Goldie Wilson-stylee, but who doesn’t love a good BTTF reference?).

NYC in the ’90s was quite special for me. It’s when I moved here. And moved here a second time (I’ve since moved here a third time), and watching The Wackness made me nostalgic for the decade. It also made me think of some of the other films from or set in that period, a number of which kind of define my experience with the city.

• 1990: Quick Change - It’s a bit ironic that this comedy, which features Bill Murray putting down the city non-stop, is the movie that really represents NYC on film for me. Actually, considering Tootsie was probably my first exposure to NYC on screen and Ghostbusters was the movie that made me want to visit Manhattan more often (I grew up in nearby Connecticut), I guess Murray was kind of like my ambassador to New York. My current jogging route goes through a neighborhood that’s prominently used in Quick Change, and whenever I pass the spot where I can see the Statue of Liberty across the bay, I think of the movie and have trouble believing anyone could want to get out of here as much as Murray’s character does.
• 1991: The Fisher King - One of my favorite spots in all of NYC is Grand Central Terminal, partially because it was my gateway to the city but mostly because of this film’s employment of the station for a fantasy waltz number in the main concourse. It’s one of my favorite scenes in film history, though I’m not quite sure if I love the scene because I already loved the station or if I fell in love with the station because of this scene.
• 1992: Definitely, Maybe - I can’t think of many movies that look back to NYC in the ’90s the way The Wackness does. There’s Austin Chick’s XX/XY, which I haven’t seen, and there’s this recent movie, which flashes back to 1992 and then continues through the decade. Two fun little gags I appreciated as a NYC settler are the bit about cigarettes costing so much more here and the spot-on comment about how one day suddenly everyone in the city had a cell phone, which they haven’t put down since.
• 1993: Manhattan Murder Mystery - Obviously there has to be a Woody Allen movie on this list. It may not be the best, but it’s Allen’s New York, it’s from 1993, and it’s got that great Cole Porter song at the beginning.
• 1994: Leon (The Professional) - The Wackness will now take over the 1994 spot, but the previous place holder was this action classic. It’s nice, because it has a sort of outsider’s perspective of the city — thanks to both the lead character and the director hailing from France — that I still had at the time. Much of the movie, though, lacks the strong touristy, landmark-heavy NYC that a lot of movies set here display (you can barely even make out the Twin Towers in the opening montage). And had it been made a few years later, it probably wouldn’t have even been shot here. Fortunately, it was, and I got my first cinematic introduction to the Roosevelt Island tram (years before seeing it in Spider-Man), which I’ll always be afraid of riding.
• 1995: Kids - I saw Larry Clark’s film a few weeks before moving to Manhattan for school, and I thought it would prepare me for the worst. But aside from seeing Chloe Sevigny around the neighborhood, I actually didn’t come in contact with a lot of kids like those featured in the movie. Of course, I was hanging out with nerdy film students, not local high schoolers.
• 1996: Girl 6 - I admit, I’ve never seen this, but just as with Woody, this list has to include one film from Spike Lee. And this one is at least appropriate to my experience, because my acting teacher at the time plays an acting teacher in the film.
• 1997: Escape from New York - Thanks to Giuliani, the NYC of ‘97 didn’t look like it did in John Carpenter’s science fiction film, which came out back in 1981. Of course, some people felt like Giuliani made Manhattan more like a prison than was depicted on screen.
• 1998: Godzilla - In the same summer, moviegoers saw parts of NYC destroyed in Armageddon, Deep Impact and Godzilla. So why am I including the worst one, which also made the least amount of money — also the one I actually didn’t bother seeing? Because while it was being made, there were tanks all over the part of Manhattan that I frequented, and though I eventually knew what they were there for, I never got over the surreal feeling of being in a city occupied by the U.S. military (on 9/11 the surreal actually became real, with soldiers visible everywhere, making it all the more significant in retrospect).
• 1999: Eyes Wide Shut - Closing out the decade is Kubrick’s final film, which he shot in England but set in NYC. Despite an attempt to make it look very accurate — I remember reading about the production’s specific import of Village Voice boxes for the occasion — it’s one of the least authentic-looking New York films of the era. At least it doesn’t feature the Rocky Mountains in the background, though.
• Bonus: Tour - This addition is blatant self-promotion, as the documentary features me and the ska band I was in. But it’s particularly fitting because it shows NYC in the last week of the ’90s, when we departed for a Southeastern U.S. tour, and it ends with us returning to the city mid-January 2000.