L.A.'s story is complicated, but they got it

City swap: For all the force and glamour of its treatment of L.A., "Collateral" was originally to have taken place in New York.

-- S.T.

10 "The Big

Lebowski" (1998)

According to Coen brothers lore, the writer-directors' rationale for setting their surrealistic comedy "The Big Lebowski" in Los Angeles was disappointingly simple: real-life friends who inspired its most vivid characters -- the White Russian-swigging slacker protagonist "the Dude" (Jeff Bridges) and his Vietnam veteran bowling buddy Walter (John Goodman) -- lived in the city at the time; it was reason enough for the understated filmmakers to shoot what has been called "the first cult film of the Internet age" here. Its basic premise centers around mistaken identity and a kidnapping gone cartoonishly awry. But by encompassing a wide swath of L.A.'s crazy quilt of social milieus -- porn stars and German nihilists, a trash-talking Latino pederast and the titular "millionaire" in his coddled Westside mansion -- "Lebowski's" narrative structure pays implicit homage to the detective fiction of local lit hero Raymond Chandler.

Changing lanes: Although Hollywood Star Lanes, site of several of "Lebowski's" most delirious comic scenes, was torn down and replaced by an elementary school in 2002, some of its neon signs and retro decor wound up at Lucky Strikes, the bowling alley at the Hollywood & Highland Center, home of the Oscars.

-- C.L.

11 "Mulholland Drive" (2001)

Named for the street that runs the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains and Hollywood Hills, "Mulholland Drive" could just as easily be called "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Less a story than a puzzle box, "Mulholland Drive" may best be viewed as an allegory of what it's like to move to Los Angeles, an abstracted look at the dreamers who come here and the rough-and-tumble life they find instead. It feels limiting to reduce writer-director David Lynch's masterful enigma to being simply "about" something -- the film is too enveloping, too absorbing, too plain weird for anything so mundane as meaning -- but it seems to revolve around diners, driving, desire, the mysteries of casting, desperation, an eye for design, death, personality transference and a Spanish-language rendition of "Crying" by Roy Orbison. "Mulholland Drive" was also the breakthrough performance for Naomi Watts, who brought real pathos and emotional uncertainty to her role, portraying the heartbreaking truths many star-struck transplants never quite grasp. There is the dream. There is reality. There may be a difference.