"Speed," the quintessential Los Angeles action movie, actually comprises not one but three Los Angeles action movies, each a contest of wills between a SWAT hot-shot and an ex-LAPD mad bomber: the first high in a downtown office tower, the second in a bus careening across town on a freeway, and the third underground in an out-of-control subway train. No action movie before or since — and certainly no other so transit-oriented — has taken more advantage of Los Angeles’ mixture of horizontality and verticality as well as its vast size and seemingly perpetual incompleteness.

The video essays of "Los Angeles, the City in Cinema" examine the variety of Los Angeleses revealed in the films set there, both those new and old, mainstream and obscure, respectable and schlocky, appealing and unappealing — just like the city itself.

For more on "The City in Cinema", "Notebook on Cities and Culture", and "A Los Angeles Primer", visit colinmarshall.org