We’re Adding to Our California Movie List

Because of reader recommendations, I recently had the pleasure of watching for the first time “Boyz N the Hood,” the 1991 coming-of-age story set in South Central Los Angeles.

If you’ve seen the film, which stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube and Laurence Fishburne, you know that it’s not a happy movie. It depicts South Central as a place where violence is constant and inescapable. But it’s an incredibly moving portrait of the L.A. of that time, when outrage was building about racism toward Black Americans following the beating of Rodney King.

“Boyz N the Hood” is one of six quintessential California movies we’re recommending today as part of the latest installment of our Golden State movie series. You can browse the previous choices, including “Chinatown” and “The Big Lebowski,” here and here.

Below are the other five newly added films, and some of what readers wrote in about them, which we lightly edited:

“The Graduate” (1967)

“‘The Graduate’ has to be on the list. It opens with the line ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles.’ It spans locations from L.A. to S.F. to ‘Santa Barbara’ (the famous wedding scene was actually filmed at a church in La Verne). It also has a few driving location goofs that make Californians giggle. The top deck of the old Bay Bridge went to San Francisco, not to Berkeley. And the Gaviota Tunnel is only on the northbound side of the 101, not the southbound side. The goofs just make it more enjoyable.” — Josh Ashenmiller, Los Angeles

“Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982)

“Sean Penn leads a 1980s ensemble tour de force of young actors (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Forest Whitaker, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Nicolas Cage) headed for movie stardom, with the first-time director Amy Heckerling and the screenwriter Cameron Crowe perfectly capturing Gen X teen angst. A jackpot of great characters and quotable lines: What are you, people? On dope?’ ” — Mark F. Mauceri, Los Angeles

“The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)

“Another great John Ford film, with Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine. Gritty hard-luck stories, but with sunlight at the end. The early scenes are outside California, but California is the goal and the dream of the Dust Bowl refugees all along.” — Burr Heneman, Point Reyes Station