BUGSY (1991)
Barry Levinson's robust drama casts Warren Beatty as Benjamin Siegel, the mobster who made Las Vegas a landmark of sin and decadence. The pairing of Beatty and Annette Bening as Virginia Hill proved combustible both on-and-off screen.
CASINO (1995)
Martin Scorsese's Vegas-based opus of crime and corruption was maligned for not being Goodfellas-great. But that doesn't mean it's still not explosive entertainment, with a career-best Sharon Stone as Robert De Niro's coke-addled wife and Joe Pesci as a prototypical desert rat.
LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995)
Glamorous it ain't, but this relentlessly bleak drama about a screenwriter (Nicolas Cage) bent on drinking himself to death seems somehow perfectly placed amid the tacky neon streets.
THE COOLER (2003)
As a sap with such bad luck he can cool any winning streak just by brushing by you, William H. Macy comes up aces -- as does Alec Baldwin as an old-school casino dinosaur facing corporate extinction.
SHOWGIRLS (1995)
It's a howler and a staggering example of overripe taste, but then so is much of Vegas, isn't it?
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