Dream State

Few things have shaped the world's picture of California as much as the movies. Film has fed a version of the state, the so-called California dream, that nearly everyone recognizes on sight yet almost no one can pin down, Californians included. Veteran San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle takes up that contradiction in his first book in nine years.

Rather than a dry chronology of the state's past, this is a loose, wandering tour through several dozen films that have projected their own versions of the Golden State onto the screen. LaSalle serves as guide with a contrarian streak of humor and prose that is sharp, observant and wary of cliché, clearing away the fog of Hollywood fantasy to look at what is really being shown.

His route crosses genres and decades with ease. Readers move from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, then on to Boyz N the Hood and Booksmart. Along the way the book revisits natural disasters, heinous crimes, questionable utopias, risky romances and nights no one forgets.

By turns entertaining and unsettling, the book takes apart the California dream and examines its hold on the modern world.