Columbia Pictures; Azoff Entertainment; New Line Cinema; Camelot Pictures; View Askew/Miramax

By Amy Kuperinsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Our state has a rich, varied history in Hollywood. Movies set in New Jersey form a cinematic group that is nearly as diverse as the real New Jersey. Among them are tense dramas, bulletproof classics, offbeat romantic comedies, nuanced indies and stoner flicks.

Rotten Tomatoes, the film review aggregator website founded in 1998, is the go-to index of critical reception for any movie, boiling down reviews into a single 'Tomatometer' score, from 0 to 100 percent, with the movies at the upper end of the scale 'certified fresh.' That percentage sits alongside the audience score for each movie.

We consulted the site to see how some of the most Jersey movies fared, meaning movies that are significantly set in the Garden State, even if they weren't all filmed locally. While Jersey is sometimes just a backdrop for a comedy or drama, other times it serves as another character in a film.

We've ranked them here from worst to best, according to their Rotten Tomatoes score. (Ties were broken by the audience score.)

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50. 'One for the Money'

Plot: Katherine Heigl plays Stephanie Plum, South River author Janet Evanovich's Trenton bounty hunter, in this 2012 comedy based on her 1994 novel. The character went on to occupy two dozen novels — but the movie, despite boasting co-star Debbie Reynolds, not so much.

Score: Just 2 percent with critics, but 42 percent with the audience.

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49. 'American Pastoral'

Plot: Ewan McGregor and Jennifer Connelly star in this 2016 adaptation of Philip Roth's 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Directed by McGregor, who plays Seymour 'Swede' Levov, a former celebrated high school athlete and businessman from Newark, the film is about what happens when Levov's daughter, Merry (Dakota Fanning), sets off a bomb in protest of the Vietnam War, and the explosion proves fatal to the owner of a gas station.

Score: 23 percent with critics, 29 percent with the audience.

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48. 'Coneheads'

Plot: This 1993 comedy, which grew out of the Coneheads sketches on 'Saturday Night Live,' stars Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin as aliens Beldar and Prymaat, who choose to raise their daughter in suburban Paramus, where in the scene above, Beldar puts on quite the fireworks display at the high school's George W. Hodgins Stadium.

Score: 33 percent on the Tomatometer, 37 percent audience score.

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47. 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop'

Plot: In this 2009 comedy, Kevin James is Paul Blart, a disrespected mall security guard in the fictional West Orange Pavilion Mall. He rises to the occasion and rides his Segway to the rescue when the mall comes under threat from a hostage situation.

Score: 33 percent with critics, 43 percent with the audience.

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46. 'Eddie and the Cruisers'

Plot: In this 1983 film, based on a novel by P.F. Kluge, a TV reporter delves into the death of the lead singer of a 1960s band called Eddie and the Cruisers. His car had gone off the 'Raritan Bridge,' but his body was not found. Somers Point, Wildwood, Atlantic City, Asbury Park and Vineland's Palace of Depression all get mentions in the movie.

Score: 33 percent with critics, but 73 percent with the audience.

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45. 'The Oranges'

Plot: This film, which opened the inaugural Montclair Film Festival in 2012, boasts a high-wattage cast in Hugh Laurie, Allison Janney, Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt alongside Alia Shawkat and Leighton Meester. Their characters live in ... yes, you guessed it ... the Oranges! West Orange, to be precise, where their two families are strained when Meester's character, Nina, comes home after five years and has an affair with the patriarch of the other family, played by Laurie.

Score: 34 percent with critics and even worse with the audience — 32 percent.

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44. 'Admission'

Plot: Tina Fey plays Portia, a Princeton University admissions officer, and Paul Rudd plays John, the love interest in this 2013 romantic comedy. John tells Portia that a child prodigy at his alternative high school (who has a bad transcript) may be the son she gave up for adoption.

Score: 38 percent with critics, 32 percent with the audience.

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43. 'Snake Eyes'

Plot: This 1998 Brian De Palma film stars Nicolas Cage as Rick Santoro, a corrupt Atlantic City detective who takes bribes and cheats on his wife. He investigates the assassination of the U.S. secretary of defense at a boxing match. One prime suspect is Julia, a woman played by Carla Gugino.

Score: 40 percent with the critics, 35 percent with the audience.

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42. 'Jersey Girl'

Plot: Let's just say this 2004 movie was far from Kevin Smith's most well-received film (and not a part of his View Askewniverse series). Ben Affleck plays a man whose wife dies in childbirth. After his daughter is born, they move to New Jersey to live with his father (George Carlin) because he gets fired from his New York City public relations firm, and there he meets a video store clerk played by Liv Tyler.

Score: 41 percent with the critics and 48 percent audience score.

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41. 'Guess Who'

Plot: A 2005 reboot of the 1967 interracial dating movie 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' starring Passaic's Zoe Saldana, Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac. Filmed in Cranford and Madison, in the film, Saldana's character takes her fiance, played by Kutcher, home to Jersey to meet her parents.

Score: 43 percent on the Tomatometer, audience score of 49 percent.

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40. 'I.Q.'

Plot: Walter Mathau is Albert Einstein, Meg Ryan is his niece and Tim Robbins is the mechanic in love with her in this 1994 romantic comedy filmed in Princeton, Einstein's longtime home.

Score: This one gets 46 percent on the Tomatometer and an audience score of 47 percent. Looks like fun-loving Einstein can't charm everyone.

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39. 'Jersey Boys'

Plot: The 2014 Clint Eastwood adaptation of the Tony-winning musical tells the story of Newark's Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and starts out in Belleville, following the group's travails and eventual rise to superstardom.

Score: 52 percent with critics, but 62 percent with the audience.

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38. 'The Family Man'

Plot: In this 2000 film, Nicolas Cage plays Jack, a high roller on Wall Street who gets a little 'Christmas Carol' treatment after he encounters a man holding up a grocery store. The next day, he finds himself a father in a suburban New Jersey family (the movie filmed in Teaneck) with two children, opposite wife Kate (Tea Leoni), his onetime sweetheart. The glimpse at what could have been changes his mind about what he values in life.

Score: 53 percent with the critics, 67 percent with the audience.

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37. 'Mallrats'

Plot: Kevin Smith's 1995 followup to 'Clerks' didn't score as well with the critics, but it further established his View Askewniverse canon, with more appearances from Jay and Silent Bob. The movie, a 'Clerks' prequel, follows two friends who have broken up with their girlfriends as they hang out at a local mall where Ben Affleck plays a greasy store manager. Jason Lee's character, Brodie, can be seen wearing a Henry Hudson Regional High School shirt (Smith's an alumnus of the Highlands school), and the Menlo Park Mall gets a shoutout.

Score: 55 percent on the Tomatometer, 82 percent audience score.

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36. 'New Jersey Drive'

Plot: This 1995 film, set in Newark and directed by Nick Gomez, took on the city's reputation as a car theft capital as it follows Jason, a teen living in the city's housing projects who steals cars and goes joyriding with his friends. A critic for the New York Times highlighted one scene in particular (a clip of it can be seen above), when the teens steal a Newark police car from an officer's driveway: 'Suddenly, the audience is rooting for a bunch of car thieves, young men clearly driving off to destruction. Yet the moment is gleeful. This white cop is corrupt and physically brutal; he deserved it. And the scene takes a comic turn, as the thieves pull over a carload of geeky white guys and discover what it's like to have power.' The film's two-part soundtrack was a standout, with music from artists including Queen Latifah, Redman and Outkast.

Score: 56 percent with critics, but 84 percent with the audience.

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35. 'Friday the 13th'

Plot: The 1980 horror classic that launched a franchise is set in Camp Crystal Lake, set in the fictional Crystal Lake, New Jersey, was filmed in the real-life Camp NoBeBoSco, a Boy Scout camp in Hardwick, and Blairstown. A murderer keeps offing camp counselors in gruesome ways until the killer's identity is revealed.

Score: 59 percent on the Tomatometer, but 61 with the audience.

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34. 'Clerks II'

Plot: This is Kevin Smith's most recent film in his View Askewniverse series (Smith says he has written a sequel), which followed the 2001 movie 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,' which saw the dynamic Jersey duo venture to Hollywood. This installment debuted in 2006 and found Jay and Silent Bob back in Jersey, with Jay explaining how the pair were sent to rehab after being busted by a Middletown cop. Dante and Randal begin working at a fast food joint after the Quick Stop and video store burn down, and Rosario Dawson plays their manager, also a love interest for Dante.

Score: A 63 percent for the critics, but a more impressive 84 percent for the audience.

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33. 'The Wedding Singer'

Plot: In this 1998 romantic comedy, Adam Sandler is Robbie, a wedding singer in Ridgefield who lives in his sister's basement and is supposed to marry his sweetheart until she ditches him at the altar ('I'm about to marry a wedding singer?!?' she tells him. 'I am never gonna leave Ridgefield!'). Enter Drew Barrymore as Julia, a cheery waitress planning her own wedding.

Score: 67 percent, but 80 percent with the audience.

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32. 'Dogma'

Plot: Kevin Smith's 1999 film, the fourth in his View Askewniverse series, stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as two scorned angels cast out of heaven who are trying to get back in, George Carlin as a cardinal in Red Bank, Alan Rickman as a seraph named Metatron, Linda Fiorentino as an infertile counselor at an abortion clinic who is distantly related to Jesus, Jason Lee as a demon, Chris Rock as an apostle, Salma Hayek as Serendipity, a muse, and Alanis Morissette as the lord and creator. And, of course, Jay and Silent Bob.

Score: 67 percent on the Tomatometer with an audience score of 85 percent.

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31. 'The Toxic Avenger'

Plot: In Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz's 1984 miracle of Jersey camp, a wimpy, bullied janitor in fictional Tromaville, N.J., is transformed, by way of toxic sludge, into the Toxic Avenger, aka Toxie, a (sometime) superhero who cavorts around real-life Rutherford, Jersey City, Boonton and Harrison. Gore, violence and gratuitous everything.

Score: 68 percent on the Tomatometer, with an audience score of 63 percent.

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30. 'Lean on Me'

Plot: This 1989 film, based on the the story of principal Joe Clark's impact on Paterson's Eastside High School, follows Clark (Morgan Freeman), principal at Eastside, where in 1987, most students are failing. Clark expels many students and lays down the law as a disciplinarian, and his methods, while heavily criticized, eventually start to work.

Score: 69 percent with critics, 85 percent with the audience.

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29. 'Not Fade Away'

Plot: Directed by 'Sopranos' creator David Chase with music direction from Steven Van Zandt, the 2012 film 'Not Fade Away' follows a group of friends who start a band in the Jersey suburbs in the 1960s. James Gandolfini plays the lead's father.

Score: 70 percent on the Tomatometer, 42 percent audience score.

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28. 'The King of Marvin Gardens'

Plot: This 1972 film, set in an off-season Atlantic City, stars Jack Nicholson as David, a radio DJ, and Bruce Dern as his schemer brother, Jason, who wants to open a Hawaiian resort with Sally, a former beauty queen played by Ellen Burstyn. (The movie takes its name from Marven Gardens in Margate City, a place made famous — and misspelled — by Monopoly.)

Score: 71 percent with the critics, 57 percent with the audience.

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27. 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'

Plot: This 1984 sci-fi film directed by W.D. Richter and written by Earl Mac Rauch stars Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai, a neurosurgeon who owns a Jet Car that can drive faster than the speed of sound. He must save the world from an alien invasion, but unlike many other films with this premise, Banzai's journey is a humorous commentary on all that came before. John Lithgow plays a physicist (he breaks out of the Trenton Home for the Criminally Insane), the Banzai Institute is located in Holland Township, N.J., and Jeff Goldblum plays a neurosurgeon named New Jersey. (Kevin Smith was involved in a TV series adaptation until he had to quit the project due to legal difficulties.)

Score: 71 percent with the critics, 70 percent with the audience.

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26. 'Cop Land'

Plot: Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta star in this 1997 movie directed by James Mangold ('Girl, Interrupted,' 'Logan') about a New Jersey sheriff (of the fictional town of Garrison) who uncovers corruption and mob ties amongst New York City police officers living in his town in the late '80s.

Score: 72 percent, with an audience score of 66 percent.

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25. 'War of the Worlds'

Plot: In this 2005 Steven Spielberg film adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic novel, Tom Cruise plays Ray, a longshoreman who lives in Bayonne who finds himself fleeing, along with everyone else, from giant alien-piloted 'tripods' with his family, including his daughter, Rachel, played by Dakota Fanning. (One of the places they flee to is his ex-wife's home in suburban New Jersey.)

Score: 74 percent, but 42 percent with the audience.

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24. 'Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle'

Plot: If this 2004 stoner movie had any more New Jersey in it, it would be a Turnpike exit sign covered in pork roll with a side of disco fries. Sure, the geography is pretty wacky (Harold and Kumar start out at an apartment in Hoboken, stop in Princeton and Newark, then go all the way to Cherry Hill to satisfy their raging cravings for White Castle), but this buddy comedy has endeared itself to many a Garden State native.

Score: 74 percent on the Tomatometer, 80 percent audience score.

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23. 'Sherrybaby'

Plot: More than just a reference to the Four Seasons song 'Sherry,' this 2006 film directed by Mountainside's Laurie Collyer stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as Sherry, a former heroin addict from New Jersey (she goes to a rehab center in Newark) who wants to reconnect with her young daughter after being released from prison (the movie was also filmed in West Orange).

Score: 75 percent on the Tomatometer, with an audience score of 57 percent.

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22. 'A Beautiful Mind'

Plot: In Ron Howard's 2001 film based on the 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar, Russell Crowe plays Princeton University mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash and Jennifer Connelly plays his wife, Alicia. The film, which delves into Nash's struggles with schizophrenia, took home the Oscar for best picture at the 2002 Academy Awards, along with a best director nod for Howard, best supporting actress award for Connelly and best adapted screenplay award for Akiva Goldsman.

Score: Certified fresh at 75 percent, with an audience score of 93 percent.

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21. 'Return of the Secaucus 7'

Plot: This 1980 indie was John Sayles' directorial debut, about a group of friends, some of whom were arrested in Secaucus in the 1960s when they were traveling to a demonstration in Washington. ('Every cop on the eastern seaboard was out that weekend trying to pick off pinkos on their way to Washington,' one character explains.) The pack reunites for a trip to New Hampshire and remembers old times, including the arrest.

Score: 80 percent with critics, 73 percent audience score.

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20. 'American Gangster'

Plot: Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas, Harlem crime kingpin, in this 2007 Ridley Scott film, and Russell Crowe plays Newark detective Richie Roberts, who is criticized by his peers after handing in nearly $1 million he found in a gangster's car. Roberts heads up a narcotics task force through which he investigates Lucas' heroin smuggling.

Score: 80 percent with critics, 87 percent with the audience.

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19. 'Cinderella Man'

Plot: The 2005 film, directed by Ron Howard, stars Russell Crowe as James Braddock, a local fighter who became the 1930s world heavyweight champion after defeating boxer Max Baer. Braddock, who earned his 'Cinderella' nickname for seemingly going from 'rags to riches,' lived in North Bergen.

Score: 80 percent, but 91 percent with the audience.

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18. 'Don Jon'

Plot: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 2013 directorial debut stars the actor as Jersey 'juicehead' Jon Martello, who is addicted to pornography and lusts after Barbara Sugarman, a character played by Scarlett Johansson, until his habit ends up haunting his relationship with the dream girl. Partially filmed in Hackensack.

Score: 81 percent on the Tomatometer, but just 58 percent with the audience.

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17. 'The Hurricane'

Plot: Denzel Washington stars as Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, a boxer and Clifton native wrongfully convicted of murder in the case of a Paterson triple homicide (he was also the subject of the 1975 Bob Dylan song 'Hurricane'). Washington was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the Norman Jewison-directed film, released in 1999.

Score: Certified fresh at 83 percent, with an audience score of 87 percent.

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16. 'Rocket Science'

Plot: In this 2007 movie that was partially filmed in Trenton, Reece Thompson plays 15-year-old Hal Hefner from Plainsboro, who stutters but is recruited for the Plainsboro High School debate team by a girl named Ginny, played by Anna Kendrick.

Score: 84 percent with critics, 72 percent with the audience.

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15. 'Happiness'

Plot: This 1998 film followed director Todd Solondz's success with 'Welcome to the Dollhouse,' another Jersey-set film. Again set (partially) in the Jersey suburbs, 'Happiness' is about three sisters and their family. One is a housewife married to a pedophile, one is a popular author who keeps getting obscene calls from a neighbor, and the other teaches at an immigrant education center and suffers pitfall after pitfall in her love life. The cast includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lara Flynn Boyle, Cynthia Stevenson, Dylan Baker and Camryn Manheim. 'People are always putting New Jersey down, but that's just because they don't get it,' Boyle's character (the author) says. 'I'm living in a state of irony.'

Score: Certified fresh at 85 percent with critics, 89 percent with the audience

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14. 'Garden State'

Plot: South Orange native Zach Braff's 2004 directorial debut stars the actor as a struggling actor haunted by an accident that left his late mother paralyzed. He returns home to New Jersey and meets Sam, a pathological liar played by Natalie Portman. Filmed in multiple local places including South Orange, Newark, Livingston, Cranford, Wallington, Tenafly and Roseland.

Score: The Tomatometer awards 'Garden State' 86 percent, certifying the film fresh (the audience score was not far off, at 88 percent).

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13. 'Desperately Seeking Susan'

Plot: In this 1985 film, Rosanna Arquette plays Roberta, a Fort Lee housewife who becomes enthralled by personal ads in the newspaper about a woman named Susan, played by fashion plate Madonna in all her trademark '80s regalia.

Score: 87 percent with critics, 62 percent with the audience.

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12. 'Something Wild'

Plot: In Jonathan Demme's off-the-wall 1986 romantic comedy, Jeff Daniels plays a straitlaced, yuppie banker whose wife leaves him. He meets the brunette Lulu, played by Melanie Griffith, who brings him home to New Jersey, where she changes identities and becomes the blonde Audrey, and where they encounter her ex-convict husband, Ray, played by Ray Liotta.

Score: 88 percent with critics, 68 percent with the audience.

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11. 'Chasing Amy'

Plot: Kevin Smith's 1997 film, the third in his Jersey-based View Askewniverse collection, sees him switching gears to enter the realm of romantic comedy with his story of Holden (Ben Affleck), a comic book artist who falls for Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), another comic book artist who happens to be gay. They eventually get together anyway, which perturbs Banky (Jason Lee), Holden's friend and fellow artist, who digs up dirt on Alyssa's past. Amy is the girl from Silent Bob's past who he finds himself constantly 'chasing' after leaving her when he learned of her past sexual experiences.

Score: Certified fresh at 88 percent, with an 83 percent audience score.

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10. 'Clerks'

Plot: The 1994 black-and-white indie that propelled writer-director Kevin Smith, Red Bank native, to stardom. Our entry to Smith's 'View Askewniverse' is Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran), a convenience store clerk who works at the Leonardo Quick Stop (and wasn't even supposed to be here today). We also meet an employee of the video store, Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), and Jason Mewes and Smith as Jay and Silent Bob, denizens of the Smith universe that traverses communities including Smith's own Highlands.

Score: 88 percent on the Tomatometer, 89 percent audience score.

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9. 'Welcome to the Dollhouse'

Plot: Heather Matarazzo stars in Todd Solondz's 1995 film about a middle school student in suburban New Jersey who is branded a nerd and faces mockery, heartbreak and other tragedies.

Score: 90 percent on the Tomatometer, 86 percent with the audience.

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8. 'The Purple Rose of Cairo'

Plot: In the 1935, Tom Baxter, an archaeologist character from a movie played by Jeff Daniels, leaps off the screen and into the arms of Cecilia, a New Jersey waitress played by Mia Farrow. 'In New Jersey, anything can happen.' Jersey resident Danny Aiello, who plays Cecilia's husband, also stars in the 1985 Woody Allen film.

Score: 91 percent with critics, 88 percent with the audience.

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7. 'American Hustle'

Plot: The 2013 David O. Russell film starring Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner is based on the Abscam case, an investigation into corruption in several states in the 1970s and '80s, using an intricate sting employing Arab sheik impersonators in which licenses for Atlantic City casinos hung in the balance, ultimately exposing various government officials, including a New Jersey legislator and a U.S. senator.

Score: An enviable 93 percent on the Tomatometer, but an audience score of 74 percent.

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6. 'Paterson'

Plot: In this 2016 Jim Jarmusch film, Adam Driver plays Paterson, a bus driver who lives and works in Paterson. An aspiring poet, Paterson keeps his verse in a secret notebook. Golfshifteh Farahani plays his wife, Laura, whose passions are constantly evolving. A bulldog co-stars in this laid-back poem to Silk City.

Score: Certified fresh at 95 percent with critics and 75 percent with the audience.

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5. 'The Station Agent'

Plot: This 2003 movie, directed by New Providence's Tom McCarthy, who helmed the Oscar-winning 'Spotlight,' was filmed in Newfoundland in Passaic County and other places including Lake Hopatcong and Rockaway. The film stars Mendham native Peter Dinklage as Finbar McBride, a man from Hoboken who moves to an abandoned train station after his boss dies and leaves the property to him. In the process, he meets a food vendor named Joe played by Union City native Bobby Cannavale.

Score: This film, a darling of the critics, gets a whopping 95 percent on the Tomatometer, with an audience score of 89 percent.

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4. 'Big Night'

Plot: This 1996 film, directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, stars Tony Shalhoub and Tucci as Primo, a chef, and Secondo, a restaurateur. The brothers from Italy open Paradise, an Italian restaurant at the Jersey Shore in the 1950s. But the restaurant's authentic food isn't an easy sell to Jerseyans who expect Americanized fare. So, with the help of a nearby restaurant owner, they come up with a plan: invite the singer Louis Prima to eat at the restaurant.

Score: 96 percent on the Tomatometer, 84 percent with the audience.

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3. 'The Wrestler'

Plot: Mickey Rourke was back on the scene in 2008 as Randy the Ram, a faded and damaged professional wrestler in Darren Aronofsky's drama, which was filmed in various locations in northern and central New Jersey. Marisa Tomei plays a stripper and love interest as The Ram ditches his job at a deli counter to mount a comeback, despite his heart condition.

Score: Certified fresh at 98 percent on the Tomatometer, with an audience score of 88 percent.

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2. 'On the Waterfront'

Plot: The 1954 Elia Kazan film, which won Oscars for best picture, director and actor, stars Marlon Brando, who "coulda been a contender" as former boxer and dockworker Terry Malloy in a story about corrupt longshoremen in Hoboken.

Score: A lofty 98 percent on the Tomatometer for this classic, very nearly matched by an audience score of 95 percent.

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1. 'Atlantic City'

Plot: "'Atlantic City': for everyone who's ever needed one more chance," promises the tagline to this 1980 Louis Malle film starring Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster. Sarandon plays Sally, who comes to America's Playground from Saskatchewean and works as a casino croupier, but dreams of Monte Carlo. Lancaster is Lou, a low-ranking member of the mob who comes to Susan's assistance after she's accosted by the mob for drugs stolen by her late husband.

Score: A rare 100 percent on the Tomatometer, but 77 percent with the audience.

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New Jersey in film and TV

Have a favorite Jersey-set film we haven't mentioned? Tell us in the comments.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.