Laurel Canyon — Lisa Cholodenko’s sexy film starring Oscar-winner Frances McDormand peaks into one of the city’s hippest, most hidden neighborhoods, the funky bridge between Hollywood and the Valley, making it and exile.

The Music Box — Sometimes you just have to see what unspoiled L.A. was like when you could still smell the Orange blossoms in the breeze; this slapstick 1932 Laurel and Hardy comedy has the pair as bumbling (of course!) piano movers fighting gravity and a steep staircase. It was shot in front of a Descanso Drive house that you can still search out.

Chinatown — Stolen water is the root of all Los Angeles’s many evils in this darkly entertaining 1974 noir pairing Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

Volcano —A guilty pleasure, the disaster movie sets Los Angeles aflame, with lava coursing down Wilshire Boulevard from an eruption beneath the La Brea Tar Pits and Tommy Lee Jones trying very hard to rescue the City of the Angels from its own tarry foundation. Tagline? “The coast is toast.”

Beach Blanket Bingo — Nostalgic for a time when bikinis were considered racy? Shake and shimmy with this sandy, sun-tanned Pacific California dream with national treasures Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon.