The history and mystique of Los Angeles lends itself to many works of fiction, songs and movies. If you’ve seen the “video essay” “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” by CalArts professor Thom Andersen, you know that this is true.

Something about the heat, the collective dreams and ambitions of so many transplanted people and the general California-ness that leads to self-improvement trends and hippie cults also leads to stories that capture this atmosphere.

These are some of my favorite movies tinged with (or steeped in) oddness, the kind of oddness that can only play out against the background of Los Angeles.

In the mid- to late 80s, a particularly fruitful time for weird cinema, a comet wipes out humanity in “Night of the Comet,” shown in a memorable barbecue-turned-wasteland scene. Two sisters from the Valley with great frenemy energy are left to figure out what’s going on.

In the dark-in-tone but bright-in-palette “Miracle Mile,” not a comet but a nuclear strike threatens the city, leaving Anthony Edwards’ Harry on a desperate mission from a seedy diner to the tar pits to find and save his love.

In cult classic “Repo Man” the prize/disaster waiting to happen is a radioactive car, repossessed by the titular Man. And in “The Hidden,” Kyle MacLachlan presages his iconic role as Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks as another FBI Agent with a calm, assured, and totally wacky method of working – this time chasing a possible alien parasite on a crime spree.

Then, from the new millennium, “Inland Empire” is my David Lynch unsolvable cinematic puzzle of choice, putting Laura Dern through increasingly insane journeys into… another reality? In “The Invitation,” a slow burn of an awkward dinner party goes from deep-rooted rehashing of trauma to a sinister recruiting for what may be a cult.

“The Neon Demon,” released one year later, is also sinister, but under a glossy and soulless façade of the modeling industry – a trap that is sprung by Elle Fanning. The most recent entry, “Under the Silver Lake,” is almost goofy in the way it sets up Andrew Garfield’s character to become enchanted by Riley Keough and then spend the rest of the two hours and change following her disappearing trail into the city and the canyons surrounding it, only finding more confusion and eccentric people in his way.

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