Sunday: 25 June 2006
So long as I’m on a movie thang, I might as well mention this small movie from the late 80s that I happened to like quite a bit.
It was years ago that I saw it and I’m not sure what prompted me to order it along with Howards End (see below) except that I remember the lovely cinematography, the compelling soundtrack from Tangerine Dream, and the story that kept me guessing to the end. I know some folks hate this movie, and I can sort of understand why - it’s not the usual American shoot-shoot-kill-kill believable movie that people like. This one strains at credibility, and offers more surreality than most Americans will tolerate, but I found it rivetting to the end. Since everyone knows I love trash movies anyway and am therefore an unreliable witness, I will say that Glenn sat on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, throughout the entire thing without asking for a single break. That’s rather unusual.
I understand Anthony Edwards, who plays Harry Washello in Miracle Mile is quite big for his britches now, in something called ER, but I only know him from this, and another little movie from about the same time, “Mr North”, where he played alongside one of my very favorites, Anjelica Huston.
Miracle Mile is a bleak, sharp-looking, low budget movie about the last hour of the end of the world. Or is it? We’re not really certain, not really, until the very end of the movie, whether a nuclear holocaust is imminent or whether Harry has simply sparked a rumor resulting in chaos.
It all starts very innocently at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles - a boy meets girl beginning. Until Harry oversleeps his midnight date with Julie, who has long since left, and absently answers a telephone booth call.
The call is a wrong number, from a frantic young man in a nuclear missile silo in North Dakota trying to warn his father that the US has pre-emptively made a nuclear strike and that Los Angeles can expect retribution in just a little over an hour. The phone call ends in gunfire on the other end, and a voice suggesting that Harry forget what he heard and go back to sleep. Needless to say, this is of some concern to Harry, who rushes into the next-door diner to warn the patrons. It’s only later that he begins to entertain the possibility that this was a prank. Has he started the beginning of a rumor that will spread like an infection?
Whatever it is, at this point the movie goes into real-time. Real-time is fairly mundane now but in 1988 it was something novel, and beginning at this point the plot becomes a roller coaster of surreality. From boy-meets-girl, we proceed into a kind of a comedy of errors, but then something happens that is utterly shocking and we realize this movie isn’t going to be merely amusing anymore.
There are some very nicely filmed scenes here; most of the movie takes place in the wee hours of the morning. Los Angeles never looked so good, a clean sort of city of the future, with frontlit high rise apartments and the El Dorado of the story - the helipad from which our heroes might make their escape to the southern hemisphere.
So - is this the culmination of a rumor gone wildfire, or is nuclear destruction imminent? You may be certain that I will not spoil it for you. Except I will tell you that it ends where it begins, at the La Brea Tar Pits.
It was years ago that I saw it and I’m not sure what prompted me to order it along with Howards End (see below) except that I remember the lovely cinematography, the compelling soundtrack from Tangerine Dream, and the story that kept me guessing to the end. I know some folks hate this movie, and I can sort of understand why - it’s not the usual American shoot-shoot-kill-kill believable movie that people like. This one strains at credibility, and offers more surreality than most Americans will tolerate, but I found it rivetting to the end. Since everyone knows I love trash movies anyway and am therefore an unreliable witness, I will say that Glenn sat on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, throughout the entire thing without asking for a single break. That’s rather unusual.
I understand Anthony Edwards, who plays Harry Washello in Miracle Mile is quite big for his britches now, in something called ER, but I only know him from this, and another little movie from about the same time, “Mr North”, where he played alongside one of my very favorites, Anjelica Huston.
Miracle Mile is a bleak, sharp-looking, low budget movie about the last hour of the end of the world. Or is it? We’re not really certain, not really, until the very end of the movie, whether a nuclear holocaust is imminent or whether Harry has simply sparked a rumor resulting in chaos.
It all starts very innocently at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles - a boy meets girl beginning. Until Harry oversleeps his midnight date with Julie, who has long since left, and absently answers a telephone booth call.
The call is a wrong number, from a frantic young man in a nuclear missile silo in North Dakota trying to warn his father that the US has pre-emptively made a nuclear strike and that Los Angeles can expect retribution in just a little over an hour. The phone call ends in gunfire on the other end, and a voice suggesting that Harry forget what he heard and go back to sleep. Needless to say, this is of some concern to Harry, who rushes into the next-door diner to warn the patrons. It’s only later that he begins to entertain the possibility that this was a prank. Has he started the beginning of a rumor that will spread like an infection?
Whatever it is, at this point the movie goes into real-time. Real-time is fairly mundane now but in 1988 it was something novel, and beginning at this point the plot becomes a roller coaster of surreality. From boy-meets-girl, we proceed into a kind of a comedy of errors, but then something happens that is utterly shocking and we realize this movie isn’t going to be merely amusing anymore.
There are some very nicely filmed scenes here; most of the movie takes place in the wee hours of the morning. Los Angeles never looked so good, a clean sort of city of the future, with frontlit high rise apartments and the El Dorado of the story - the helipad from which our heroes might make their escape to the southern hemisphere.
So - is this the culmination of a rumor gone wildfire, or is nuclear destruction imminent? You may be certain that I will not spoil it for you. Except I will tell you that it ends where it begins, at the La Brea Tar Pits.
