Miracle Mile (1988)

Miracle Mile (R)

"Forget everything you just heard, and go back to sleep"

A young man suddenly finds the love of his life in the Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits museum.  His perfect day turns into nightmarish night as he oversleeps his alarm and misses their first date.  It goes from bad to worse (and leaves stereotypical story telling behind) as he answers an incessantly ringing Telephone outside a midnight diner in writer/director Steven De Jamatt's pre-apocalyptic film Miracle Mile.

This is not your usual new romance in danger film.  Playing off the decades Atomic annihilation hysteria that gripped the United States since the 50s, Miracle Mile pulls of a miraculous feat of low budget enrapture.  The visuals are brightly stunning neon at night, the scripting is highly literate and the acting is wonderful characterization.  The leads Anthony Edwards (Top Gun) and Mare Winningham (St. Elmos Fire) have a dynamically palpable chemistry, and their LA late night co-stars are an ensemble casting wetdream of top-tier character actors and soon-to-be stars.  The twists and turns of the story follow a twisting dream logic that leads you down nightmarish tunnels while holding your hand with a warm, friendly hopefulness.  All the while featuring an under-your-skin soundtrack by Tangerine Dream, Miracle Mile is a film that encapsulates that final fearful decade of the Cold War.  The obvious love and attention on a shoestring budget makes the film more than just an admirable yet forgotten cult classic, but instead something to be studied and revered.  And where it homages other LA psychedelic jaw droppers like Day of the Locust, it's immense influence on more modern day LA epics like Drive, Magnolia or Crash are unmistakable.

Miracle Mile lives up to its name and reputation with its own optimistic nerdy charm in the face of the utter bleakness of humanities fate.
It is uniquely of the 1980s, by the 1980s, and simply one of the best of the 1980s.

9.5 Goose with a Trombone, Coals into Diamonds out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)