Reviews
[Blu-ray Review] ‘Miracle Mile’ Explodes on Blu-ray
Before Kino Lorber announced they were releasing Miracle Mile on Blu-ray I had never even heard of the film, much less seen it. The other night when I got around to popping the movie in and hitting play, I did so with no expectations. What happened in the next 88 minutes blew me away. Maybe it was because of my lack of expectations, or maybe it wasn’t. Whatever the reason, I can’t stop thinking about Miracle Mile.
Director Steve De Jarnatt’s second and shockingly last feature film opens up in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Harry, played wonderfully by a young Anthony Edwards, spots Julie (Mare Winningham) and the two are immediately drawn to one another. They never speak but they constantly lock eyes and flirt as they make their way throughout the museum in an opening credits montage. As the two exit through the gift shop, Harry blows his chance and fails to introduce himself. Dejected, Harry heads to the La Brea Tar Pits and begins to wallow in his disappointment. After a brief moment and much to the surprise of Harry, Julie appears and introduces herself. The two spend the rest of the day together until it’s time for Julie to go to work.
Miracle Mile begins with all the makings of a romantic comedy. Two hip, young people meet and connect instantly, spending a wonderful day together. Then the movie takes a turn. Harry has plans to meet Julie at the diner where she works but he shows up late, after Julie has already gone home. Harry attempts to give her a call on a pay phone but has no luck. Then the pay phone rings back. After a moment of brief hesitation, Harry answers the phone. The person on the other line is very frantic and is calling with a warning. He says a nuclear bomb will be going off within the hour and in 70 minutes it will hit and wipe out LA.
This is when Miracle Mile looks to be taking a shift from a rom-com to more of a screwball comedy. At this point I expected the film to take serious subject matter and play with it in a bit of a light hearted, over-the-top fashion. It does go down this path for a little bit. Harry warns those in the diner of the impending doom and they all begin to load a random array of supplies into a truck. The idea is to get out of town before mass panic ensues. There are some laughs in this scene, particularly when two of the folks in the truck begin to take down a list of the names of important people that they want to make sure survive and help lead the new, post-apocalypse world. One girl suggests Pat Riley.
Harry decides he can’t leave the city without Julie and jumps out of the truck in an attempt to find her. As Harry makes his way through Los Angeles more and more people become aware of what awaits them. This is when the film makes takes a final shift and begins to head down a dark and grim road. The outlook becomes increasingly bleak and yet Harry will not give up. He’s determined to find Julie and get her out of the city.
Miracle Mile somehow manages to be one of the darkest films I’ve ever seen dealing with an all out nuclear war, while at the same time being incredibly sweet and romantic. Harry is a good guy looking for the perfect girl. He finally finds her and he will not let the end of the world stop him from being with her. Despite barely knowing her, he goes through hell to find her. He jumps off a moving truck, steals a car, gets chased by cops and that’s just the beginning of what he’s willing to do.
Essentially Miracle Mile is this sweet, blossoming romance that happens to take place just before a nuclear apocalypse. It’s never sappy or cheesy or anything like that. Whether it’s the romantic aspect or people trying to deal with facing doom, everything feels very real. In fact I’d argue that Miracle Mile may offer up the best depiction of mass panic that I’ve ever seen in a movie. When the entire city becomes aware of what they’re facing, the results are pretty horrific. And still, through it all, Harry and Julie find one another.
If you’re like me and you somehow managed to miss Miracle Mile all these years, do yourself a favor and see it. This really is a fantastic movie and the Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber looks great. I’m no expert when it comes to transfers, but I know what looks good to me and Miracle Mile certainly looks good. Cinematographer Theo van de Sande certainly took full advantage of the great late 80’s Los Angeles locations available to him and they look gorgeous on this release. The image looks crisp and clear and maintains that wonderful film quality. The release also comes with some nice special features, including two audio commentaries.
Miracle Mile is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
There’s an air of the improbable in every step of George A. Romero‘s career, something that began when his feature debut accidentally fell into the public domain and, along the way, became the most revered zombie movie of all time. There’s always been a scrappy energy to the way Romero worked, from Night of the Living Dead‘s more amateurish touches to the way he fought tooth and nail to cobble budgets together for much of his career. It makes him a filmmaker worth rooting for, and it’s easy to see why he’s grown so beloved.
The process of restoring Day of the Dead, Romero’s 1985 zombie classic, has that same air of the improbable. When the restorers working on Scream Factory’s beautiful new 4K glow-up of the film first set to work, they were delivered cans of film from the much-maligned 2008 remake of the same name, and had to keep searching to get all of the footage necessary to revive the original. A film initially shaped by budget constraints and Romero’s inventive spirit was once again fighting to stay alive. The restorers kept at it, found the footage they needed, and the result is a new horror essential, a 4K set that proves Romero was always worth rooting for, not just because he was a fighter, but because he had the talent to back it up.
Day of the Dead famously began as an epic, only to grow in intimacy as the budget shrank and Romero found he had to limit his locations and setpieces. Like Night of the Living Dead before it, Day then becomes a study in how to do a lot with a little, and my God does Romero do a lot. The film opens with its most expansive sequence, a helicopter flight over a desolate, zombie-ridden Florida, complete with alligators lurking on street corners and zombies piling out of buildings in states of advanced decay. Its heroes, including intrepid scientist Sarah (Lori Cardille), are looking for survivors, for hope. They find nothing and instead retreat back to their bunker, an underground labyrinth of salt mines and cinder blocks, wondering what to do until the end comes for them too.
If Night is a case study in how people behave in a crisis, Day is a case study in what happens when the crisis grows humdrum, when all that’s left to really squabble over is what the few remaining survivors will do with their time. Some, like the infamous Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), shift into full-blown violent ideation towards others, while Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) throws himself into bloody work. In the middle of it all is Sarah, still clinging to the idea of a future even if she can’t see or feel it, and the film’s chief dramatic tension becomes not who will break first, but who will be left standing when the break eventually comes.
All of this serves to make Day especially bleak, even by Romero zombie film standards, not just because of the death surrounding the characters, but because of the grind of it all. It’s a gritty, dirty, shadowy movie, and I don’t know that I recognized quite how intensely focused a film it is stylistically until I saw this restoration. It’s not just sharpening the lines and correcting the colors after years of degradation; there’s a real texture to this movie that even Night and Dawn don’t really have, a sense of people scrounging around in the dirt for whatever they can find, and this restoration highlights that.
It might be Romero’s most visually developed film and compositionally ambitious movie, from the opening dream sequence to the final collapse of the bunker, and it’s all captured and enlivened by a careful, beautiful 4K upgrade.
If I had my druthers, this set would come with a few more brand-new bells and whistles, but the ones it does come with, including a set of lobby cards in the collector’s edition and new interviews with surviving cast and crew, are quite lovely. The cherry on top, though, is a new commentary track by critic and film historian Drew McWeeny and author Daniel Kraus, who has now completed two unfinished novels of Romero’s, including the epic The Living Dead. Few people working in the horror space right now know more about Romero than Kraus, but more importantly, few people understand Romero as Kraus does. He’s been inside the man’s imagination for so long that he’s imbued with a certain emotional intelligence about the films, and listening to him and McWeeny trade insights for the length of the film is a delight.
But what comes through most from this new restoration of Day of the Dead is just how much we still want to root for George A. Romero. To this day, he remains one of the great titans of independent cinema, a filmmaker who fought for every dollar on the budget, every creative decision, and every story for as long and as hard as he could. Day of the Dead‘s existence is proof of that, but seeing it with this fresh spotlight is a reminder of the artistry behind that independent spirit, and a celebration of one of horror’s greatest storytellers.
Day of the Dead is out now in a new Collector’s Edition 4K from Scream! Factory.
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