Apocalypse (pt. IV)

Miracle Mile

Blast from the Past

Happy New Year, my dear readers! I hope you’re ready for another half-assed, burnt-out, holiday-edition of Double Feature Thursday, because as we all soldier through this bizarre, liminal space between Christmas and the New Years (and several days after January 1st), I have minimal reserves of movie-inspired moxie left to offer. Getting through this exhausting, lonely, oft-existential time of year is a feat in and of itself, and we’ve finally made it through. Give yourself kudos for surviving 2025: for accomplishing everything you wanted to, and for persisting even when you didn’t accomplish something. The horrors are persistent, but so are we, so let’s celebrate our victories, not dwell on our failures, and trepidatiously hope for the best as we enter a new year. There’s no telling what drama and conflama 2026 will bring, but I can promise that this silly little blog of mine will still be around. Now let’s ring in the new year with my favorite genre to end the year with: apocalypse movies! Just like last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, I wanted to balance out this potentially-triggering theme with a realistically-dark apocalypse movie and a unexpectedly-light-hearted apocalypse movie—which also reflects how the best and worst parts of life often occur in tandem. I’m not sure why I always enjoy ending the year with movies about the end of days—perhaps its a cathartic release of the world-ending moments that provided anxiety throughout the year, perhaps it’s a reminder that things could always be worse as we head into another 365 days of uncertainty. I love the idea that the end of the world can be approached in a myriad of ways, with a myriad of tones and senses of humor, and the final double feature of 2025 proved that the end of the world may be a bummer, but it is always entertaining.

Both of tonight’s apocalyptic films transport us to Los Angeles, both were surprisingly funny, and both featured quick but memorable performances from drag queens, but let’s begin with the more bleak of the two—this is Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 film Miracle Mile. Before this film even began production, its script had become a bit of a legend in Hollywood. In 1983, it had been chosen by American Film magazine as one of the ten best unmade screenplays, with newcomer Steve De Jarnatt hoping to direct it as well. But the studio wanted to make it on a bigger scale and didn’t trust a first-timer like De Jarnatt, so Miracle Mile existed in production limbo for several years. Through nearly a decade of studio negotiations, script rewrites, recasts, and De Jarnatt continuing to stubbornly bet on himself, Miracle Mile was finally complete. Miracle Mile opens on a sweet-but-geeky man named Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) narrating, “I never really saw the big picture before, not til today” as he stumbles into an unexpected and educational meet-cute with Julie (Mare Winningham) at the La Brea Tar Pits. This happens to be one of my favorite spots in LA, so as soon as our protagonists locked eyes at this location, with a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream playing in the background, I was already sold. Harry and Julie immediately hit it off, and end up spending the whole day together—wandering the streets of LA, freeing lobsters from a restaurant, and all the while finding an adorkable chemistry. Harry narrates, “I always thought I was a romantic guy, I just had no one to be romantic with” as the two continue to sweep one another off of their respective feet. After spending the afternoon together, Harry and Julie plan to meet up again that night, after Julie is off work at midnight. The only problem is that Harry takes a nap, his power goes out, his alarm never goes off, and Julie is left stood-up outside her diner job. Harry jolts himself awake and arrives at the diner at 4am, with Julie nowhere to be found. He decides to sit down at the diner to try to collect his thoughts and gather intel from Julie’s coworkers, and leaves Julie a voicemail from a payphone outside. Moments later, the payphone begins to ring, and, hoping it might be Julie, Harry picks up. Only it’s not Julie, it’s a frantic man named Chip who is trying to reach his father because, as Chip claims, we’ve got just over an hour until nuclear war breaks out. At first, Harry thinks it’s a prank, but then Harry hears other voices in the background, the sound of gunshots, and an unfamiliar voice that says, “Forget everything you just heard, and go back to sleep.” Harry bursts back into the diner, warning the patrons of this news, begging for Julie’s home address, and is fairly unconcerned with those who do not believe him. Suddenly, an important-looking businesswoman makes a call to Washington, and learns that several politicians are already on their way to “the extreme Southern Hemisphere”—effectively confirming that nuclear fallout is imminent. When the patrons of the diner finally catch on, they all make plans for an escape, with the businesswoman ordering a private jet to Antarctica. They all jump into a catering van and begin speeding down Miracle Mile, but Harry begs them to turn around to grab Julie first. They argue that there’s no time, so Harry jumps out of the moving car and attempts to track down Julie himself. What follows is an edge-of-your-seat-race-to-beat-the-clock-thriller full of jolts, laughs, and a shocking amount of romance. Thankfully, Harry and Julie are able to find one another, reconcile, and make their own escape plan, but will they make it out of the burning city of Los Angeles in time? You’ll have to watch it yourself and find out, because the journey this film takes you on is utterly engrossing. A painfully palpable sense of tension and dread is felt throughout this film, but I was surprised to find myself laughing just as much as I was wincing. I believed in every performer’s anxiety, I believed in the tangible sense of urgency, and I really believed in Harry and Julie’s love—no matter how new and ill-fated it is. (Plus, Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham got married in 2021 so their love really transcends time and apocalypses!) Miracle Mile is one of those rare films that operates on a small scale, but effectively delivers a big-time sense of danger and doom. The moments of unexpected drama blended seamlessly with the unexpected moments of tenderness, and I was completely glued to the screen. Appropriately bleak but with a welcome amount of levity and love, Miracle Mile is an apocalypse movie worth watching during your last 87 minutes on earth.

But if your doomsday film craving leans a bit more light-hearted, I’ve got you covered. Up next is film I’ve been wanting to see for awhile, yet another Brendan Fraser classic in the grand pantheon of Brendan Fraser classics that makes his Oscar win for The Whale all the more confusing and infuriating, this is Hugh Wilson’s 1999-but-non-Y2K apocalypse movie: Blast from the Past. Blast from the Past begins in the San Fernando Valley in 1962, where the brilliant but zany scientist Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) lives with his pregnant wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek.) In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Calvin has constructed a massive, underground fallout shelter for his family, and after one-too-many troubling news reports, Calvin insists that they go inside. Just as the young couple begins climbing down the hatch, an F-86 Sabre experiences a mechanical failure, causing the plane to crash directly into the Webber’s house. The two make it safely inside just in time, but Calvin (pretty reasonably) assumes that this was a missile, and that nuclear war has officially begun outside. Assuming the worst will occur—toxic rain clouds, the creation of mutants, and the complete obliteration of the human race—Calvin sets the shelter to unlock in 35 years, after the hazardous dust has settled. The end of the world did seem on its way, but it was merely a coincidence. Everyone assumes that the Webbers died when the plane struck their house, and life just kept going on outside, with a diner quickly replacing the plot of their home. Life below the surface kept on going for the Webbers, too, as Calvin set up their growing family with enough food and supples to last them decades. When their son, Adam (Brendan Fraser) is born, they raise him as normally as they can, several dozen feet beneath the earth. Adam learns about every subject, learns several languages, and can grasp nearly every single concept—except baseball (I feel you, Adam.) All the while, the times have really kept on changing, as evidenced by the quaint diner above their bunker steadily transforming into a divey pizzeria, and eventually a very seedy bar in a rough part of town. When 35 years have passed and Calvin requires some medical supplies, the now-grown Adam takes it upon himself to bravely venture into the uncertain new world above their heads—to gather more food and first aid, and hopefully, a nice girl with whom he can repopulate the new earth. Well, that was the plan, at least, but it’s now 1990s Los Angeles, and the hellish world Adam’s father imagined isn’t too far off from reality. Adam is bewildered by the adult book stores, vagrants vomiting, but mostly by the beautiful, smog-filled sky above, which he’s never seen before. Everyone who Adam walks by is disturbed by his optimistic, needy curiosity, but thankfully he meets Eve (Alicia Silverstone), who begrudgingly agrees to help him out. Eve has no idea why this broad-shouldered, 6 foot 3 man is so innocent and desperate, but she takes pity on him, and assists him in his search for supplies, and a potential wife. With the help of her gay best friend, Troy (Dave Foley), and no help from her douchey ex-boyfriend, Cliff (Nathan Fillion), Eve helps Adam sell his dad’s now-extremely-valuable baseball cards, gather nonperishables, and essentially, becomes Adam’s pimp. Blast From the Past is somehow not at all what I expected it to be, but it was just as cute and funny as I was hoping it’d be. And I know it’s not a true apocalypse movie, but it still deals with the threat of nuclear war and the existential dread of sustained-survival, just in a way more adorable way. Everyone was young and attractive and full of 90s spunk, with Alicia Silverstone and Brendan Fraser providing enough magnetism to reroute a missile or two. The 1960s sense of war-torn paranoia felt scary-relatable, even in 2025, and its blend of satire and silliness was fun to experience. Well that’s enough apocalyptic adventuring for one evening and one year, so I’ll bid you adieu for now and wish you the happiest new year! May your resolutions and your spirit not be broken, but even if they are, just remember: it’s not the end of the world! Ciao ;)