Shot mostly in real-time, Miracle Mile is a exhilarating roller coaster ride through late-night Los Angeles and a seemingly huge inspiration for the 2008 movie Cloverfield. What follows is Harry’s race against the clock to find his newfound love and escape in a helicopter before it’s too late. On the other end of the line, a frantic man warns him that nuclear war is set to break out in exactly 70 minutes. Anthony Edwards stars in this highly underrated late 1980s thriller as Harry, a lovelorn man who just happens to answer a random ringing pay phone late at night. You find the partner of your dreams, only to discover after the initial “meet-cute” that the world will soon be engulfed in a nuclear apocalypse. It’s a piece of irony worthy of Alanis Morissette (in that it’s not exactly ironic). While not nearly as powerful as some of Haneke’s other works, Time of the Wolf stands as a fantastic alternative to the typical end-of-the-world fare. Here, by never revealing the cause of the apocalypse, Haneke almost seems to be making a statement not about the nature of man in times of peril but about how fragile human relationships can be and how little it takes to suck the compassion out of people. When the family tries to find new shelter, however, they are shunned or ignored like lepers in biblical times. Haneke regular Isabelle Huppert plays the matriarch of a French family who travels to their home in the country only to find that an unspecified disaster has driven the world into chaos. This is certainly the case with his 2003 apocalyptic film Time of the Wolf. Boasting a cast that includes Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astaire, On the Beach is a must-see for any classic-film fans.Īustrian director Michael Haneke isn’t exactly known for playing it safe rather, he seems to prefer pushing the boundaries of good taste, as if daring anyone to keep watching. Set months following a devastating World War III, the film posits a world in which most of the Northern Hemisphere has been contaminated with radiation poisoning and people are moving down to Australia in order to escape the slow-moving but ever encroaching radiation dust. Leave it to Stanley Kramer then-director of such issue-heavy projects like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Inherit the Wind-to deliver a moving ensemble drama about a group of characters in denial about their eventual destruction. Given the content restrictions enforced on films in the pre-MPAA age, you’d think it would be next to impossible to release a film containing the kind of visceral impact as a more modern production. While such a heavy-handed approach certainly bogs the story down in parts, the film is worth seeing for Rogers’ fantastic performance alone as well as the sheer bravery of story’s final 15 minutes. It’s not hard to see why thanks to its ham-fisted diatribe against traditional religious views of God. Made on a miniscule budget, the film did little business during its initial run, despite ringing endorsements from the likes of Roger Ebert. As the signs of the Rapture begin appearing, however, Sharon also begins to doubt her devotion to God and his “cruel” ways.
She eventually even marries and has a daughter. The group warns that the biblical Rapture is near and Sharon takes the news to heart, vowing to give her life to God and live a purer lifestyle. Mimi Rogers plays Sharon, a Los Angeles hedonist who ends up falling in with a religious sect obsessed with the End of Times. Yes, the film kind of falls apart in the final reel, but by that point it’s earned more than enough goodwill to balance out the weaker areas. Moreover, by sticking closer to the book’s original premise, which involved a man’s attempt to locate his wife in the ensuing chaos, Spielberg creates a disaster film that feels much more intimate and personal than the ‘50s version. When the Tom Cruise character, having narrowly escaped the initial alien attack, looks into the mirror and realizes he’s covered in the ashes of disintegrated civilians, it’s next to impossible not to summon up the image of debris-covered New Yorkers wandering around the aftermath of the Trade Center attack. The power of Spielberg’s 2005 version is how he repurposes the original’s pervading Cold War paranoia in favor of incorporating elements of post-9/11 trauma. And who better to do so than Steven Spielberg? In other words, unlike certain other properties, a remake was not out of the question. Today, the film stands as an essential, if somewhat dated, milestone in the evolution of special effects.
Wells’ classic novel remains one of the most notable science fiction films of the 1950s.
Director Bryon Haskin’s 1953 adaptation of H.G.