My Top Ten Movies Watched At Home In 2015

I’ll be posting a list of My Top Ten 2015 Movies (by UK release date) tomorrow but, as always, I also like to do a list of my favorite older films that I watched at home for the first time in the past year. I watch more movies at home in a year than I do in the cinema so it seems silly to ignore them as there are often some great ones that I’ve just seen for the first time.

I keep a full (sadly ranked!) list of what I watch throughout the year HERE and see that I watched 73 films at home in 2015. Yikes! That seems excessive. Well, I’ll admit that I don’t pay attention to half of them as they’re playing in the background while I do other stuff (especially those really shitty movies I’ve ranked at the very bottom of the list of 73). But I loved some of them so I’d like to highlight not just ten but the top fifteen. You should all know by now that I can’t ever make a top ten list only containing ten things! 😉 But I did manage no ties…

So here are My Top Ten Movies Watched At Home In 2015 counting down to my very favorite (including the next five as honorable mentions). I’m proud that I’ve managed to review the full Top Ten other than my number one. Hmm… I really should say something about that one!

Honorable Mentions:

15. Miracle Mile
14. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
13. The Unbelievable Truth
12. Waxwork
11. Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

Top Ten:

10. eXistenZ

9. Melancholia

8. Short Term 12

7. Dredd

6. We Are The Best!

5. Road House

4. Escape From Alcatraz

3. The Last Unicorn

2. Grave Of The Fireflies

1. Escape From New York

I wanted to keep this list simple so I’ve said nothing about any of these movies. But feel free to discuss them with me in the comments! 🙂 I’ll say it was pretty easy deciding the order for these but I did have a hard time deciding which movie to put at number one for tomorrow’s list. Number one & two were so close! But I still managed no ties for tomorrow.

My Top Ten Kelly Jo Minter Movies

Happy Birthday to Kelly Jo Minter, who turns 49 today! What’s that? Did I just hear a bunch of you say “Who?”.

Kelly Jo Minter! YES! She’s in two of my all-time favorite movies! She seemed to often play a hooker or “drug addict”… But she was a cutie & a perfectly good actress so I don’t know why she never made it big. Also, when you see these “Happy Birthday” Top Ten posts it usually means I was short on time so looked up actor birthdays for a quick, easy post. 😉 Anyway, I was excited to see that it was Kelly Jo Minter’s birthday today – she was in a lot of good movies! (Okay, in very small roles plus I really could do with re-watching the bottom four but, hey – I saw them so they count! lol!).

Here are My Top Ten Kelly Jo Minter Movies counting down to my very favorite:

10. Doc Hollywood

Kelly’s role: Mulready

Oh yeah, Doc Hollywood… This was totally the type of movie you’d catch on TV back in those days. I saw it once. Pretty sure I didn’t hate it. Don’t remember Kelly in it!

9. New Jack City

Kelly’s role: Recovering Addict

Saw part of this while at a party & don’t remember much other than Chris Rock smoking crack. Don’t remember Kelly! Good to see she was a “recovering” addict.

8. House Party

Kelly’s role: LaDonna

Saw this with a guy I made out with in college. God he was a loser. Or maybe that was House Party II? Either way, I don’t remember Kelly. At least her character had a name.

7. The People Under The Stairs

Kelly’s role: Ruby Williams

Oh yeah – I kind of remember Kelly in this now (after looking up pictures for it). At least it was a big enough role for me to find pictures of her! I should watch this again. (R.I.P. Wes Craven)

6. Popcorn

Kelly’s role: Cheryl

One I remember! Since I just watched it last year for my Horror Month last October… It was okay! Well, it was bad. But good! In that shitty old slasher kind of way. With a bigger budget, it would’ve done better. It had potential.

5. Miracle Mile

Kelly’s role: Charlotta

Another one I watched & reviewed recently! I was shocked to find that this film has quite a few blogger fans. Kelly has a very small role but it was cool seeing her in it. There were lots of familiar faces in this one.

4. Summer School

Kelly’s role: Denise Green

Oh yeah… Summer School! I remember really liking this at the time. I bet it’s one that hasn’t aged well, though. Maybe it’s one that I should leave in the past.

3. A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

Kelly’s role: Yvonne

This has to be Kelly’s biggest role by far. When looking for pics of her, the majority are from horror conventions thanks to her being in this. I love every single Elm Street film – I don’t care what anyone says. (But it’s a shame she wasn’t in 1 or 3 since those are the really really good ones)

2. The Lost Boys

Kelly’s role: Maria

Hell, I have to say I don’t think I ever noticed her in this. Look! There she is talking to Alex Winter! Best vampire movie EVER, dammit.

1. Mask

Kelly’s role: Lorrie (aka “a hooker”)

I love Mask so much – it’s easily in my Top 10 Movies of all time (with about 15 other movies). It also tops My Top Ten Tearjerkers list – even though I’ve probably seen this a good 30 times, I can’t make it past the end without blubbering like an idiot. Anyway, it’s again a fairly small role for Kelly but not a bad one. She’s a very sweet hooker! It’s a nice moment in a severely underrated film.

I think this must be a fairly recent picture. According to IMDB, Kelly designs handbags now.

Miracle Mile (1988) Review

Miracle Mile (1988)

Directed by Steve De Jarnatt

Starring:
Anthony Edwards
Mare Winningham
Denise Crosby
Mykelti Williamson
Kurt Fuller

Music by Tangerine Dream

Running time: 87 minutes

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB)
A young man hears a chance phone call telling him that a nuclear war has started and missiles will hit his city in 70 minutes.

My Opinion:

What’s this? An apocalyptic movie from my beloved 1980s with a Tangerine Dream score yet I’d not even HEARD of it let alone ever seen it?! How is this possible?!?! Well, I think UK Netflix is finally getting better as they’re starting to stick some slightly obscure 80s films on there, which is exactly what I want! I’m always on the lookout for lesser known movies from the 80s (and 70s) and Netflix has surprised me twice in the past month with this and then with one I watched a couple weeks ago (Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. I can’t wait to review that!).

I’ll start by saying that Miracle Mile isn’t exactly a great movie & it’s obvious why it didn’t end up some mainstream hit at the time. However, I liked it because it’s my type of thing and I’ll probably end up giving it a higher rating than it may actually deserve. I think my positive reviews here are sometimes taken as recommendations but I’d only recommend this one to a select few people. I kind of attempted to explain my rating system in my recent Re-Rated post (HERE). For example, though I LOVE Hardware and gave it a really positive review, I’ve only actually recommended it to two people (who haven’t watched it) as I know it’s only for a certain type of person. So I take no responsibility for anyone hating this if they watch it! Make up your own mind & don’t get mad at me if you choose to watch this and then hate it like MovieRob did after I declared my love for Hardware. 😉

Miracle Mile is an odd one. From the tiny bit I read when I discovered it on Netflix & from looking at some pictures, I thought it may be more of an “apocalyptic romance” and in a way it almost looked like it could be closer to an 80s teen film than a dreary nuclear war film (as in, it looked like it would be a little closer to WarGames than Threads but it ended up somewhere in between the two). There IS a romance that’s quite sweet but not in a bad or annoying way – I liked how it was fit in around the story of how the main character (Anthony Edwards) is going to get to safety in only 70 minutes after hearing a chance phone call telling him missiles are about to strike his city. He’s an awkward guy and he’s only just met a quirky girl who seems to be his perfect match (Mare Winningham). After missing their date due to his alarm clock not going off, he receives the phone call & then must track her down in order to save her. For anyone not into romance, they don’t exactly get a lot of screen time together but when they do I liked seeing their strange little relationship & Winningham’s innocent & almost childlike character (except when she says to Edwards “Third date, Harry, I’m gonna screw your eyes blue“).

When I mentioned this movie, someone somewhere (sorry, I don’t remember who – it may have been on Twitter) said something about Mare Winningham being a second rate Lea Thompson but, really, we have a movie that stars Goose instead of Maverick so it was less likely to be a big blockbuster with Anthony Edwards in the lead. It also looks & feels pretty low budget (I have no idea if it was) and the acting from some of the supporting characters isn’t the greatest. But, hey – I liked the story and it went in a way I wasn’t really expecting. It’s nice to watch a movie that’s not 100% predictable for a change. Edwards meets a lot of different types of people in his 70 minutes of running around the Miracle Mile neighborhood of L.A. and it was fun seeing faces I recognize from other 80s films & TV shows.

You of course have Edwards & Winningham in this who, although not often in leading roles, were in their fair share of big 80s movies (Top Gun, St. Elmo’s Fire, Revenge Of The Nerds, etc). You also have Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump), Denise Crosby (Star Trek: TNG & Pet Sematary – two things I loved way too much!), Kelly Jo Minter (Mask – an all-time favorite film of mine), O-Lan Jones (crazy lady in Edward Scissorhands), Jenette Goldstein (the woman who stabs the guy through the milk carton in Terminator 2 and who was Vasquez in Aliens, which is possibly the best movie ever!), Earl Boen (also in Terminator 1, 2 & 3!), and Brian Thompson (in The Terminator! what’s with all the Terminator people in this?! okay – looks like they’re from the same film company or something). I can’t find a good picture of Brian Thompson from Miracle Mile so here he is in The Terminator – he has a face that’s hard to forget!

My favorite “Hey, it’s that guy” actor, though, is Kurt Fuller (Wayne’s World) & I was very happy to see him in this! Here’s Fuller in Miracle Mile – he probably has the most memorable scene of the whole movie.

Summary:

Miracle Mile certainly wasn’t quite what I was expecting but I love that it managed to actually surprise me. It’s somewhat quirky & unpredictable. It won’t be for everyone but I enjoyed it and, as always, enjoyed seeing familiar faces from what’s probably my favorite era of movies. The Tangerine Dream score did help to give it that 80s feel I love although none of it was quite as good as the train sex music from Risky Business. There was one great totally Tangerine Dream-y scene which I’ll include a YouTube clip of at the end. Another scene like that really would have helped this strange little film I’d never before heard of but I did like it & am hoping to discover more movies like this that I somehow managed to miss when I was younger.

My Rating: 7.5/10

**This scene is safe to watch – it’s toward the beginning of the film & just shows how Edwards misses his date. It’s a great piece of music.**