Miracle Mile (1988) review

Lonely trombonist Harry (Anthony Edwards) starts a relationship with his "ideal partner" Julie (Mare Winningham) and everything is going well, except one night he picks up the phone outside the iconic Johnie's Coffee Shop and is told by a man claiming to be from a missile silo in North Dakota that nuclear war has started and everyone has approximately an hour to leave the city (it unfolds in "real time").  Black Mirror mastermind Charlie Brooker says it has the "biggest lurch of tone" of any movie, and I kind of get what he's talking about: it's an ominous little number that creeps towards its nihilistic conclusion, all set in a seemingly abandoned Los Angeles with the hypnotic score provided by Tangerine Dream.  Its appeal is largely to the senses and not the intellect, however: the exact cause of the end-of-humanity is never explained (was it an accident? did the Soviets intentionally hit the button?) ... and I don't think the answers can be found in the Cliffs Notes for Gravity's Rainbow.