Hello there Dear Listener, the Maestro and I have just finished recording this week’s episode, dedicating ourselves to the dicussion of Kubrick’s first feature film ‘Fear and Desire’ and the new Kevin Smith ‘comedy’ ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ (or simply ‘Zack and Miri’, in these Puritanical times).  My genial co-host is surely beavering away on the ‘raw edit’ as we speak…whereas I am about to sit down and watch two films that have nothing to do with each other, namely Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda in ‘Same Time, Next Year’ and this year’s ‘Get Smart’, about neither of which I know what to expect.  To the matter at hand: last night I spent 84 minutes in the company of Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham in ‘Miracle Mile’ – a quite astonishing nuclear threat fim from 1988.  As well as being exceptionally well put together – great theatricl set-ups, elegant art directions, soft and engaging performances, it is, quite simply, one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen.  It came out toward the end of the Cold War era, and reminds me mostly of the excellent 1983 TV movie ‘The Day After’, which famously ends with a radiation-crazy Jason Robards crying out to heaven on the top of a bomb site; and serves as a rare Hollywood political polemic with the guts to end realistically.  It can’t be said that ‘Miracle Mile’ had any practical effect on policy, in the way that ‘The Day After’ did (its director Nicholas Meyer – pretty wonderful writer too – there’d be no ‘Wrath of Khan’ or ‘Seven Percent Solution’ without him received a letter from the Reagan administration stating that his film had affected public perception to the extent that it was impossible to continue the arms race with popular support), partly because its release was so close to the end of the Cold War, but watching it made me thik of the un-fond memories I have of films that depressed the hell out of me. Let’s try ‘Se7en’, ‘A Short Film About Killing’, and ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ for starters.  Would be interested if any Dear Listener has other examples of films that are either depressing, or actually changed the world.  Please do comment below.