The heart of Texas holds a bright shining star, but what if it is really a black hole? When considering the grim side of Western films, this seems perfectly reasonable. Anti-heroes readily populate our cultural […]
Author: Brian Miller
Brian is the founder of the Deathbomb Arc record label and writes film essays at various sites under the guise Neon Zen.
SIDESTROKE BUDDIES: On sexual naivete in Mario Bava’s ‘Hercules in the Haunted World’
“With the boys forget the girls / Boys with boys, girls get with the girls and / The boys with the boys / It’s only right and natural” — The Frogs It is amusing that […]
NEW IN ACTION: APRIL 2021
Action is alive and thriving. Here are just four of the many recent Action genre releases and reissues to bless our lives with pure destruction. Jiu Jitsu (2020) [added to Netflix] The trailer for this […]
ACTION: THE UNSPOKEN GENRE
For years, action movies have been dismissed by serious cinephiles as “big and dumb.” But what if they weren’t just that? In our new column Into Action, we aim to remind movie fans of the […]
IF YOU’RE CLOSE ENOUGH TO READ THIS HEADLINE, YOU OWN THE RIGHTS TO BATMAN. ALSO, YOU’RE A RELIGIOUS NUT.
Brian Miller holds a degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Be sure to click over to his personal movie review blog to see his “favorite filmic things” of 2020. If you […]
DIE, OR GET LAID TRYING (ON THE ROLE OF HORROR SHAPING ’90S SOFT-CORE)
Do successful horror films grow into franchises, or are they genetically bound to the insatiable libido of culture, forcing them to evolve into soft-core porn? While longevity among any horror brand has both its inevitable […]
“Me: Don’t call this ‘The Zen Art of Franchise 3rd Entries’; Grumpire: ‘Okay, we won’t’.”
The auteur casts a long and heavy shadow over genre franchises. Those inaugural, boundary-breaking, breathtaking works of art set things in motion for entire new worlds, while simultaneously doing everything they can to pump the […]