Cinema Time Capsule

Comics were huge in the early 20th century. Superheroes came to life on the radio in the 30s before movies and then TV in the 60s. They appeared to experience a resurgence in the 80s as film companies re-discovered this treasure trove of beloved characters and stories (decades before the onslaught of the MCU). We take you back to our childhoods of buying comics and watching our favourites (Batman, Superman, the Hulk and more) on th...

Every generation dreams about the future and what advances will be made. In the 80s, we were wondering about the new millenium and whether we would have alien or robot overlords. Join us and our special guest, Doug Nagy, as we explore the roots of humanity's dystopian fascination, what they say about us and what some of our favourite films in this genre got right in their future predictions. Shortly after this was recorded, Do...

No writer and director spent more time mining adolescence in the 80s than the eternal teenager, John Hughes. Join us and our guest, Mary Kennedy, as we dig into his six teen films and explore what we feel has remained endearing and valuable and what has lost its lustre with the passage of time and growth (or maybe was problematic back then too but wasn't spoken). We try to cover it all before we decide which film belongs in the...

Who likes being scared? Child Of The 80s does, that's who! The Doctor Of All Things Retro maintains he does not in spite of his co-host's insistence otherwise! We had the pleasure of watching some horror films with Mike Trebilcock, frontman of Canadian music legends, The Killjoys, and composer of film scores for current horror movies. Mike and Jeff bond over their love of this genre, Joel warms to the idea that he might n...

Dynamic duos have often been featured in movies since they began (and go back into radio and theatre). They share a strong bond of trust but may have similar or opposing strengths and they understand each other better than the people around them due to their shared experiences or some apparent mental connection. There were some great partnerships in 80s movies and we looked at six movies that featured them with our special guest, D...

Movies about teens (or adults playing teens) were a boon in the 80s. Our baby boomer parents were many so they created a large number of offspring who reached adolescence around the same time, creating a market for the trials and tribulations of teenagers on the silver screen. In this episode, we review some of our favourite non-John Hughes teen movies with our special guest, Kristy Woudstra! We talked a long time so we split it i...

We decided to create blitz episodes to detour from 80s movies and look at some other things from our beloved decade of childhood that we remember fondly.  
For this first blitz, we introduce the first 'Ask Dr. Marko' segment in which our highly-trained medical correspondent answers some questions about the physical (im)possibilities of stunts we watched in our action movie episode.  We admit some of our mistakes from ...

The 80s were a golden era for action movies.  Several actors made their careers during this time with buff bodies, high body counts and witty one-liners.  In this episode, we chose six of our action movie heroes and one movie for each that we thought best represented their work during the decade.  Listen in as we revisit selected movies from Arnie, Sly, Chuck, Van Damme, Kurt and Swayze then tell us what you think we...

As the December holidays approach, we reminisce about our favourite Christmas activities and gifts (G.I. Joes and knock-off WWF wrestlers from Big V) before taking you back to some of our favourite holiday TV specials (and one that is classic 80s cheese) and movies that we enjoyed that we hope you might like as well.  We include a literal shout-out from the audience at our last screening of 'The Monster Squad' and some listene...

In this episode, we recap our selections for the most frighteningly memorable 80s movies that caused us varying degrees of 'kinder-trauma'.  We review three Disney productions - 'The Watcher In The Woods', 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' and 'Mr. Boogedy' - as well as 'The Monster Squad' and 'Little Monsters' and reminisce about childhood experiences that were brought back to our memories as a result (for example, getting ki...