Cinema Time Capsule

SNL celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2025 but we didn't start watching it until the 1990s. As Canadian kids with bedtimes in the 80s, we had more exposure to SCTV, the incredible sketch comedy show that featured an outrageously talented cast from Second City. Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, John Candy and Harold Ramis and later Rick Moranis and Ma...

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,...

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. S...

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...

Happy holidays, viewers! Join us as we travel back to 1985 to pick our 'top five' toy requests to Santa and our parents based on the Sears Wishbook while reminiscing a bit on Eaton's and Consumers Distributing. A lot of you sent in messages about your favourite Christmas toys too so thank you! We also revisit a couple of our favourite 80s holiday TV specials and hope you will watch wit...

You want more terror? Ahhhhhh! Lock the doors and do not invite in any stranger that show up (they are vampires, for sure). Here's the second half of our horrifying conversation with Mike Trebilcock in which we revisit some of our favourite frightening flicks of the 80s.

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...

Waking up in the morning was/is a drag but filling a bowl with your favourite sugary cereals can turn that frown upside down and get you running. Free toy inside! Free toy inside! So many good cereals with great commercials and false promises of healthy eating were part of our 80s childhoods. We bought a lot of our favourites to reminisce and see if they were as good in 2023 as they were in 1983.

We are long-winded and we enjoy talking movies so here is the second half of our conversation with Dr. Sean Springer on our selections for 80s buddy movies! We also check the answering machine for your messages and give you the results of the poll!

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 feat...

Back - caught you lookin' for the same thing! (Any Public Enemy fans here?) In this case, believe the hype! Here is part two of our conversation with Kristy Woudstra on some of our favourite teen movies from the 80s. We also check the CTC answering machine for your messages about your favourite teen flicks. We hope you enjoy revisiting these with us.

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 t...

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 a...

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 Sw...

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 '...

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 a...

Welcome to the first episode of the Cinema Time Capsule podcast!  We recap our first screening of 'Gremlins' before moving on to reviewing the films chosen for the vote in our second screening focused on kid adventure movies.  We are excited to have our producer and fellow film fan, Simon, join us for the episode.