Retro Reviews

Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera is turning 100 years old. The film is an iconic masterpiece, forever in the top ranks of the horror genre. As much as I love the horror genre, silent horror gives me the creeps, and that’s not a bad thing. Nothing compares to …

Jared Padelecki has been in a ton of movies and films in his life. Whether he’s Thomas Kinkade, Dean Forester, Walker Texas Ranger or Sam Winchester, Jared has been a busy man the last 26 years. At a recent interview conducted during Fan Expo Boston, Jared was asked if he …

When The Brothers Grimm first hit theaters in 2005, it was dismissed by many as a messy Terry Gilliam experiment that felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be. But twenty years later, the film deserves a second look through a different lens. Beneath the storybook aesthetic, hammy …

In the summer of 1990, director Joel Schumacher released Flatliners, a stylish psychological sci-fi horror-thriller that asked one dangerous question: what really happens after death? The film hit U.S. theaters on August 10, bringing neon shadows, gothic set design, and a cast of rising stars who would become household names …

“Are you ready for my wisdom?” ~Nix Welcome back to The Black Box Chronicles as we take a look at a movie I DIDN’T see back when it first came out. As mentioned before, back in 1995 the pay-per-view movie channels would show trailers of not only the movie you …

Tim Burton’s Batman was a cultural phenomenon that changed the Hollywood cinematic landscape. In the summer of 1989, the caped crusader lit up the box office to the tune of $400 million dollars and singlehandedly brought superhero films back into the limelight. Universal Studios, which had passed on Batman some 10 years before, …

Welcome back to The Black Box Chronicles where I take a look at some of the movies I used to watch again and again back in 1995. For those that followed Congo and Species know that 9 year old me sat in front of my TV and watched the hot new …

The 80s had a defined style infiltrating all of Pop Culture. The dark comedy, Better Off Dead (1985), fully embraced this style. It is a masterpiece that embodied almost every teen movie trope of the time. In celebration of Better Off Dead (1985) turning 40 let’s take a look back at …

The world was introduced to The Exorcist III thirty five years ago on August 17, 1990, the second sequel to the classic horror film, The Exorcist (read our retro review here), from 1973. It was directed by the author of the original novel, William Peter Blatty, which he based off the …

Let’s look at how one film shaped a nation’s cinema and left its mark on the psyche. Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock isn’t just a film — it’s a mood, a myth, and a milestone. Adapted from Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel, this eerie tale of missing schoolgirls in the …