What's a RETROACTIVE REVIEW?
A "Retroactive Review" is basically a dusty movie review from the vaults. The reviews and movies are old, but they represent the type of writing for which I have the most passion. Some of my favorite retro-reviews and perhaps the occasional new review will appear here regularly.
But first some history:
Sure, writing is my bread n' butter. It's what I do, what I've always done, and what I'll keep on doing forever and ever, amen. (Hire me!) But first love? Nope. That would be movies. I absorb movies, movie trivia, and other miscellaneous pop culture the way most guys absorb sports. (Which I just don't get. Sorry.) As a child, long before I developed the attention span to write, I'd get out my big ol' coffee can full of crayons and draw scenes from my favorite movies. (The Ghostbusters, Superman and Indiana Jones were common themes in my "early work.")
In third grade I started scribbling out my own little one-panel comic strip that, essentially, was my way of creating my own "Mad" magazine-style movie parodies. I even took my humble comic to the editor of our hometown newspaper ("The Brookville Star") in hopes of getting some pre-pre-pre-internet public exposure. That venture -sadly- never took off, but by the time I made it to high school I decided I was going to elbow my way onto the school paper staff (not so tough in Brookville, Ohio) so that I could jockey for the (not yet created) "movie critic" position (which I proceeded to create). By my senior year I was the editor of the Brookville High School "Blue Blazer," giving me free reign to write the longest, most self-indulgent movie reviews I could dream up, and I loved every line inch of it all.
Even though my career aspirations never involved becoming a filmmaker I was still able to squeeze some unnecessary film classes into my packed Ohio University journalism curriculum. They say "those who don't, teach" (which is total bull, by the way), and likewise one might say those who don't make movies, point and laugh at movies made by others. That's not really bull. That's probably pretty true actually. [Read more and the Grindhouse review after the jump.]
