Welcome! This is a compendium of a lifetime spent writing about the movies, since I began doing capsule film reviews at the age of sixteen!
At first I would write them on index cards, and then graduated to those black hardcover dollar store notebooks, until we got our first computer: a hand-me-down Mac IIsi desktop with a whopping 68 MB of memory! And once we became more electronic, I would communicate much of my film discoveries in my print zine, The Eclectic Screening Room, which published from 2001 to 2012, lasting 25 issues and three monographs. The Eclectic Screening Room (or ESR, in its common shorthand) currently exists as an online entity, and will resume its print run one of these days.
Some works herein were previously published in ESR, but this website will be much more comprehensive, as I continue to dig out and polish pieces from my notebooks, index cards, and old hard drives, culminating in four decades (and counting!) of film writing. I will include articles and essays on film culture: memories of rep cinemas, TV programming, etc. Quite simply, I wish to keep a vibrant history alive for the electronic age: present and future. You’ll find my cinematic tastes are as “eclectic” as my zine’s namesake. If anything, my life journey has been one long “eclectic screening room”.
How to use this site: Each capsule review features credits (where applicable) for director, writer, producer, music score, cinematographer, and principal cast. If a review references another title on this site, there will be a hyperlink to it.
This site is inspired by the late Fred Adelman’s Critical Condition (which retains a “zine” kind of format in its HTML design – a look I couldn’t quite pull off here), and by L.A. Morse’s pair of reference books Video Trash & Treasures, which grouped all of its reviews into so-called “festivals” (films that share a similar theme or sub genre).
Each film reviewed is part of a category, which groups titles of the same genre, or by the same filmmaker. This is done to replicate a magazine format in a website, and because I want the reader to be able to discover things: if they’re interested in one film, they’ll easily find something else that will intrigue them.
Needless to say, this site will be a constant work in progress as I endeavour in transferring a lifetime of memories. It will frequently be updated with reviews and other fun pages, so do check back often. We hope you enjoy taking the trip with us.
Oh yes. The site’s title is inspired by the late, great Nostalgic Cinema: a second-run movie house that played in Toronto from 1982 to 1994, and was a tremendous influence on my moviegoing.
Thanks for reading!
All my very best,
Greg Woods
THANKS! To the people who supported my work or have inspired me in life’s journey: Bill Shute, Brad Puskas, Brian Random, Colleen Marlin, Dave Eustace, Dave Lamb, David Faris, Dion Conflict, Doug Davidson, Elwy Yost, Eric Bourgignon, Fred Adelman, Jan Kristoffer Dale, Jason Pankoke, Jason Tannis, Jay Scott, JC Culp, John Porter, Katie Durant, Keith Shockley, Knut Andre Dale, Laura Mendes, Matthew Van Allen, Mike Ritz, Rob Craig, Robert Altman, Scott Allgood, Sean Irvine, Shirley Hughes, Simon St. Laurent, skot deeming, Stacey Case, Will Sloan.
…and especially, to Susan. You are the light.