Movies & TV
Movie and TV takes with an actual point of view — not press-release recaps, but writers arguing for the shows and films worth your time and against the ones that aren't.
Drugs: Youngins
DRUG USE AND DRUG ABUSE IN YOUNGINS: FICTION COMPARED WITH TEENAGE REALITY Youngins presents teenage life as a mixture of friendship, school pressure, relationships, family problems, peer influence and the desire to fit …
by dabiyoungs_inkroar · 🦁 2 · 💬 0 · 2 days ago
YOUNGINS: ADDICTION
ADDICTION IN YOUNGINS: CHARACTERS, CONSEQUENCES AND THE REALITY OF TEENAGE DEPENDENCE Youngins does more than portray the ordinary experiences of teenagers. Beneath the friendships, relationships, school competitions and…
by dabiyoungs_inkroar · 🦁 2 · 💬 0 · 4 days ago
The Guide to Watching Movies and TV More Critically (Without Ruining the Fun)
Watching more critically doesn't have to mean watching less enjoyably — it usually means noticing the craft decisions that were always there, working on you, without you clocking them. Here's what to …
by Jake Sullivan · 🦁 15 · 💬 6 · 3 months ago
Why I started watching films a second time immediately, back to back
A friend suggested watching a film twice in a row, back to back, for anything with a real structural twist, and it changed how I experience the genre entirely. The first watch is for the story. The second, immediate watc...
by Pantho Bihosh · 🦁 5 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
Why the 'bottle episode' is the most honest test of a show's writing
A bottle episode — one set, minimal cast, built to save money mid-season — has nowhere to hide, and that is exactly why the format keeps producing some of television's most memorable single episodes despite being born en...
by Jake Sullivan · 🦁 5 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
The editing trick that makes TV finales feel bigger than they are
Watch the last ten minutes of almost any well-regarded season finale and you'll notice something the editors rarely get credit for: the average shot length quietly shrinks compared to the rest of the season, sometimes by...
by Jake Sullivan · 🦁 5 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
The sound design trick horror movies use that has nothing to do with jump scares
The scariest sustained dread in horror films rarely comes from jump scares — it comes from a sound design trick called infrasound, frequencies below normal human hearing that the body still registers as unease without th...
by Jake Sullivan · 🦁 5 · 💬 0 · 3 months ago
The thriller structure I now notice in almost everything I watch
Once a film editor friend pointed out the specific rhythm of a well-built thriller's second act — a rising sequence of smaller, escalating reveals rather than one large one saved for the end — I started noticing it every...
by Pantho Bihosh · 🦁 4 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
Why the best science fiction films underuse their special effects budget on purpose
Several of the science fiction films I rewatch most were made on budgets that forced genuine restraint, and I've come to believe that restraint is doing more work than the effects ever could. A film that shows you everyt...
by Pantho Bihosh · 🦁 4 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
The psychological thriller adaptation that finally got the unreliable narrator right
Most film adaptations of unreliable-narrator novels quietly give up on the unreliability, because a camera has a much harder time lying convincingly than a page of prose does — the audience can usually just watch and see...
by Pantho Bihosh · 🦁 4 · 💬 1 · 3 months ago
Why the best TV finales are the ones that feel like the worst episode of the season
The finales I rewatch most, across years of tracking my own viewing, are almost never the biggest or most explosive episodes of their seasons. They're often the quietest ones — the ones that felt, on first watch, like a ...
by Priya Shah · 🦁 4 · 💬 0 · 3 months ago
The reason you can't finish that acclaimed show everyone recommended has a name
There's a specific, trackable pattern behind the acclaimed show sitting half-finished in everyone's watchlist: it's almost always a show with a slow-building first three episodes and a genuinely great fourth, and most vi...
by Priya Shah · 🦁 3 · 💬 0 · 3 months ago
The 'watch one more episode' trap has a specific runtime, and streaming services know it
The average episode runtime that maximizes "just one more" binge behavior sits in a surprisingly narrow band — long enough to feel substantial, short enough that stopping feels like giving up on something almost finished...
by Priya Shah · 🦁 2 · 💬 0 · 3 months ago