27 pieces in this section.
Apple TV+ has more money than anyone and a production slate that cannot be reconciled with itself. An essay on the strangest major streamer.
The contemporary comedy, across film and TV, has made the cameo its dominant register. An essay on what the cameo does structurally, why it has become default, and what comedy used to do instead.
The MCU is contracting. The DCU is in perpetual reboot. The Wizarding World is dead. The Dark Universe never started. A post-mortem for a decade's dominant cinematic format.
A personal essay on the specific pleasure of owning music in a physical format in the year 2026. Not an argument against streaming. An argument for both.
Across the last three years, the three-hour-plus film has quietly returned to the centre of serious American cinema. An essay on what the long film does that the short film cannot.
A specific generation of actors is writing and directing their own films because the industry is not producing the kind of work they want to be in. An essay on why this matters and what the films look like.
The biopic is a genre with a default structure, and the default is almost always the problem. An argument for the biographical films that refuse the shape.
The specific practice of choosing the pre-existing songs that go into films and prestige TV has quietly become as identity-defining as cinematography. An essay on who the contemporary music supervisors are and what they do.
The specific tools that made prestige TV great have, across two decades of refinement, become the tools that are now limiting it. An essay on formal exhaustion.
After fifteen years of singles-first streaming strategy, 2024 was the year pop music remembered how to be an album again. An essay on why it happened and what it means.
The contemporary biopic has adopted a specific form that functions as reputation management. An essay on the mechanism by which the biopic launders its subjects, and what the occasional exception does differently.
The legacy sequel, as a format, has a specific failure mode. The films that work despite it are the exceptions, and the exceptions teach the rule.
Films and TV shows are casting more speaking roles than they can properly serve. An essay on why the ensemble has gotten bloated, what it costs the specific characters inside it, and what tighter casts still do.
The most consistent artistic project in English-language cinema of the last decade has not been a movement or a style. It has been a subject: grief, treated with a specific patience that the previous decade did not allow.
The physical-media market for serious film has specifically grown across the last five years, against every predicted trend. An essay on what streaming failed to provide, and what the 4K disc is doing to fill the gap.
The specific function of the international film festival circuit has quietly changed across the last five years. An essay on what Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and TIFF are actually doing now, and what they have stopped doing.
The music video as a form had a specific golden age. It is now largely dead, replaced by things that are not music videos. An essay on what we lost.
There was a specific mid-budget horror economy that functioned across the 2010s. It does not function anymore. An essay on what was lost.
The eight-episode prestige-TV season has become the default format. It is also, for most shows, the wrong length. An essay on what the episode count is costing us.
The flop, as a cultural category, is being rehabilitated inside five years instead of twenty-five. An essay on why, and what is gained and lost in the accelerated cycle.
The rom-com was commercially dead for a decade. It returned in 2023-25 and the return was not coincidence. An essay on what the surrounding cinema had become, and why audiences wanted this back.
The argument against CGI and for practical effects has hardened into a specific aesthetic dogma that no longer tracks the actual craft. An essay on what the argument originally responded to and why it now misfires.
A case for the 90-minute movie in the age of 160-minute movies. Most short films are tighter, meaner, and more controlled than most long ones, and the industry has forgotten to value this.
The limited series is absorbing the specific talent, capital, and formal experimentation that used to sustain the multi-season drama. An essay on what the two forms do differently, and what we are losing.
Hollywood's opening-weekend-dominant distribution model was built for a specific marketplace that no longer exists. An essay on what has broken, which films are succeeding despite it, and what a replacement would look like.
Letterboxd's aggregate star rating is now the first thing most viewers see about a film, and it is quietly replacing the job criticism used to do. An argument against treating aggregation as judgement.
