TV and Movie Reviews and Recaps websites sought.
December 8, 2015 5:50 AM   Subscribe

In the past few years, most of my mainstay pop culture sites for movie reviews and TV recaps and reviews have shut down or declined drastically in appeal. I need suggestions for replacements to check out that aren't defunct, or sites I already know about that don't fit the bill; I'm not expecting a voluble community, as I'm happy with just good site writers with a good grasp on pop culture and an intelligent perspective. So not AV Club, not Fanfare, not Vulture or TVLine or Entertainment Weekly but somewhere new; a lot more detail follows.

The movies and TV parts often come separately. So with movies; essentially, I really miss The Dissolve, which covered the increasing number of more obscure films with same-day Video on Demand releases, and was written by reviewers who wrote well enough that I could disagree while still appreciating their perspective. They were also very good about spoilers, both in their reviews and in the occasional use of the Spoiler Space to talk about films for after you'd seen them.
The AV Club used to be good for that as well, but their new reviewers I often find too pretentious, smug or even just incorrect on what actually happened in a film, as well as much more likely to spoil the big moments by providing two very easy dots to join together. I've tried some random rummaging through Rotten Tomatoes, but I could do with some guidance.

As for TV, I still enjoy previously.tv and The Fug Girls, and used to like The AV Club but mostly don't anymore. Previously.tv is a good start, but especially for reality shows I don't watch I could do with more photos to get a better feel for the people involved, and for something like Project Runway so I can match a description with the image - like Tom and Lorenzo before their heart wasn't in it. I would also like more analytical recaps, especially for shows which can handle it; John Teti's recaps for The AVClub were the gold standard here, especially for Six Feet Under, as well as Miss Alli's TWoP recaps of Survivor, The Amazing Race and The Apprentice - but I've not found anything else of their calibre. Too often recaps are about soliciting the audience's opinion over expressing their own, or inject no life into a flat recap of events - or they over-deconstruct or nitpick so as to take out all enjoyment. I'm not a hate-watcher, and I'd much rather read someone eloquently talking about something they like, or like parts of, rather than only ever denigrating.

An added wrinkle with TV recaps is I don't get to watch anything live, let alone it can take me quite a while to catch up, so spoilery images or titles for later episodes are enough to keep me away from a site.

tl;dr: More sites like The Dissolve, TWoP, teevee.org, even Grantland and TVGasm. The AVClub with better writers, previously.tv with even more of their recap/reviews and more pictures, The Vulture but with better analysis and a much less spoilery interface. Non-US more than welcome.
posted by gadge emeritus to Media & Arts (9 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Alan Sepinwall is pretty great if you watch the shows he reviews.
posted by General Malaise at 6:44 AM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


You might already know this, but the previously.tv site runners are the same people who started TWoP. Writing about TV has changed a lot since TWoP started and those really long, detailed recaps don't seem to be on-trend anymore. Miss Alli is Metafilter and NPR's own Linda Holmes.

You might try Alan Sepinwall and the other writers at HitFix.

I like Mo Ryan's take on things.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Lainey Gossip has a few show and movie reviews now: Walking Dead, The Affair (I don't and probably will never watch the Affair but the reviews are really good), etc. Movie stuff is here. Her site is kind of like Fug Girls mixed with Tom and Lorenzo but with more 'strategies of fame' and Canada.
posted by hydrobatidae at 7:12 AM on December 8, 2015


Recap Everything is hilarious, but only covers a few shows and often rather belatedly.
posted by LoonyLovegood at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2015


I've been reading Todd VanDerWerff's recaps since he covered Community for the AV Club, and he's now the Culture Editor at Vox. His writing isn't limited to TV or movies, or even recaps, but I think his reviews fit what you're looking for.
posted by memento maury at 9:45 AM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks for the recommendations so far!

I knew about the TWoP people going to previously.tv (and Miss Alli's NPR role and being MeFi's Own). I like most of what they do, but I could do with an accompaniment. Their Particles are good for recaps, and the Rankleds are good for competitive reality shows, but some of the articles exclude too much about the actual show to make much sense if you're not immersed in it, especially without captions on the header photos to tell you who you're looking at.

As for Todd VanDerWerff, I like his style as well, though especially when writing for the AV Club he could get too into criticising a show for what he thought it could be, or turn into, rather than what it was, but he's a good writer about such things and the relief of not doing weekly recaps I hope will have taken some pressure off; Glee felt like it broke him at times.
posted by gadge emeritus at 2:07 PM on December 8, 2015


I really enjoy Phoebe Robinson's recaps at NYMag. She mainly does the Shondaland shows. I read her recaps more often than I watch the actual episodes.
posted by CatastropheWaitress at 4:41 PM on December 8, 2015


Pajiba: film, tv, culture and think pieces
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:47 PM on December 8, 2015


Projectfandom.com is my go-to site for most scripted shows.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 5:47 AM on December 9, 2015


« Older Is there anything like community college in the UK...   |   Books and movies about infidelity? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.