Film sites: databases, criticism and where to watch

Film coverage online divides into three functions that people routinely conflate. Databases record what exists: cast, crew, release dates, running times. Criticism argues about whether it is any good. Availability tells you where you can watch it. A site that does one of these well usually does the others badly.

Databases are the most durable and the least fashionable. Their value is completeness and accuracy, and the good ones have decades of accumulated correction behind them. They are also the hardest to replace, which is why the major ones have outlasted almost every other kind of film site.

Criticism is where the interesting reading is, and the useful distinction is between a review aggregator score and a critic whose taste you have calibrated against your own. An aggregate tells you what the consensus was; it cannot tell you whether you will like something.

Availability information is the fastest to go stale, because streaming rights move constantly. Any "where to watch" page more than a few months old should be assumed wrong, and regional differences make most of them wrong for most readers anyway.