This is a running list of reputable / scholarly / academic websites that are appropriate for film research.
If you find a link that no longer works, please let me know.
If you find a dynamite resource that is not listed, please let me know!
Please also see the Resources to Approach with Caution section for some time-saving tips.
The American Society of Cinematographers - https://theasc.com/american-cinematographer - Founded in 1919, a longstanding cultural, educational, and professional organization that focuses on the art of film, mostly through cinematography. A print magazine as well as website that features articles, videos, podcasts, and more.
Australian Centre for the Moving Image - https://www.acmi.net.au/ - An actual museum is Australia, but the website includes articles, educational resources, and in-depth analysis of some films.
Collider - https://collider.com/ - Entertainment industry news, interviews, reviews, analysis and more. Trending closer to just being an aggregator (see Caution section), but still has some original reporting.
FilmSound.org - https://filmsound.org/ - An independently published website by a Swedish film teacher, but he has put in decades of work creating the ultimate resource for learning about sound in film.
International Cinephile Society - https://icsfilm.org/ - Only two decades old, but an established group of film scholars and industry professionals. Hosts film festivals and posts essays on films. Also has a great list of resources at https://icsfilm.org/links/
New York Film Academy - https://www.nyfa.edu/ - An actual film school with multiple locations, but the website has a blog, videos, podcasts, and student resources that are freely accessible. Check under "Discover NYFA" in the "News and Culture" section.
Senses of Cinema - https://www.sensesofcinema.com/ - An independent but well-run online film magazine. Australia-based, but covers worldwide and lesser-known films and filmmakers.
SlashFilm "/Film" - https://www.slashfilm.com/ - Started off as a film blog, but quickly grew to cover TV, anime, video games, and other entertainment mediums. Includes articles, interviews, and videos, as well as educational resources.
WeScreenplay - https://www.wescreenplay.com/blog/ - A website that offers professional feedback on screenplays, but also has an interesting blog that focuses on writing for film.
Being able to evaluate a source of information is a critical life skill. It is especially useful in the world of IB and academic writing, where you are often asked to reference or cite academically-appropriate research in essays and other forms of analysis. Over the years it has unfortunately become more difficult to discern the propriety of information, especially when searching on the Internet. In the sections below you will find information about different types of websites to look out for, and how to approach them with a critical eye.
These websites publish articles and listicles (e.g. "10 Things You Didn't Know About Coraline") that rely heavily or entirely on reporting done by actual journalists or information taken from other websites. The articles do not feature primary sources, but instead "report" on what other reporters have written. For example, an aggregator would write an article about Avatar, but if they included a quote from the director, it would be from a CNN interview with the director. Think of it as a screenshot of a repost that is shared on social media. The telltale signs of one of these types of websites is multiple advertisements on the webpage, numerous links to other articles on their website, and clickbait-y titles for their articles. Sadly, these types of websites are really easy to produce with AI large language models, so they will likely become more prevalent in the coming years, and because it is a profitable business model, established publishers will start to adopt their methods.
How to deal with them: Go to the source. If an aggregator quotes something an actor tweeted, find that tweet and link to it instead.
Examples:
Cinephilia & Beyond - https://cinephiliabeyond.org/ - Articles, archives, and more on a beautifully designed but difficult-to-navigate website. Best to search via Google, starting with "cinephiliabeyond.org:" and then the search term. The articles are mostly analysis and secondhand journalism, but plenty of links to original sources are used. The website seems to be based out of Croatia, which may be important to consider regarding cultural contexts.
TheCinemaholic - https://thecinemaholic.com/ - A film news aggregator and listicle website that relies on secondhand journalism, so not a useful primary source of information. It also does not cite sources for its information and appears to only link to other articles on their website. Their ethics and editorial policies are interestingly written, so I will check up on them from time to time. For now, best to avoid entirely.
The Internet has democratized information - everyone has a voice, which is good, but not everyone knows what they are talking about. Generally speaking, people also have a hard time discerning objective Truth from subjective truths. There are a number of ways to get your voice out onto the Internet, and many of them pay or are engineered to pop right to the top of a Google search result. Websites such as WordPress, BlogSpot, Medium, Quora, Substack, YouTube and more allow anyone to create a website and post their thoughts in a way that appears professional and trustworthy. With that said, there are excellent film critics who post their work on these sites in addition to their normal publishers. Social media-centric websites such as Rotten Tomatoes are excellent for seeing if you want to spend money on a movie ticket, but anyone can create an account and submit a review, so proceed with caution.
To make matters worse, search engines like Google are now using AI to read these websites and summarize answers to search terms that you use. It puts those AI-created results right at the top of the page, but does not currently do a good job of evaluating the accuracy of the information, or even evaluating the accuracy of the summary that it creates.
How to deal with them: Evaluate the authority of the source. Was the review written by Roger Ebert, an award winning film journalist, or @_TheKiser607, an English major who currently works at Best Buy but likes posting movie summaries on YouTube?
Examples:
Metacritic - https://www.metacritic.com/ - An entertainment review aggregator. It does include published reviews from reputable news and magazine sources, but also allows individual users to post reviews. Best advice is to cite a published review directly from the source instead of through Metacritic's website.
Rotten Tomatoes - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/ - A film and TV review aggregator / social media oriented website. It has expanded to include interviews with filmmakers and other interesting articles. Users can post reviews, so do not treat those as "authoritative" sources of information unless they are one of the "Tomatometer-approved critics." It would be a good idea to read the profile of those critics to learn more about their location and background - which could be useful when thinking about how art is perceived through different cultural lenses.
This is a catch-all category for works that are written by people who, while they may have great information, are not considered an authority in the subject area. Most often, these come from other students who have written an essay for an assignment, presentation websites, study guide websites, and other teacher's websites - GradeSaver, SparkNotes, 123HelpMe, Prezi, and Google Sites are just a few. While you would hope that the information being presented is accurate and appropriate, it is not an accepted practice to cite a fellow or former student's work, or a teacher's website (there are very rare exceptions, none of which you will encounter in this class). Imagine how strange it would be to write "According to Lundy, a student who passed your class last semester, Fight Club is a movie about toxic masculinity." That is what it feels like when you cite someone else's school essay, presentation, or video essay. Similarly, study guides and Prezi presentations can be written by anyone, and may or may not contain accurate or wholly original information.
How to deal with them: The defining line between authoritative or not can be blurry, so when it comes to these sources: don't even read them. If they have a works cited page, skim that for useful links to actual resources.
Examples:
The San Francisco Art & Film Program - https://artandfilm.org/writing-on-film - An arts and culture organization based in San Francisco, but includes college and student essays on their website. Though they are well-written, avoid using other student's work as a resource. If you get any ideas from their writing, you do need to appropriately cite it, or you are at risk for being accused of plagiarism.