Sophie from That Final Scene

There's Wallace! Congratulations, Michael B. Jordan! I feel like a proud Auntie 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 #ActorAwards

i feel that!

Absolutely!!

all of you Letterboxd users terrify me (but you also make me jealous) On the torture of watching other people be Perfectly Consistent.

I wrote about what these Perfectly Consistent Letterboxd Users reveal about a gap I didn't know existed, and why I can't stop staring at their profiles like they're a different species: www.thatfinalscene.com/p/all-of-you...

(10/10)

Every time I see one of these profiles—those pristine grids of daily watches, those Patron badges, those multi-year streaks—I feel something I can't quite name. (9/10)

They're not analyzing whether the film earned a spot in their diary. They're not waiting for the right spiritual alignment. They just...do it. Like breathing. (8/10)

I can write 4000 words analyzing a film's themes. I can publish 30 essays in a year. But I cannot maintain a simple logging habit that these people do without even thinking about it. (7/10)

The "add to diary" button sits there. Waiting. Mocking me. It would take literally two seconds. But something in my brain treats it like I'm being asked to write a book report for homework I already finished. (6/10)

Meanwhile I'll have a complete spiritual crisis watching Marty Supreme, mentally compose a Pulitzer-tier review about Timothée Chalamet's rodent-like performance, and then just... not log it. (5/10)

They rack up those pink and purple Letterboxd Fridays like they're collecting Pokémon. Every single week. No exceptions. No gaps. Just relentless documentation. (4/10)

Turned off Dune Part Two after 25 minutes because you hated it that much? Logged. Watched a foreign horror film while reorganizing your closet? Also logged. The streak must continue. (3/10)

These aren't casual film lovers. They have streaks in the HUNDREDS. They'll watch a David Michôd movie, not realize who directed it until the end credits, and still log it immediately. (2/10)

🧵 There are Letterboxd users with 300-day logging streaks who log films they watched as background noise while doing their taxes, and I need to understand what species of human does this (1/10)

inside the wild plan to turn movie theaters into fitness centers for your brain (+ a filmstack challenge) A radical blueprint on transforming our dying theaters into cultural fitness centers. And a Filmstack Challenge!

Sean Baker followed me after I diagnosed why cinemas are actually dying, and now I just published my solution: transforming movie theaters into cultural gyms.

Here's the blueprint I just wrote:

the death of cinema & how to bring it back to life (part 1) I paid £20 to watch someone scroll through pasta recipes during a r*pe scene, and that's not even the worst part of going to theaters in 2025.

A really great read on the death of cinema. Looking forward to reading the solutions. Well-researched. open.substack.com/pub/thatfina... @thatfinalscene.bsky.social

what you're risking while watching elon musk risk tesla When billionaires can't escape mathematical reality, we all learn what we've actually mortgaged.

How Wall Street manipulates TIME ITSELF to escape accountability: These are the lessons from MARGIN CALL that explain every financial crisis you've lived through.

ADOLESCENCE is terrific. Television doesn't get better than this. I know it's easy to hate on Netflix when so much of their content is garbage, but they sure as hell earned my monthly subscription with this one.

did i just invent the formula for underrated directors? A term that reveals more about us than the directors we apply it to.

I tried to create a mathematical formula to identify "underrated" directors and accidentally proved why the whole concept is flawed.

After watching the latest episode of THE WHITE LOTUS, I’m calling it a frustrating season. If water guns is the plot device we get by the half-season mark, then we no longer have a slow burn. We have a no burn.

Even if the finale is a bloody massacre, it doesn’t make the journey worth it.

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much On visible ambition and the mortifying ordeal of being too earnest for your own good. When did effort become our culture's ultimate ick?

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much
open.substack.com/pub/thatfina...

Absolutely! I go into this in much more detail (and nuance) in the full essay 🤗

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much On visible ambition and the mortifying ordeal of being too earnest for your own good. When did effort become our culture's ultimate ick?

I've got much more to say about this whole phenomenon—the class dynamics beneath it, how it shapes creative industries, and why I'm done pretending not to care. Full essay here: (14/14) www.thatfinalscene.com/p/jeremy-str...

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We've built a culture that celebrates the appearance of effortless success while mocking those who show their work. Maybe that says more about our own fears than about the people brave enough to care openly. (13/14)

The most electric performances—in acting, writing, any creative field—come from precisely that willingness to look completely undone by wanting something. To risk appearing uncool in pursuit of something meaningful. (12/14)

For what it's worth, Culkin himself doesn't play this game. In his Oscar speech, he directly addressed Strong: "Jeremy, you're amazing in The Apprentice. I love your work. It's f---ing great." Real recognizes real. (11/14)

This isn't about who "deserves" the Oscar—both delivered extraordinary performances (though I do have a fave!). It's about how we've turned caring deeply into something embarrassing, something to be hidden rather than celebrated. (10/14)

What's fascinating is how this plays out beyond awards shows. In every industry, we celebrate the "natural genius" while side-eyeing the visible striver. The dropout billionaire over the immigrant founder who meticulously built their business. (9/14)

We've developed a strange relationship with authenticity in 2025. We claim to value realness but recoil when it arrives unfiltered. Remember Timothée Chalamet's SAG speech where he admitted wanting "greatness"? Same reaction. (8/14)

The internet's response? Immediate mockery, especially contrasted with Culkin's reaction—simply posting a photo of himself drinking champagne on a Parisian balcony with "LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO". One approach read as desperate, the other as cool. (7/14)

When Oscar nominations dropped in January, the pattern repeated. Strong released a heartfelt statement about his lifelong devotion to acting alongside a childhood photo of himself outside the 1993 Oscars. (6/14)