Cinnamon DB is a movie database that sorts 49,000 films and 10,000 TV series by how they feel, not by genre. Every title is rated on twenty feelings, so you can ask for something sad but kind, or frightening without the violence, and get an answer.

What does the DB in Cinnamon DB stand for?

Database. It’s part of the name: Cinnamon DB is one site, at cinnamondb.com, a database of films and TV series sorted by how they feel. It isn’t a general-purpose database.

How do you find a movie by mood?

Pick the feeling you want rather than the genre. Cinnamon DB rates every film on twenty feelings, such as melancholy, warmth, tension, beauty, strangeness and playfulness, and shows you the films that actually feel that way, filtered to what’s streaming where you are.

How is Cinnamon DB different from IMDb or Letterboxd?

IMDb and Letterboxd are excellent at who made a film, how it’s rated and what people said about it. Cinnamon DB tells you what a film is like to watch, and which other films are like it.

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About

What Cinnamon DB is

Cinnamon DB sorts films and series by how they feel. Not by genre, not by what’s trending, not by what a streaming service wants you to open next. By whether something is heavy or light, scary or kind, beautiful or plain, strange or familiar. It’s built for the question you actually have at nine in the evening, and it answers it in under a minute.

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First, the name

Cinnamon DB is one name for one thing. The DB is short for database, because that’s what it is: a database of films and TV series. Search for “cinnamon” alone and you get a spice. “DB” alone could be half the internet.

So: Cinnamon DB, at cinnamondb.com. If you came looking for a general-purpose database, this isn’t it. If you came looking for something to watch, you’re in the right place.

The problem with genre

Genre is a filing system, not a description. “Horror” covers a film that makes you laugh and one that keeps you up all night. “Drama” is nearly half of all cinema and tells you almost nothing. You’ve never once wanted to watch a drama. You’ve wanted something sad that wouldn’t be cruel about it, or something warm you hadn’t already seen twice.

Nowhere else answers that, because how a film feels has never been written down. Streaming services sort by what they’re promoting. Review sites sort by rating, which tells you whether people liked a film, not whether it suits your evening.

What this movie database does instead

Every one of the 49,000 films and 10,000 series here is rated on twenty feelings: how dark it is, how warm, how tense, how playful, how strange, how beautiful, and so on.

So you can ask for what you actually want. Sad but kind. Frightening without the violence. Beautiful and slow and asking something of you. Genre can’t say any of that.

Recommendations work differently too. Ask most sites for something like a film you loved and you get the same studio, the same star, or whatever was popular that year. Cinnamon DB finds the films that feel most like it. Often that’s a film from another decade, another country and another genre. Often it’s exactly right.

The fastest way to find a film

Most film sites are built to keep you browsing, since a visitor who finds something quickly is a visitor who leaves. This one is built to get you from “no idea” to something on screen.

So there are no autoplaying trailers, no pop-ups before you’ve seen anything, and no endless feed. Pages stay fast on a phone with bad signal, and there’s a light theme and a dark one. Four clicks from the front page to a film you haven’t seen, that you can watch tonight, that feels the way you wanted to feel. That’s the whole design brief.

Streaming, where you actually are

A recommendation you can’t watch isn’t a recommendation. Cinnamon DB knows what’s streaming in 139 countries and works out which one you’re in, so what it suggests is something you can open tonight.

Or go the other way and browse what’s on a particular service: every mood, on the subscription you already pay for, ranked by how well each title fits the mood rather than by what the service is pushing this week.

Where to start

There’s no wrong door, but these are the quickest:

Browse by mood: pick the feeling, get the films.
Answer a few questions: for when you know how you want to feel but not what to call it.
Shape it yourself: turn the feelings up and down and watch the recommendations change as you go.
Films that are kind to you: warm, playful and comforting at once, which is rarer than it used to be.
The long reads: what turns up when you look at fifty thousand films by how they feel.

Common questions

What does the DB stand for? Database. It’s part of the name: Cinnamon DB, one site, at cinnamondb.com.

Do I need an account? Not to browse, search or read anything. Only to keep lists of your own.

How is it different from IMDb or Letterboxd? They’re excellent at what they do: who made a film, how it’s rated, what people said about it. Cinnamon DB isn’t competing with either. It tells you what a film is like to watch, and which other films are like it.

Does it cover TV? Yes. Around 10,000 series, rated on the same twenty feelings as the films.

Where does the information come from? Film and series details and streaming availability come from TMDB and JustWatch. The twenty feelings are Cinnamon DB’s own.