CineScope
Your Gateway to Discovering Movies and Series—Trending, Latest Releases, and Everything Cinema
The Problem
Movie enthusiasts often struggle to find comprehensive information about films and series in one place. They have to jump between multiple platforms to discover trending content, check new releases, view cast details, and read plot summaries. There was a need for a unified platform that brings all essential movie information together with a fast, user-friendly experience.
The Solution
CineScope is a modern movie discovery platform that aggregates data from The Movie Database (TMDB) API to provide cinema lovers with everything they need—trending movies, latest releases, detailed cast information, plot summaries, and ratings—all in one clean interface. Built for speed and simplicity, it's like IMDb reimagined for the modern web.
Smart Movie Search
Instantly search and discover movies by title, genre, or keywords with lightning-fast results.
Trending Content
Stay updated with the latest trending movies and series, refreshed daily to show what's popular.
Detailed Movie Info
Access comprehensive details including plot summaries, cast information, ratings, and release dates.
Lightning Fast Performance
Smart caching with Redis ensures repeated queries load instantly without hitting API rate limits.
Tech Stack
System Architecture
Cache Strategy: Popular movies cached for 24 hours, reducing API calls by 80%
Deployment: Backend hosted on DigitalOcean | Frontend deployed on Vercel
My Role & Contributions
- •Designed and built the entire Flask REST API backend from scratch
- •Integrated TMDB API for fetching movie data, trending lists, and cast information
- •Implemented Redis caching strategy to temporarily store frequently accessed movie data in memory
- •Set up Celery task queue for asynchronous API calls to prevent blocking requests
- •Deployed backend to DigitalOcean and managed production environment configuration
Technical Challenge Solved
Problem: TMDB API Rate Limits
The Movie Database (TMDB) API has strict rate limits that restrict the number of requests per second. When multiple users searched for the same popular movie (like "Avengers" or "Inception"), the application would hit rate limits and fail to return data. Additionally, every API call took 1-2 seconds, making repeated searches for the same content painfully slow.
Solution: Smart Caching with Redis & Celery
Implemented an intelligent caching layer using Redis to store frequently accessed movie data temporarily in memory:
- When a user searches for a movie, the system first checks if the data exists in Redis cache
- If found (cache hit), data is returned instantly without making an API call
- If not found (cache miss), Celery queues a background task to fetch from TMDB API
- The fetched data is stored in Redis with a 24-hour expiration time
- Popular movies remain cached, eliminating redundant API calls
Result: Reduced API calls by 80% for popular content and improved response time from 1-2 seconds to under 100ms for cached data.
Key Learnings
Handling External APIs
Learned to work with third-party API rate limits, authentication, and error handling in production environments.
Redis & Celery Mastery
Gained hands-on experience implementing Redis for caching and Celery for async task processing to optimize performance.
Production Deployment
Deployed and maintained a production Flask application on DigitalOcean with proper environment configuration.
Explore CineScope
The platform is live and ready to help you discover your next favorite movie.