letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

I feel some stress when I read certain types of exceptionally dumb or bad faith shit that gets a lot of shares/likes tbh

but yknow I should really just get tf over it

a few things I don't like about letterboxd

- we all know this, the TV non inclusion or semi sometimes inclusion is bad and silly and completely arbitrary
- certain types of bad takes rewarded
- a minor thing, but as with RYM, odd preferences/fetishes for certain types of content or certain stylistic or formal features. sometimes it's interesting other times it's just annoying

definitely wish that they allowed TV and episode reviews. or hell, spin off another site for that and video games. the personal logging is what i most like about it, i guess

i use it mostly as a tracker of stuff i've watched and don't really "engage with the community" but it's a really well-designed site that is a pleasure to use if you just want to track some films and make or read a watchlist.

I would be fine with one entry per series, only added once it's finished airing / being released. that also means no MCU reviews :)

i am furious that i cannot write a review of true detective season 2 on letterboxd but someone can write about the queen or the queen's gambit or twin queens the return

it's so silly

one other thing that's dumb: apparently if you log a movie without rating it, you drag down its rating

what? that's stupid. no rating should not = 0 rating.

I can't personally prove that but I have heard it alleged

The other good websites are Bandcamp and Lichess. This is my theory of websites.

what about ilx i can has cheezburger

A friend of mine worked there and it was a train wreck as you might imagine

1. !!

2. "A group of investors acquired the website in September 2007 for US$2 million"

3. oh

looool

having worked at some sketchy ass train wrecks, I salute silby's friend

brad thank you for the nathaxnne tip, anyone else have accts they like?

I've been using Letterboxd for years, but literally the only thing I use it for is to maintain the film diary I've been keeping since 1992. So I just go on and log a movie and leave. I don't do ratings or write reviews. I do follow a handful of people, but I honestly don't spend much time there. I do like being able to look up when in 1997 I saw The Ice Storm or whatever.

we all know this, the TV non inclusion or semi sometimes inclusion is bad and silly and completely arbitrary

The rule I made in 1992 (when I was 12 lol) was that I only logged movies that had, at some point, been released theatrically (regardless of where I personally saw them). So no TV movies, no straight-to-video, no Netflix-only. (But film festival releases are OK.) The last year has made me rethink that, though. Esp. since there's lots of stuff in the Letterboxd database that would be easy enough to log, if I wanted to.

here's mine: https://letterboxd.com/adamt/

Oh hey, look at that. I just assumed this thing was already passe and that's why no one ever talked about it. I use it pretty regularly, mostly to keep track of what I've watched/intend to watch (because my brain is sieve-like with respect to keeping track of such things), partly to read what others think of what I've watched (I follow some of y'all, I'm PlooplePop). I guess there's a social media aspect to it but I don't really engage with that as such.

Oh right, the polite way of doing this: https://letterboxd.com/plooplepop/

xp i would definitely rethink the TV/STV/streaming exceptions. i mean, even decades past, there were notable TV movies, sadly never to be seen or heard from again!

i don't find Letterboxd vexing at all! it's fun! my movie watching habits got way better since i started using it. i like the challenge of trying to write funny blurbs, which has kinda gamified movie-watching

My frustration is actually less about the hot takes and more the dudes who seem to watch only hyper-canonical stuff and dutifully give everything five stars. Then I remember I was 18 once, too.

I think the site is best for finding out about off-the-beaten-path films rather than engaging with long reviews that could be blog entries - I'm sure there's ppl out there who do that well but I've not found much so I stick with Xgau-style capsule reviews in both reading and writing.

The stats are super fun tho my regular viewing of shorts means my most watched actors always end up being Mel Blanc or Buster Keaton.

100% would not want TV to be included, far too many places online to talk about that shit. I do agree the currently available TV should be removed tho.

Anyway: https://letterboxd.com/Reifferschizzle/

The lists (+ the presence of hyper-obsessive users) are one of the best features imo. Would you like to see all of the hard sci-fi films written by first-generation Italian Americans between '75 and '80? There's probably a list for that.

https://letterboxd.com/glumdalclitch/

If Letterbox had a recommendation engine I'd be all in, but outside of meme lists and pithy gag reviews I'm not sure I've much use for it. I've been using Movielens for the last decade for movie discovery and it hasn't done wrong by me so far.

I use the Activity feed as my de facto recommendations guide

i’m like nearly on the verge of paying for a subscription just for those sweet sweet activity feed filters

The fav streaming services feature is also good, and they’ve started sending notifications when something on your watchlist appears on one of your services.

I'm really unclear on what the actual benefits of a paid membership are. Like, if it included the ability to get really fiddly with the filters or, say, compare the content of different lists, I'd pony up in a heartbeat.

doc casino is an excellent letterboxd follow btw

As are you! ILXors unsurprisingly showing the other users of that site how it's done.

I would go "pro" just to check it out but I don't want it to say "pro" next to my name, that's nerd shit

some of my other favorite writers:

- claire diane: https://letterboxd.com/fieldmouse/ (doesn't update often, but when she does, watch out. responsible for the most beautiful film criticism i've ever read, this review of nightmare on elm street 3: https://letterboxd.com/fieldmouse/film/a-nightmare-on-elm-street-3-dream-warriors/ )

- scumbalina: https://letterboxd.com/scumbalina/ (if you want earnest well-written discursive five star reviews about shot-on-video horror, look no further)

- sydney: https://letterboxd.com/campbart/ (a lot of the writers i love on letterboxd have an almost stream-of-consciousness thing going on, but sydney's reviews are all precision, and she has the best taste on earth. currently going through a bollywood thing, very cool to keep up with)

- j0siah m0rgan: https://letterboxd.com/josiahmorgan11/

j@ke c0le and j0sh l3wis are also very good but are very popular on the site. m@tt lynch ostensibly shares a lot of my taste and priorities but i think he's just terrible. i don't exactly know why i'm google-proofing but simon did it earlier and it seems like a good practice lol

one of the appeals of letterboxd when i joined was finding all of these trans writers writing these beautiful reviews that explore both their own identity and the hidden or not-so-hidden depths of trashy horror films. i assume that is not covered in the nyt piece but that's the no. 1 reason the website is so so valuable to me

My updates have gotten extremely sporadic, but here's me: https://letterboxd.com/ephender/

brad thank you for those, most of the ppl I'm encountering online who use it are like 19 which is.....cool but not all the time lol

https://letterboxd.com/1000TimesYes/

other than twitter, the best "Social media" platform

lol I was wondering why so many people were following me

I just started using it and haven't figured out how I want to use the "like" and rating features.

Anyway, I'm https://letterboxd.com/Anniella/

when I started using it (2014) I enjoyed rating movies, but now all I do is "like" if I like a movie even a little bit, and occasionally write a lil blurb

The Pro sub is like, $12 during Thanksgiving, easily worth it for me

https://letterboxd.com/jaymc/

http://letterboxd.com/unbornwhiskey

way too self-conscious to actually review things these days but sometimes i try

https://letterboxd.com/junkzone/film/the-box-2009/

this review should be more popular

I like looking at other people's favorite films. I've watched enough meh films for a second time that I like being able to check whether or not I've already seen something. And I live in hope that my pithy comments--when I feel sufficiently moved to write them--will one of these days catch the attention of someone who is intrigued, rather than alienated, by my sense of humor. But you'd think by now I'd know better about getting the things that I want.

I do like being able to look up when in 1997 I saw The Ice Storm or whatever.

― jaymc, Tuesday, February 9, 2021 10:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I have scattered movie logs back to 2001 I've been wanting to do this with! Someday...

The second most liked review of that movie is like seven paragraphs, you really don't need to scroll much.

The writing style also doesn't strike me as letterboxd-y, lb reviews tend towards flippancy and dumb jokes. That is just professional critic Ehrlich being his usual earnest self.

Personally I don't read anything on there that isn't a capsule review, my patience for reading long essays by randos has run out.

letterboxd voice? idk isn't that just a variant of the bite-sized fragments through which we've increasingly expressed ourselves on the internet since twitter started? most of my favorite writing on lb (nathaxnne and clare (fieldmouse) and pd187 in particular) is nigh-longform

i wrote this slightly longer-than-usual piece on there recently that i'm proud of https://letterboxd.com/unbornwhiskey/film/the-village/1/

i have written 44 reviews, of which only about 5 are longer than two sentences. if i had been required to write more than two sentences for the rest of them, i probably wouldn't have posted anything at all.

fwiw, my one-sentence "reviews" are usually just pointing out a small detail that amused me, rather than trying to articulate a pithy summary of the movie and what it means.

yeah I don't see the big deal. Readers know where they can find my longer stuff. Sometimes I post a few sentences there as a way to open up for a longer piece later, or I'll cattily and briefly review the film outright.

Most of my reviews were very short reviews of films I watched with my late dad. And a handful of similarly short reviews of old 50s/60s comedies I've watched with my old Mum. I don't think anyone is following me for reviews. I'm not a writer so why on earth would I even attempt to write a long review - it would be awful.

When I post reviews, I'm only ever expecting / thinking about my followers reading them tbh. I can sympathize with 龜's irritation (though I think ivy is right that this style not native to LB), but yeah I probably would never post if there was a minimum length. Also, the single most annoying review I've encountered was longform: a lengthy, suspiciously detailed personal story about a high school missed connection that didn't reference the movie until the final line. I wouldn't have cared really, but it was the most popular review for the film.

While I'm here, I watched Kenji Misumi's Kiru (Destiny's Son) over the weekend, and Daniel if it's true that you haven't seen that yet, check it out! I was very impressed, should be as/more famous than his Lone Wolf and Zatoichi films imo (not that I've seen all of those), just one beautiful shot after another

That sounds right up my alley too, Rob. Added to watchlist.

I was pretty surprised it's not more well known (it's on Criterion Channel as part of his Sword Trilogy, though it's a thematic trilogy not a plot/character one). My only cavil was that it's def too short at 70 mins — it feels like there could have been 3 hrs of story in the novel or the screenplay, and there's a certain Dickensian quality to the plot that might have benefited from more time passing— but on the other hand what you get is a supremely condensed aesthetic experience.

Pithy one sentence reviews get more likes than longer reviews unfortunately

Thanks rob, that movie seems to have 5 star ratings across the board from my mutuals, and I'd never even heard of it!

As for the one line reviews, it should also be pointed out that as with the example 龜 posted most read reviews will often be by big critics. Ehrlich writes for IndieWire, of course he's not gonna give you a full review for free on his LB. Same for most paid critics, and that includes those who don't have publications but have managed to make some cash via substack or patreon.

Outside of that yeah you have a lot of enthusiasts writing long reviews, probably hoping to graduate to a paid gig. It would be unseemly of me to mock, I was doing the same thing on Epinions back in the day, but the effort of finding someone who writes long AND well is a bit of a drag. I've mostly gathered a group of mutuals who write good capsule reviews and whose tastes I know are compatible with my own.

plus me, lol

I'm in the UK so no access to Criterion Channel.

pithy reviews are fine and good as long as they're actually expressing something about the movie and not just 'actor hot' or 'this movie has same actor as other movie'

I like that everyone finds their own groove, whether it's 10 words or 10 paragraphs. One friend gives a star rating and always just quotes a meaningful line. I stopped doing star ratings, realizing that I don't have any obligation to and my rating could change between immediately after seeing/feeling a movie and thinking about it (or not) months later.

In all sincerity as much as I do get annoyed from time to time by some of the reviewing prose styles, LB is probably the most useful social media site I've ever been on

I think there are a handful of ways people use the site and if you're expecting it to be strictly one thing it'll be an exercise in frustration. It's interesting to see the people who just use it to track their watching and pal around with others by posting a quote or something brief versus the people who think they're auditioning for prime Rotten Tomatoes placement

I stopped doing star ratings, realizing that I don't have any obligation to and my rating could change between immediately after seeing/feeling a movie and thinking about it (or not) months later.

The way I mentally deal with this is to think of my star rating as a rating of the experience I had with the movie, rather than a rating of the movie itself (although these are of course not so easily disentangled). I resisted giving ratings for a long time, but I have found that the (self-imposed) obligation to rate forces me to think more critically about the movie than I otherwise might, even if it's just "is this working on me?"

90% of my use for the star ratings is to be able to remember/sort my favorites at the end of the year or for whatever time period. the other 10% is for anyone who sees it if they care what I think

1 star: movie has at least one clown
2 stars: movie has zombies
3 stars: movie has no paranormal entities
4 stars: vampires
5 stars: there’s a frankenstein

I use both the ratings and the reviews to remind myself of what I thought of a movie. I don’t have any inkling that there is an audience for my reviews, though I only started using Letterboxed a month or two ago (username @sctttnnnt).

After many years of being much more focused on TV shows and only watching a few movies a year, I suddenly got the itch to dive back in. I made lists of the full 2022 Sight & Sound list, the AFI100, every Best Picture winner, and the recent NYT best of the 21st century. Once I crossed off everything I’d seen, I combined all the lists together in chronological order by release date, and for the last few months I’ve been loosely working my way through film history (or at least the parts of film history I didn’t already know). Once I’d been doing that for a bit I realized a Letterboxd account would be helpful.

I started forcing myself to actually write something about every movie I logged a few months ago. Most of these aren't really eloquent or insightful, but they're mostly for me anyway.

My 40 favorite first-watches of 2025: https://letterboxd.com/mondosalvo/list/40-favorite-first-time-watches-of-2025/

Barfly is underrated. Maybe my favourite movie Mickey Rourke has been involved in

Recently signed up. Logged everything that I saw at the cinema last year (most of it via Mubi Go).

https://letterboxd.com/krakow81/

Here's my list: Best first watches of 2025

Only 25 for me, but I did at least annotate them:

https://letterboxd.com/reifferschizzle/list/new-to-me-25/edit/

That link doesnt work for me

https://boxd.it/Rbls6

My fave first time watches of '25

https://boxd.it/Rghju

I liked this piece on Chuck Norris, because its also about everything.

https://letterboxd.com/pd187/film/missing-in-action/

pd187 has some absolutely amazing reviews, and seemingly unfathomable knowledge on all sorts of conspiracy.

Yeah this poster is a very good old style reviewer who would look up the people involved in a thing and make connections etc.

Thanks for the share, good read that and an instant follow.

ok, after reading this in one of pd187's reviews, along with the general writing style..
after years of canibus telling me to watch this while thinking spaceys name was k-pax

..I'm going to call it, pd187 is former ilx poster ethan p

oh good i’ve been wondering who he was on here for ages

I think you’re probably right… pd = plum drank, their website has some local georgia stuff and “best beloved tuppence”, and writing style is very ethan. one red flag is I’d expect more rap stuff but maybe his interests have shifted

I was mostly joking but if it is him that's very funny

I’d expect more rap stuff but maybe his interests have shifted

Plum187um

I was mostly joking but if it is him that's very funny

https://pd187.neocities.org/