letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

I sometimes worry my ratings are inflated but then I'll see something so many degrees worse than most of what I watch, not even an infinite scale could put it in perspective

Yeah, I just don't watch bad films that often anymore. Refusing to go see things just because there's #discourse has helped.

You can always change the rating later if you watch it again and it doesn't hold up.

This is a great aspect of LB imo - star ratings always in flux, to be changed upon rewatch.

I think I've posted this before, but this is usually my dumb guide:

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/rating-scale.jpg

I like this Dan S. Rainbow scale

Truly, no one I follow has more alluringly idiosyncratic favorite film lists: https://sallittfavorites.wordpress.com/

I like using Letterboxd but whenever a review calls any movie whatsoever “boring” I get incandescently mad

rt

Helpful discussion. I think if I sign up, my plan will be to avoid ratings and avoid writing reviews per se – I’m mostly interested in exploring older world cinemas, and maybe journaling some of that, if I can think of anything to write.

I haven't reviewed or starred anything, I suppose I'm just leeching off of other's watch lists/diaries. I have no shortage of things to watch, but often I'll see something pass by on my friends list that left-field enough to get a "what the hell is that?" It may just be a cool poster and no review at all, but tbf I did buy records based only on the artwork.

Wait ILX0r Dan S is Dan Sallitt?

Yeah, I don't rate/review anything, either. I just log the films I watch. I like reading other people's reviews, though.

When I signed up a while into the pandemic, I was reviewing each film I logged, but that got tiresome. Instead, I assigned a shorthand to the star ratings (which I borrowed from Michael B and modified). Works well enough.

Follow me for more middlebrow viewing! https://letterboxd.com/mondosalvo/

I like your rubric. I've been reluctant to assign star ratings because I feel like I would overthink it, but maybe I just need to develop something like that.

When I signed up a while into the pandemic, I was reviewing each film I logged, but that got tiresome. Instead, I assigned a shorthand to the star ratings (which I borrowed from Michael B and modified). Works well enough.

hehe I borrowed and modified Mike's too.

Honoured to be an influence lol

Speaking of reviews, how come the pithy one-reviews I write get more likes than the reviews I devote a bit of time to?!

Because that's the style favored by the youngs of today. My follower count would be off the charts if could just bring myself to write 'slaaaay' and hit post.

perhaps the greatest skill is editing your review down to a single word or phrase that best conveys your thoughts

What’s your boxd again, Michael B?

https://letterboxd.com/carrotbourke

the correct way to use the stars is to force yr readers to triangulate the quality of the films with the content of yr reviews so as to work out how yr numbering system operates

xp thanks! Following

mark s probably has one of those letterboxd accounts where everything that’s rated is a tepid 1 - 3 stars with the exception of a single 5-star Shrek review

I will not be checking to confirm this

How did you know???

a couple of friends and I came up with this for the ratings, probably pretty similar overall to everyone else’s

5 — special, all time favorite
4.5 — near perfect movie
4 — great, one of the best of the year
3.5 — really good, some flaws but worth seeing in a theater
3 — solid, worth seeing if you like that genre
2.5 — uneven, too many problems, but some redeeming qualities
2 — a mess but I can see what they’re trying to do
1.5 and below, various degrees of feeling insulted having had to watch it

my ratings skew toward the higher end, I don’t do this for a living or anything so I generally am only going to see movies I’m interested in

I’m @radiokeller

Yeah, I'm generally a softy when rating things because I also don't seek out films I think I won't like.

However, my lowest score belongs to 'The Villain,' a live-action Warner Bros cartoon from the late 70s with Kirk Douglas and Arnold Schwarzenegger that I thought was hilarious as a kid and realized as an adult it isn't funny or even competently made.

I'm probably throwing the algorithms off because I never use the star ratings - just the check as to whether or not I liked it. If I'm watching something that is clearly crashing-and-burning for me, I'm out. I'm not sticking around to go, yup... that's a 1 star p.o.s. and I'm affirming that I watched every frame of it.

I don't watch things I know I wont like either. So it looks like I like everything but hey ho. It's not like anybody will follow me for recs.

Have any of you got a list of favourite films or 5 star rated films? If so, please post a link to them. I'd like to peruse them for recommendations.

I've a fav by year list but it's badly in need of revising, will post later.

Because that's the style favored by the youngs of today. My follower count would be off the charts if could just bring myself to write 'slaaaay' and hit post.

Don't think this is strictly a youngs thing, millenials shaped by twitter prob as responsible as anyone. I'll admit if something's longer than a paragraph or three I skip past too, feel like capsule reviews serve the format better, longform reviews I think are better suited to blogs (or I guess in 2023 newsletters).

because when I'm scrolling through my feed U really don't want to read more than three paragraphs for any one entry. think of it like texting YouTube video links that are longer than a minute, nobody wants that

Here's the list. I messed with it a bit, trimming away films I've played out or which don't mean that much to me anymore. Still wish I'd explored more of the good stuff of the 80's and 90's, original list was riddled with childhood faves and it's still a bit too much of that. Anyway had fun doing my own personal version of the S&S results, playing the outrage in my head as Truffaut leaves the list, etc.

http://letterboxd.com/reifferschizzle/list/favourite-movies-for-each-year-1920-2022/

You’ve watched
49 of 103 47%

A film per year is a good idea. Some years are awfully tough.

I had a go, but I think I may have accidentally left a year out but I cba checking which year. If anyone spots it then please let me know.

https://letterboxd.com/pfunkboy/list/favourite-movies-for-each-year-1920-2022/

'68 and '69 are missing iirc

Most of my 'best of' lists are for the vast array of trashy movies that I love, but my 1930s list is relatively respectable: https://letterboxd.com/plooplepop/list/top-films-of-the-30s/

yeah i ended up checking and fixed it

xp

there are users who regularly post thoughtful reviews that get hundreds of likes, but i think it takes a willingness to spend a not insignifcant amount of time writing reviews on letterboxd to build a following that's willing to read them. i regularly block people who have popular glib one-liners with thousands of likes because usually they're serial offenders and it lessens the odds that i will have to see a trying-hard-to-look-dashed-off dimwitticism as the most popular review under every movie. i'm very thankful for the pauline kael account that has trascribed her writing under tons of movies, i wish there were more accounts like that

just tbc all of you wonderful ilxors i've followed have been a pleasure ;)

How do folks deal with diary entries in the past where you don't know the date you saw it - just make something up? I didn't keep a regular film diary until 2006, so I'm filling in the previous 35 years of movie watching as best as I can. So while I know I saw David Lynch's Dune on opening night in 1984, I know zilch on when I would have seen the original D.O.A. on late night KTLA-TV in the 1970s.

I only do diary entries prospectively, anything from the past I just rate/review (if I remember it well enough) but don’t log

it's interesting which tv shows people log on letterboxd. like people are logging black mirror episodes now? i guess bc it's an anthology series so each episode is its own "movie." i find it annoying personally.

Yeah, plus limited series. I do log the ones I watch (most recently, White House Plumbers) but don't rate them. I guess that's my moral line in the sand?

LB is also pretty inconsistent about what tv shows it considers to be movies in the first place.

I mean, honestly, I submitted this well over a year ago thinking it would get yanked within weeks, and it's still there: https://letterboxd.com/film/clown-ministry/

The standards aren't that tight

Their incredibly hazy stance on TV drives me nuts. Like, why do episodes of Black Mirror count but not episodes of The Outer Limits?

I had to find a whole other TV-centric platform (Serializd) whose UI is basically a jankier Letterboxd and which seems to be populated by a total of 15 people who are in their early twenties. It does what I need it to do, though, for the most part. I started using Letterboxd mostly as an aid for my sieve-like memory so the lack of interaction with other humans is fine but there's definitely a strong sense of shouting into the complete and utter void over there.

I don't log TV shows. That's in part bc when I started keeping a movie diary 30 years ago, I decided I would only log theatrical releases and not, for instance, TV movies. I've backed away from that a bit in recent years as major filmmakers have made movies that haven't played in theaters. it seems weird not to log Soderbergh's Kimi bc it was only on HBO. But Black Mirror episodes seem like a bridge too far.

That said, the Emmys have always considered them in the TV movie category, so I get why Letterboxd treats them that way.

I'm not above larding up my total number of items watched; I just don't want to give them ratings

i think twin peaks: the return is the only tv-adjacent thing i've logged but even then i logged it as one thing, not each episode individually

ok, I'm in

https://letterboxd.com/centuriessound/