letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

Makes sense there'd be a TV clone/competitor to Letterboxd, but what I really want is one for video games

― Nhex, Tuesday, 20 June 2023 18:36 (one hour ago) link

I want one for logging everything (e.g. digging through lots of mid-'60s media atm). Which is basically just a blog iirc. And which isn't really a thing anymore but the longer I shout into multiple complete and utter voids the more I'm just like 'Blogger here I come (again)'.

One day I thought "I'll just add every single film I've ever seen" and started with a genre, going through the list alphabetically, planning on going from genre to genre. I lasted one long afternoon session and didn't make it through the alphabet one time. Maybe I'll go back to that someday.

― Motoroller Scampotron (WmC)

I should get back to this project. Someday.

I sometimes think about adding the movies I saw before 1992, when I first started keeping track. In the late '90s, I tried to make a list of these pre-1992 viewings in a notebook, which I still have, although there are a few titles with question marks next to them. I'm still not convinced I ever saw The Karate Kid, but it's possible.

Some of my biggest gaps are from when I worked at the movie theater in high school -- crap like The Relic and Def Jam Presents: How to Be a Player, which I just added now

When I first got into it I sat down and marked "watched" every movie I could remember watching in my life, but def made no attempt to log, rate or review them. I'm sure there must be some childhood gaps, but I'm satisfied, and it was kind of fun to do!

I log TV shows by season, but I'm also involved enough to build my own database to track everything (books, tv, movies) and then export out what I need. Filling in the gaps is indeed fun - since I know that everything in my log prior to 2006 is suspect I'm giving it an arbitrary date (I know I saw Casablanca at UCLA sometime in the late 80s) and tagging the date as suspect. Somewhere on the net I found an archive of New Beverly Theater flyers from the 80s and 90s. and it's like finding a site full of old gig flyers.

I'll list TV shows on letterboxd if they are a one-season-and-out. Things like Pistol, Adam Curtis' documentaries, etc

They changed the scoring system for the Letterboxd top250, presumably to prevent a less than a year old film from being at the top. Current 250:

https://letterboxd.com/dave/list/official-top-250-narrative-feature-films/

It's an interesting mix of regular canon, IMDB bait (Shawshank in there at 10, Nolan Batmans and such) and more interesting/out of left field choices. Anyway if the modern film geek canon puts Kobayashi's Harakiri as the best film of all time and Come & See as #2 that's certainly nothing to complain about.

One film that used to be top10 and is now gone from the top100 altogether is Auto da Compadecida, a Brazilian comedy that apparently got in there purely through a concentrated effort by Brazilian users to troll US letterboxders angry at its inclusion in the top100.

Across the Spider-Verse is already #7 of all-time so if they're trying to avoid recency bias it's not working

Cool that La Haine is up there, felt like that movie was pretty overlooked for the last couple decades

I went on a rant about how much I didn't like La Haine once and it turned out the person I was speaking to loved La Haine so much that it inspired him to become a filmmaker, I only found this out later from his brother, a close friend of mine.

Not sure what the lesson here is, sorry.

The Letterboxd top 250 means less now than the IMDB one does, which is pretty sad

Ugh

Across the Spider-Verse is already #7 of all-time so if they're trying to avoid recency bias it's not working

Cool that La Haine is up there, felt like that movie was pretty overlooked for the last couple decades

― Nhex, Wednesday, June 21, 2023 9:10 AM bookmarkflaglink

lol and the previous Spider-Verse is at #33

The nice thing is that new films eventually fall once the first wave of superfans subsides and the rest of us catch up, and yet some of the original IMDB atrocities persist (Shawshank mainly, but also the outsized reputation of the female-less 12 Angry Men)

i tried to get obsessed with letterboxd during the pandemic but it didn't take. which is weird because its made for my kind of brain. i just got weary of documenting/listing things in general back then. i ended up writing some tiny reviews though!

https://letterboxd.com/skotrok/films/reviews/

5 stars!

https://letterboxd.com/skotrok/films/rated/5/

The fun thing is to sort your top-rated movies in order of average ratings (lowest first): https://letterboxd.com/ephender/films/rated/5/by/rating-lowest/

The new Spider Verse was #1 before the rejig so yeah it is working.

tbf new Spidy might just be one of my fav superhero films of all time (need a second watch to confirm placement)

The Letterboxd top 250 means less now than the IMDB one does, which is pretty sad

Eric H with the "Shawshank Redemption better than the works of Kobayashi" take.

The fun thing is to sort your top-rated movies in order of average ratings (lowest first)

lol, yeah, some of the trash at the top of mine is fabulous, and I'm sorry that the rest of the world can't see it: https://letterboxd.com/plooplepop/films/rated/4.5-5/by/rating-lowest/

I'm guessing most people don't feel this way here but... frankly, isn't having IMDB darlings like The Shawshank Redemption a more "honest" rank? Like Godfather II, Dark Knight, etc. are overwhelmingly loved by the masses and critically. Nothing against films like Hara-Kiri... for example, I love High and Low but outside of cineastes, who remembers it? It's probably not even in the top 5 most famous Kurosawas! Many of these entries are only here seemingly because they're streaming on Criterion Channel (which is fantastic! love that all this stuff is so much more available to everyone now).

The list of high-rated, under-logged movies (Top 50 under 5000 ratings) is potentially more interesting to me. Two Gintama movies??

Interesting(?) factoid I discovered a while back (which may have changed since I discovered it): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the only film on LB that's both the most popular and the highest rated film from a given release year.

I'm guessing most people don't feel this way here but... frankly, isn't having IMDB darlings like The Shawshank Redemption a more "honest" rank? Like Godfather II, Dark Knight, etc. are overwhelmingly loved by the masses and critically. Nothing against films like Hara-Kiri... for example, I love High and Low but outside of cineastes, who remembers it? It's probably not even in the top 5 most famous Kurosawas! Many of these entries are only here seemingly because they're streaming on Criterion Channel (which is fantastic! love that all this stuff is so much more available to everyone now).

I think the "honesty" here depends on who you think the list is supposed to represent. For me it's like, the Sight & Sound poll tells you what actual critics think, the IMDB list tells you what normies think...and the LB 250 is in some weird netherworld between the two but also taking in demographics that fit neither (thus the amount of anime present). Harakiri and Come & See are a great one-two punch for me, because they're both highly respected canonical films but also both works you'd never see make the top5 in any regular critics list. And yet, why not? They're fine choices!

Come & See is my 18 year old son's favorite movie. for what it's worth. he does not write for Sight & Sound.

I'd never even heard of Come & See until a couple years ago, and it almost instantly became one of my favourites. It's like, canonical in some circles, but still a major shock for new viewers.

I haven't seen either film -- am I right in suspecting that that top 2 is a little idk bro-y? (happy to be corrected)

otoh I saw 12 Angry Men for the first time a few days ago and loved it, sorry Eric

i watched come & see with both my kids because it was just such an unbelievable movie to me and i felt like i needed to share the experience. though its definitely not for everybody. i had no idea that they would end up loving it so much.

The list of high-rated, under-logged movies (Top 50 under 5000 ratings) is potentially more interesting to me. Two Gintama movies??

I've seen exactly one (The Mysteries of Lisbon), and honestly haven't heard of about half of these.

I've been putting off the Troells too long. Should I watch The Tree of the Wooden Clogs?

Devils On The Doorstep is good, should give a content warning for "shit that will fuck you up" on there though.

peter watkins' edvard munch rules. the pseudo-doc format lets you sink into it in this langourous sort of way, like watching a documentary in school that you expect to suck but you slowly realize is amazing. it seems like it might be dry at first but it circles back to key moments repeatedly and they accrue power as memories do when reflected upon throughout one's life

I haven't seen either film -- am I right in suspecting that that top 2 is a little idk bro-y? (happy to be corrected)

Difficult to answer this as both def take place in very masculine environments but if by "bro-y" you mean movies that straight men love because they're badass then yeah no, they are very much not that. Come & See frequently gets mentioned as the most harrowing anti-war film ever made, Harakiri is like many samurai films of its era a condemnation of the feudal code that this setting previously romanticised; I don't entirely remember but I think there's, like, zero actual swordplay in it.

Should I watch The Tree of the Wooden Clogs?

yes. Lots of good films on that list.

seconding the Munch film.

this is so crazy. i go downstairs to make dinner tonight and my kid tells me that he watched Harakiri yesterday and tells me that its number one on letterbxd! what a weird world i live in. reading this thread and then him telling me that out of the blue! i didn't even know that he paid attention to stuff like that. its in the air, i guess.

To be clear, I like 12 Angry Men ... I just think its prominence on the IMDB is kind of a giveaway that a disproportionate number of those in the IMDB-user demographic (and the Letterboxd one as well) prefer their movies to not prominently feature women

A few weeks ago I saw that someone was uploading 12 Angry Men in short chunks on TikTok and it was going viral, with zoomers wondering what was going to happen.

this is so crazy. i go downstairs to make dinner tonight and my kid tells me that he watched Harakiri yesterday and tells me that its number one on letterbxd! what a weird world i live in. reading this thread and then him telling me that out of the blue! i didn't even know that he paid attention to stuff like that. its in the air, i guess.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 23:47 (yesterday)

It's one of the coolest facets of Letterboxd tbf

RIP. Killed by private equity

https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/letterboxd-acquired-50-million-deal-valuation-1235740185/

Blame probably falls on the owners/founders/sellers today, at least.

No social network lives forever, god willing

Canadian private equity though

Climate change-proof, at least

Until it burns down from fire

Netflix dvd, on its last day today, allowed me to download the entire history of my rentals over the past 10 years, including rental dates and my ratings. It was a nice gesture.

Over the last couple of weeks I have looked at their website to see which great films they still had in stock. I was able to get Mulholland Drive, Jeanne Dielmann, Sunrise, Singin' In the Rain, The Rules of the Game, and Sansho the Bailiff. A lot of my favorite films were not available.

They said they wouldn't expect any dvds to returned, so I'm keeping them. They also suggested they would give their subscribers up to 10 dvds for free on their last day, depending on dwindling availability, but they only gave me one, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. It is one of my favorites ever so I'm not unhappy.

I was thinking of going to letterboxd, but I don't know anything about it.

how is this site ever going to make back $50 million? this can't bode well

Welllll...hell. Looks like the only social media-ish thing I use is about to go straight down the shitter, huh. The internet has really been doing a splendid job of chasing me off the internet of late.

Suddenly feeling good that I just made my own database for tracking movies, books, etc.

fwiw, Letterboxd does make it easy to export your data. might be a good idea to do regular backups.

My Letterboxd diary was originally begun 31 years ago on Cardfile in Windows 3.1

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Cardfile.png