letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

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

Picture "Soapdish" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey."

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

― Nhex, Friday, September 29, 2023 10:01 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah lol these media logging sites can't really be monetized for much, the core functionality is personal and not social

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

aiui they bought 60% in a deal that values the site at $50 million, so whatever disasters are in store, there’s no demand to return $50+ million imminently

Tiny Capital's founder Andrew Wilkinson spouts some of the most ridiculous affirmative tech speak nonsense that it seems written by GPTzero. Worth searching the internet for if you want your cognition interrupted. OTOH, perhaps there's a chance he'll leave Letterboxd alone.

"the core functionality is personal and not social" ---- otm. i like that i can follow a very small group of people, most of whom i personally know (plus some ilxors), and see what they wrote about whatever movie. that's kinda the extent of the "social" i want. my greatest fear is some rando parachuting into my comments demanding a debate or w/e.

OTOH, perhaps there's a chance he'll leave Letterboxd alone.

Over the years, I’ve been approached by many private equity firms. Typically, the process was a miserable three- to six-month ordeal where they would tell me one number at the beginning. Then, it would end up being a horrible earnout structure and a cultural mismatch and all sorts of other stuff. I was looking at Buffett and thinking, “Buffett seems to do deals in two to four weeks by being upfront and straightforward. I should just do the same thing for all these great founders.” So I started doing that. That resonated with founders, and we were able to buy a ton of great businesses. We did exactly what Berkshire does. We do deals in less than 30 days. We don’t participate in competitive processes. We leave the founder to run the business if they want to. If not, we work with them to hire management. We just focus on incentives, capital allocation, and net new M&A up at the head office level.

"the core functionality is personal and not social" ---- otm. i like that i can follow a very small group of people, most of whom i personally know (plus some ilxors), and see what they wrote about whatever movie. that's kinda the extent of the "social" i want. my greatest fear is some rando parachuting into my comments demanding a debate or w/e.

Weird to think that is one of the factors that makes it maybe the only social media site I've ever given money to, besides this one

“goodreads for movies” is partially right, but not addressing what goodreads has become is a glaring oversight

makes sense to see letterboxd as an acquisition when rottentomatoes is totally cooked

As utterly psychotic as I find those who, like MD'A, keep decades' worth of viewing-log records with all kinds of coding (i.e. walkout; rescreen; format; etc.), it's also probably the only legit way to keep track, by doing it yourself on your own property

i looked into that kind of stuff for a while with different text editors, personal wikis etc. and frankly i do like having a third party site do it better than something i could hack together

Scorsese allegedly joined Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/mscorsese/