letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

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...

https://letterboxd.com/geoffreyess/

https://letterboxd.com/SimonFerocious/

i enjoy whiney's letterboxd, his dedication to only watching hyper current movies is impressive. i basically only watch stuff from 20th century

they should let tv shows on letterboxd not because reviewing tv shows is cool (it's not) but because they should just totally relax their uptight standards about can get reviewed and posted about. a lot of cool underground stuff uploaded directly by creators to youtube like gothic king gobra by trapped constantly gets taken down by the site because it's not official by some weird standard

https://letterboxd.com/JackUzi77/

https://letterboxd.com/cajunsunday/

I did a lot of reviews in 2013 and 2014 when I was determined to become a world renowned critic of European and silent cinema lol.

been re-watching a bunch of canonical stuff lately, plz don't judge harshly. i rlly appreciate this app. it's beautifully designed, and it feels good to finally have a film diary.

https://letterboxd.com/daveyshindig/

imo letterb*xd is the only social media app that doesn't feel gross. my partner introduced me to it last year and it's been a li'l bright spot thru quar.

they should let tv shows on letterboxd not because reviewing tv shows is cool (it's not) but because they should just totally relax their uptight standards about can get reviewed and posted about

this is my stance as well

imo letterb*xd is the only social media app that doesn't feel gross.

Yes. I've undergone a fairly complete socialmediadectomy in recent years and Letterboxd is as comfortable as I am at dipping my toe back into that fetid water.

i pray they will never be acquired by a FAANG company.

brb, following everybody ITT.

It’s nice to have a place on the internet where people aren’t constantly talking about fucking TV shows

brb, following everybody ITT.

letterbilxd

doc casino is an excellent letterboxd follow btw

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 10, 2021 12:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

Awwww! Thank you BN! Your reviews are great, fyi. i worry that mine tend too much into the "i like this aspect. but, there's this other aspect." formula. not sure anyone out there really needs the 2,856th wannabe newspaper critic "review" of a movie. i wish i had the art that the youth have, of tweet-like zingy 'reviews.' but more than anything i think i'm writing them for myself, it's fun to go back later to a movie i think of as X and Y, and discover that at the time i responded more to Z, or whatever.

so yes, i am on there, https://letterboxd.com/doctorcasino/

i feel a little overwhelmed by the activity feed, so i don't always follow people back but i should just get over that i think. i also struggle to remember which ilxor is which on there when the usernames don't match, but i do love y'all!

my main problem with it is that i think having the star rating system at my disposal can become really distracting and strange. i've always been an I Log Everything kind of person but not as much an I Rate Everything one, and i can find myself actually thinking during the movie about whether it's three stars or three and a half, and that's a really pernicious mental habit or compulsion that can take me out of the enjoyment. maybe i should just stop with star ratings! although it's fun also to be able to filter and be like "i've watched 500 movies in the last couple years, what were the standouts?" BUT i also can do that with the lists, since i keep one each year for "best viewings." hmmm.

I leap the ratings hurdle by rating only those films I feel compelled to rate. If it's of average quality, an 'I viewed this from beginning to end' is sufficient for my needs. I mostly just wanna keep track of whether they're good, weird, or shitty.

(My favorite Leone film btw)

/silby, of course

I’ve only rated one movie

they should let tv shows on letterboxd not because reviewing tv shows is cool (it's not) but because they should just totally relax their uptight standards about can get reviewed and posted about
this is my stance as well

― stimmy stimmy yah (Simon H.), Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:46 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

On the same tip, their rules on what constitutes "hardcore pornography" is totally arbitrary-- for example, very good blue movie SexWorld (1977) is not listed (I tried to add it), but Andy Milligan's Fleshpot on 42nd St. and Radley Metzger's Score and Abel Ferrara's 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy all have pages. C'est la vie

i pretty much give every movie i care to review five stars lol

a lot of people have told me that the stars are useful for keeping track of things to rewatch etc, I get that....but goddamn do I hate rating movies

Rating anything is silly, to me, if you aren’t either super cereal or super goofy about it

The only ratings I really care about are “worthwhile” and “excellent”, I don’t care about different kinds of bad.

Needless to say I lack the enthusiasm to be super cereal about rating anything

Kinda use my Lettrboxed ratings in the same way I use my iTunes ratings. It's qualitative to an extent but it's more a method of categorization for me. Like my 3.5 star ratings are reserved for a very particular kind of movie experience whose actual quality may vary wildly from its companions.

also I wanted to mention that I actually really like the "trendng with ppl you follow" display on the home page, which has been great for alerting me to new (and new-to-me) stuff, also just neat when an older film one person raves about ripples through a community

agonizing over whether something is 3 stars or 3.5 does kind of suck (wish I'd adopted OL's approach but too late now), and I am familiar with Doc C's in-progress mental rating annoyance.

I only just signed up for this last month so my account is pretty worthless for anyone other than myself, but: https://letterboxd.com/roobric/

Yeah, almost everything I bother to rate falls in the 2.5 to 3.5 range. I figure 4 stars and above should be good enough for a yearly top 10. And everything 2 or below is basically different shades of awful.

Browsing and clicking around is still enjoyable, I learn about something new every day! Browsing through random actor/director's filmographies, lists of faves from ppl I trust, etc.

I do also still find new ppl to follow but this comes mostly from checking out reviews for ultra niche shit.

In terms of high profile new releases, whether arthouse or mainstream...tbh I usually don't even check out what ILX has to say about those, sure as fuck ain't going to do it on letterboxd.

I'm a minimal letterboxd user maybe - I don't read reviews or recommendations, but it's very useful for keeping a universal watchlist & being able to see where things are streaming. I admit it's kinda fun to log things as I watch too, but I don't always remember.

i do keep a running list of films based on crime novels, also, that i remember to update from time to time.

I just got into letterboxd earlier this year. Ostensibly, I was going to use it with my wife to come up with movies that we could both agree on trying together, but she hasn't done anything with it.

Last year, I watched something like 120 new-to-me movies, which is the most I've seen in one year. Letterboxd proved handy for cataloging them. Then I went back and added every movie I could remember seeing, as long as I could remember something about them. For example, I know that I saw Bourne Identity when it came out, but I couldn't remember anything about it, so it wasn't logged until I rewatched it a few weeks ago. Likewise, I didn't include most children's movies that I've watched with my kids. Otherwise there'd be two dozen Pokemon movies in there that I couldn't tell you anything about. There are still a few old watches that trickle in now and then, but my total is somewhere around 500.

When I first jumped on, I tried following film podcaster dudes that I listen to (presumably some overlap with Film Twitter), but I quickly realized that I didn't care that much about their opinions and ratings and shit.

I add reviews occasionally, but it's more just notes for myself. I don't write them for an audience.

ok now I’m confused. is there some sort of twitter-like “feed” somewhere on this app? serious question — or is all this social media stuff we’re talking about just accounts you are choosing to follow?

There's a feed but that's only for your activity + the activity of ppl you follow.

The bad stuff happens when you go to the page of a certain movie and read the top reviews - especially if it's a new release or well known film.

yeah, I do like scrolling through Activity to see what people I follow have recently watched, rated, and reviewed. sometimes it gives me ideas for what to watch myself, or it'll tip me off about new movies I didn't realize were out, but I also just like seeing reactions.

I also look at reviews for a particular movie after I've watched it, but usually focus on those of people I follow rather than the teeming masses.

There's a feed but that's only for your activity + the activity of ppl you follow.

The bad stuff happens when you go to the page of a certain movie and read the top reviews - especially if it's a new release or well known film.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, April 17, 2024 4:26 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ah ok that’s what I thought! anyway, skill issue for sure

sure, probably a skill issue. That said, there are a fair amount thoughtful people I follow who stopped using it 2-3 years ago. And then there are others I followed who used to write more thoughtful stuff, but have since moved on to focus on one-liners and half-ironic hot takes. Don't know what else to say, I used to find the site fun to click around in, and now I don't, so I don't spend as much time there.

i guess i probably could curate a better letterboxd experience, maybe i'll get around to that at some point

it's fun to write one-liners and I don't like thinking

I don't pay a lot of attention to reviews by strangers, and I don't see much of the "social" functionality outside of my activity feed, but stepping up from a free account to a pro one has made me super conscious of my viewing stats. Like, "ooh, I haven't watched any movies from Croatia this year...I'd better find one!" In that sense, it's very valuable. Since I signed up during lockdown, watching as many movies per week as I can has been a pretty rich experience.

It's not like I never enjoyed films before, but I'm watching 10x as many now as I ever did at any other stage of my life.

Yeah letterboxd is definitely responsible for me watching movies I’d never have seen otherwise. As I said to a friend, watching movies in large quantity isn’t a virtue in itself really but watching more gives you more chances to be surprised