letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

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/

im still p_nk_s

Letterboxd draws its catalog of titles and data from The Movie Database (TMDB) (https://www.themoviedb.org/); I don't know where they source their info or how they distinguish between cinema/TV/other. It seems to be possible to add listings--I follow on YouTube several aficionados of obscure comedy shorts. Not all of these titles turn up on Letterboxd, but a certain uploader's titles always do.

The only more-or-less TV title I've logged on Letterboxd was the video for "Old Town Road" (2019).

I made a case for an Indian art-house miniseries once. It showed up months later. I kind of doubt it had anything to do with my request.

Would def prefer my feed be clogged up by comedy shorts and Indian arthouse series rather than those fucking Black Mirror eps.

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

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

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Tuesday, June 20, 2023 10:06 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

See, I would do this, but then do I go back and add that I watched the miniseries Alex Haley's Queen starring Halle Berry in February 1993?

I had to give up any hope of a reliable, exacting diary of screening dates when I misguidedly chose to import my IMDB entries, which not only screwed up that plan but then also introduced a much harsher rating system for older entries, which was my own fault. I tended to rate "average"/"neutral" movies at, like, 3 on IMDB, rather than the 5 that would've made more sense.

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??