letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

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

In a constant struggle to not have the USA be my top country of movies watched this year, lol.

What is everyone's highest rated decades via the stats?

https://imgur.com/a/j31qozq

https://i.imgur.com/0BNd2LC.jpeg

80's, 90's and 20's, because these are decades I haven't watched that much from. The decades I actually care about I watch enough movies from to have a lot more 3 star ratings.

Yeah, it's confounding to me that the '40s is my highest-rated decade because, aside from every decade of the 21st Century, it's also my least-watched decade by far. '70s and '30s in the second and third spots feels right, though.

2000s is the most surprising for me, since I never think of myself really caring about much from those years (and I still don't, really, but I guess I rate the good stuff higher than I realized).

https://i.imgur.com/8ddEb0o.jpeg

My Stats page says my highest-rated decade is the 2020s, but I've only been rating for a year, so there are only three decades for which I've seen more than a dozen movies. My average rating for the 1960s is higher, but the sample size is 5.

Who's your most-watched actor? Mine is Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Chishū Ryū

Most watched director Jean-Luc Godard

Director is more embarrassing for me (I Was a Teenage Woody Allen Fan).

Who's your most-watched actor?

Proudly, it's M. Emmet Walsh just ahead of Bogart.

Director is Hitchcock by some distance over Huston.

Director is more embarrassing for me (I Was a Teenage Woody Allen Fan).

― jaymc, Thursday, 18 April 2024 13:25 (thirty-one minutes ago) link

Likewise

I should really figure out some historical logging or figure out what I've forgotten to log since signing up for letterboxd. My stats are kind of bizarre.

I'm running through all the John Waters films I've never seen this year, so my stats are going to be very weird in December.

Most watched are Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc; if shorts are excluded, Scorsese and Michael Caine.

i'm an idiot, how do you see your most watched actor, director, etc?

If you have at least a Pro subscription, you can click on your All Time stats and look.

That themes & nanogenres thing is relatively new innit?

Yeah...it sucks.

Apparently I've watched a lot of movies about "Humanity and the World Around Us." Very informative.

Family drama = Ozu watches

https://i.imgur.com/2iQJmdh.jpeg

Humanity and the world around us is probably Kor-eda

Ugh, just realized Woody Allen is somehow my most watched (non-animated shorts) director despite the fact that I maybe only saw the first two or so movies that he made in this century.

My most watched (non-animated shorts) actor is Tim Heidecker, lol. Closely followed by Samuel L. Jackson and Cary Grant.

Samuel L.Jackson will sneak in there yeah, especially if you didn't get off the mcu train early enough

taking a look mine and -

* Chishū Ryū ✅
* Tim Heidecker ✅
* Samuel L. Jackson ✅ (17 movies with no MCU!)

but laughing pretty hard at my #1 -

* Sylvester Stallone, 22 films!

even tho sly isn't usually in em, I generally watch a lot of horror and exploitation so my "nanogenres" are also pretty funny -

* Gruesome, Terrifying, Imaginative 62 films
* Eerie, Graphic, Screaming 52 films
* Blood, Shock, Gross 50 films
* Killer, Terror, Brutally 49 films
* Violence, Bizarre, Extreme 49 films
* Blood, Horrific, Unsettling 48 films
* Action, Gangster, Violence 48 films
* Death, Psychopath, Graphic 47 films
* Brutal, Shock, Extreme 47 films
* Victim, Bloody, Terrifying 47 films

My Highest Rated actors is weird.

I didn't attempt to log everything until recent years and Ethan Hawke is inexplicably one of my most-watched actors

These are still the only user stats I'm ever interested in:

https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/417445545_10159945532767358_7139205201699595527_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=Hu99-2B0hnEAb60djCT&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=00_AfD-9ufrsDcnRCLVW009eX6LM95x-W1MfrujCWqLRqDQOA&oe=66288D3A

https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/417457570_10159945532787358_7353406479538643797_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=9XPJ8KpycroAb7YxzNL&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=00_AfDU-_iWiZqWRq5H3LPmNuaguwQRh1jS-TwPMUQLM8Nv8Q&oe=66288DAB

lmao those are great, especially the higher than average one

also the goonies truly sucks, thanking u

I've only rated three movies, I like that letterboxd gives me the freedom not to rate things

A lot of ratings I have in there came from importing them from IMDB, where many grades date back to, like, the year 2000, and I'm pretty sure that version of me just went to the list of the top 250 rated movies and gave roughly half of them 1-outta-10 ratings

https://i.imgur.com/lBbJSwv.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/wUMrQVT.jpeg

oh, these pics are too big. I don't know how to post them any smaller. Sorry.

Femme Fatale is not a five star movie

It's more of a five star than Poltergeist

I like to think we all agree on Braveheart being a half star

3 and a half stars imo. The half star is for Mel Gibson's accent.