Letterboxd is a Cinephile's Delight

I have, slowly, slipped away from most social media in the past decade.  At one point I had a Tumblr, Facebook, Snapchat, & Vine...all of them are gone, the latter far before that platform went to social media heaven.  I still technically have a Pinterest, but mostly because I think I should have one as a home-owner (even though, and I am likely preaching to the choir here if you own a house-decorating is way too expensive, and Pinterest just makes you feel bad).  Instagram I keep because it's one of the only apps that a couple of relatives are on (and because I like the Cincinnati Zoo page), but generally would be okay skipping that.  Twitter remains an addiction that not even Elon Musk is going to kill, it seems, so that's around for good.  And I try to use GoodReads, even though it sometimes serves as a reminder that I don't read nearly as much as I used to, but I am consistently trying to fix that so it will stay indefinitely (even if I'm not as active on it as I'd like to be).

But the app that gives me the most joy, by far, is Letterboxd.  It's the one app I still promote on this blog (follow me here!), and I find it endlessly fascinating.  I've been wanting to do an article about exactly why I find it fascinating for a while, and figured in a week where I'm kind of going with articles that I've been putting off, this was toward the top of the list, so here goes-some of the things I love about Letterboxd.

First, I should probably ground the uninitiated into what the app is.  Essentially, Letterboxd is a social media app only in the sense of whom you're following.  There's no DM's (which differentiates it from GoodReads, which is a similar app for books), though there is a feed giving you your friends information. Much of it, though, is centered around tracking all of the movies (and, depending on what a stickler you are, miniseries/TV movies/TV specials) that you've seen throughout the year.  Each movie has its own page, and you can track if you've seen it, when you've seen it, and write a review or star rating so people know your thoughts on it.  Personally, I track every single film I see not only with a star rating, but also with a review on the site (which was an easy solution when this blog became too overwhelming for me to track every single film I'd seen with a full 1000-word review).

This means that the site essentially becomes a curated Rotten Tomatoes.  Whereas that site has problems up the wazoo in terms of what critics they prioritize, and honestly, showing how group think has made film criticism lazy, here you have only your own friends to rely upon for ratings.  If you know you have a good friend that is into horror films, you can go to the movie page for a horror film, and see what they said about the latest slasher or a deep cut thriller.  You can, admittedly, get this from texting, but oftentimes you have a delay and need to decide in the moment whether to press that "streaming" button or purchase that ticket...this makes it a lot quicker.  I feel a lot more confident skipping a movie, even if it has good reviews, if I see a lot of people whose tastes I understand & know are similar to mine have given it the thumbs down.

You also learn random things about your friends, and as an ardent observer of people (I was a psychology major for a reason), it becomes curiously insightful into not just your friends, but into yourself.  One of my favorite games to play is to check out all of the big new releases among my (very) devoted Letterboxd crew (I follow a lot of people who watch north of 300+ movies a year, in some cases double that) and see which movies everyone seems to be watching in the first week, and which ones virtually no one is watching.  I saw, for example, a shocking number of people show up for Scream VI pretty much the second it came out, while movies like Black Adam or Shazam: Fury of the Gods were totally missed.  My friend group is far more devoted to MCU than DCEU it turns out, and seems to value horror above comedy, drama, or anything not Oscar-related.  It also clearly underestimated To Leslie as an Oscar contender, as it was easily the movie that was most seen AFTER the nominations announcements rather than before (for the record-I saw it before the nominations, though Causeway kept me from a perfect score, as I was tracking that on Letterboxd soon after Brian Tyree Henry became official).

I've also loved it just to hold myself accountable.  I adore the Stats page, which tracks aspects of the movies you watch each year, including stars & directors, and you understand exactly how much (or little) you might watch a specific star's work in a given year.  Obviously for me, the Saturdays with the Stars actors tend to make up the bulk of my end-of-year Top 20, but because I only watch 300-350 movies in a year (I'm averaging more than that this year though so far!), a marathon of The Matrix or Scream (both of which I did last year) will suddenly make it pretty obvious what you watched at year's end.  Right now it's a revolving door as I still have actors I've only seen in two pictures still in my Top 20, so it seems every movie I watch they bring in more (Letterboxd tends to have a recency bias when it comes to their stats).

It also shows you where your gaps are.  Actors like Brad Pitt, for example, one of my favorite actors and someone I have apparently seen in 34 films, I can quickly gage the top films that I haven't seen of his if I want to complete his filmography...it honestly makes a point of underlining which of his films you most need to see, and makes you want to see all of his pictures just to get it done.  

In the process, though, it becomes less about the list-making and more about learning about the back catalogs of artists...actors, directors, writers, composers...all of whom have devoted their life to movies. The best part of cinema at this point is that it's never-ending.  You can never see every movie, you can never know every performance.  But if you're a cinephile, Letterboxd at least gives you a map into infinity.  You won't visit every corner of this world, but you have a way to get there, to track how you got there, and leave that behind for other people to find.  As someone who initially became involved with the world of the movies because I couldn't make sense of my own world, it's wonderful to have it feel less a solo journey, and now a friendly quest, something I get to do along likeminded individuals, all ready to track the next stop into the unknown, one opening credits at a time.