letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

I've been using letterboxd again after chatting with some younger cinephiles...if the whole thing were just the Activity page and your friend's ratings/reviews I would unabashedly love it. unfortunately ppl who are not my smart friends exist

anyway, do you use it? or read anyone on it? or? etc

i think i started referring to letterboxd as the new tumblr five years ago, so now that it has been written about in the nyt and has an ilx thread it is no longer cool, sorry

was the NYT thing recent? my acct is like.....five years old and has been dormant almost as long, lol

yeah it was like last month?

This was all very recent on the Last (x) Movies thread, so I'll cut-and-paste it into here.

Have people shared Letterboxd accounts on ILX anywhere? Mine is https://boxd.it/ENrV. I used it sparingly in the past but am logging every movie i watch in 2021.
― na (NA), Wednesday, January 20, 2021 7:07 PM (two weeks ago)

I think I've shared mine before, but here it is again: https://letterboxd.com/jer_fairall/
― edited for dog profanity (cryptosicko), Wednesday, January 20, 2021 7:27 PM (two weeks ago)

Have shared mine before: https://letterboxd.com/PollyPrecoder/
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Wednesday, January 20, 2021 7:43 PM (two weeks ago)

https://letterboxd.com/souleraser/
― flappy bird, Thursday, January 21, 2021 3:25 AM (two weeks ago)

Mine's just two lists of favourite movies; this thread is actually my Letterbox for what I watch.
https://letterboxd.com/hunsecker/lists/
― clemenza, Thursday, January 21, 2021 3:30 AM (two weeks ago)

I like looking at those lists.
― Dan S, Thursday, January 21, 2021 9:26 PM (two weeks ago)

i generally like it. though the excessive listing and gag reviews can get tiresome, it's a great way to know what my friends/people with opinions I respect are seeing, and general attitudes. though of course, this is the internet, so you're gonna get a lot of challops all the time

i was very upset i could not find the original breakfast at tiffany's list today

I mainly only use it for 1. writing gag reviews and 2. 'liking' actually good reviews / getting movie recs from ppl I trust for whatever reason

my favorite letterboxd writer, bar none, is nathaxnne: https://letterboxd.com/unawarewolf/

Mainstream or not it remains one of the only good websites because it doesn’t have Sharing, any activity from people you don’t follow is below the fold and optional, and the most genius design choice is you can use it however you want: star ratings, likes, reviews, diary entries, and lists all sort of slot together nicely and each aspect is optional. Just don’t tell yourself it’s “a community” or any of that garbage, it’s just a good website.

The other good websites are Bandcamp and Lichess. This is my theory of websites.

post feels kinda otm to me. it is def one of the few places on the internet where i feel very little stress

I feel some stress when I read certain types of exceptionally dumb or bad faith shit that gets a lot of shares/likes tbh

but yknow I should really just get tf over it

a few things I don't like about letterboxd

- we all know this, the TV non inclusion or semi sometimes inclusion is bad and silly and completely arbitrary
- certain types of bad takes rewarded
- a minor thing, but as with RYM, odd preferences/fetishes for certain types of content or certain stylistic or formal features. sometimes it's interesting other times it's just annoying

definitely wish that they allowed TV and episode reviews. or hell, spin off another site for that and video games. the personal logging is what i most like about it, i guess

i use it mostly as a tracker of stuff i've watched and don't really "engage with the community" but it's a really well-designed site that is a pleasure to use if you just want to track some films and make or read a watchlist.

I would be fine with one entry per series, only added once it's finished airing / being released. that also means no MCU reviews :)

i am furious that i cannot write a review of true detective season 2 on letterboxd but someone can write about the queen or the queen's gambit or twin queens the return

it's so silly

one other thing that's dumb: apparently if you log a movie without rating it, you drag down its rating

what? that's stupid. no rating should not = 0 rating.

I can't personally prove that but I have heard it alleged

The other good websites are Bandcamp and Lichess. This is my theory of websites.

what about ilx i can has cheezburger

A friend of mine worked there and it was a train wreck as you might imagine

1. !!

2. "A group of investors acquired the website in September 2007 for US$2 million"

3. oh

looool

having worked at some sketchy ass train wrecks, I salute silby's friend

brad thank you for the nathaxnne tip, anyone else have accts they like?

I've been using Letterboxd for years, but literally the only thing I use it for is to maintain the film diary I've been keeping since 1992. So I just go on and log a movie and leave. I don't do ratings or write reviews. I do follow a handful of people, but I honestly don't spend much time there. I do like being able to look up when in 1997 I saw The Ice Storm or whatever.

we all know this, the TV non inclusion or semi sometimes inclusion is bad and silly and completely arbitrary

The rule I made in 1992 (when I was 12 lol) was that I only logged movies that had, at some point, been released theatrically (regardless of where I personally saw them). So no TV movies, no straight-to-video, no Netflix-only. (But film festival releases are OK.) The last year has made me rethink that, though. Esp. since there's lots of stuff in the Letterboxd database that would be easy enough to log, if I wanted to.

here's mine: https://letterboxd.com/adamt/

Oh hey, look at that. I just assumed this thing was already passe and that's why no one ever talked about it. I use it pretty regularly, mostly to keep track of what I've watched/intend to watch (because my brain is sieve-like with respect to keeping track of such things), partly to read what others think of what I've watched (I follow some of y'all, I'm PlooplePop). I guess there's a social media aspect to it but I don't really engage with that as such.

Oh right, the polite way of doing this: https://letterboxd.com/plooplepop/

xp i would definitely rethink the TV/STV/streaming exceptions. i mean, even decades past, there were notable TV movies, sadly never to be seen or heard from again!

i don't find Letterboxd vexing at all! it's fun! my movie watching habits got way better since i started using it. i like the challenge of trying to write funny blurbs, which has kinda gamified movie-watching

My frustration is actually less about the hot takes and more the dudes who seem to watch only hyper-canonical stuff and dutifully give everything five stars. Then I remember I was 18 once, too.

I think the site is best for finding out about off-the-beaten-path films rather than engaging with long reviews that could be blog entries - I'm sure there's ppl out there who do that well but I've not found much so I stick with Xgau-style capsule reviews in both reading and writing.

The stats are super fun tho my regular viewing of shorts means my most watched actors always end up being Mel Blanc or Buster Keaton.

100% would not want TV to be included, far too many places online to talk about that shit. I do agree the currently available TV should be removed tho.

Anyway: https://letterboxd.com/Reifferschizzle/

The lists (+ the presence of hyper-obsessive users) are one of the best features imo. Would you like to see all of the hard sci-fi films written by first-generation Italian Americans between '75 and '80? There's probably a list for that.

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

Well, that makes sense but hear me out

re: the what to watch conundrum, find some lists you like or build out your own watchlist and let this thing pick something from the list of your choosing: https://watchlistpicker.com/

I've let it guide my choices a couple weeks and I ended up with a really enjoyable array of shit I'd never have grouped together myself.

Where are you searching, specifically? Letterboxd has tons of filters for most things...

Sci-fi or horror for a recent decade for instance. You get superhero slop or anime all over the place because the fans give it all 5 stars no matter what. Or just dramas, now it includes a bunch of streaming shows. I’m never going to watch an animated Spider-Man movie but to make it disappear from searches, I have to “watch” it.

There aren’t really filters to eliminate all that. And I’m using the search to make a watchlist! That’s where wading through everything is annoying.

You can filter out TV stuff.

Not on the website, browsing options are year/rating/window of popularity/genre/service (limit list to favorite services)

if I click on sci-fi my options are then limited to year/decade, services and how I want the list sorted

Sort by least popular and the superhero slop will be near the bottom (nb I make no guarantees for what will be at the top).

I've always found this list useful. https://letterboxd.com/justtru/list/top-250-narrative-feature-films-under-15000/

It's how I discovered this amazing film
https://letterboxd.com/film/anantaram/

or this one which kept the old rule
https://letterboxd.com/alyacat28/list/top-300-narrative-feature-films-under-5000/

Not on the website, browsing options are year/rating/window of popularity/genre/service (limit list to favorite services)

After clicking on sci-fi, then click the little eye icon under the word FILMS and there should be a bunch of filter options.

pls hire one UX expert

Just a quick s/o to ilxor Ivy for being the sole voice of reason amongst my LB followeds on Honey Don't, a stylish, funny film that is at times very sensual and at others gory in a very fun way. Somehow everyone else mistakenly rated it somewhere between one and three stars.

i’m still a mostly happy user of this app, but my partner’s (wonderful) debut film is going through the festival circuit right now, and while most reviews are positive, a subset are of the zingy “one-liner” put-down variety, and its caused me to reflect on whether letterboxd’s existence is a net negative for humanity

listen it’s very understandable why some people hate it i guess but i like my noirs aimless

flopson, fwiw whenever I've checked out letterboxd for a film I saw at a festival before it hit wide release it's been the most insufferable shit, just real try hards who think they are going to be the one to really stick it to some independent film. I remember one of the worst cases was an Angolan film that played the LFF, dumb zinger reviews w/ zero sense of cultural context or the logistics of filming w/o hollywood budgets. But basically if letterboxd didn't exist they'd just be doing the same thing on famous net negative for humanity twitter, which let's face it is where they learned it in the first place.

Ivy I enjoy following you on LB and I just checked your star rating distribution and it was exactly as I’d guessed it would be lol

yeah the early reviews are gonna be people hoping to be the one-liner review that sticks as the top review on the movie, since those dont usually change much after release, theres a snowball effect for obvious reasons. wish you could disable the top reviews section and just see friends + most recent.

I’m able to sort that way on my app. might be a paid feature though idk

https://letterboxd.com/journal/letterboxd-video-store/

"Coming in early December: Letterboxd Video Store, our latest feature to get you adding films to your watchlist and, crucially, checking them off. Here’s everything you need to know."

This article does not answer my questions (particularly, will there be fees to stream? Will there be ads? Just how will region-restricted rights be managed?). However, the idea of Letterboxd going to rightsholder X, saying Y number of people want to see Z so let's make a deal is beautifully logical.

so when did letterboxd voice become a thing? see some discussions of how reviews less than two sentences should be banned and i think i agree. trying to see how people feel about the new bi gan movie and this is the most liked review:

few filmmakers more spectacularly exult in the fact that cinema is still in its infancy, but if you told me this was the last movie anyone would ever make that would also make perfect sense.

everything feels so exhausting

I started watching ot last week, stopped because I realized I wasn't in the mood. Will take up again from scratch tomorrow.

The second most liked review of that movie is like seven paragraphs, you really don't need to scroll much.

The writing style also doesn't strike me as letterboxd-y, lb reviews tend towards flippancy and dumb jokes. That is just professional critic Ehrlich being his usual earnest self.

Personally I don't read anything on there that isn't a capsule review, my patience for reading long essays by randos has run out.

letterboxd voice? idk isn't that just a variant of the bite-sized fragments through which we've increasingly expressed ourselves on the internet since twitter started? most of my favorite writing on lb (nathaxnne and clare (fieldmouse) and pd187 in particular) is nigh-longform

i wrote this slightly longer-than-usual piece on there recently that i'm proud of https://letterboxd.com/unbornwhiskey/film/the-village/1/

i have written 44 reviews, of which only about 5 are longer than two sentences. if i had been required to write more than two sentences for the rest of them, i probably wouldn't have posted anything at all.

fwiw, my one-sentence "reviews" are usually just pointing out a small detail that amused me, rather than trying to articulate a pithy summary of the movie and what it means.

yeah I don't see the big deal. Readers know where they can find my longer stuff. Sometimes I post a few sentences there as a way to open up for a longer piece later, or I'll cattily and briefly review the film outright.

Most of my reviews were very short reviews of films I watched with my late dad. And a handful of similarly short reviews of old 50s/60s comedies I've watched with my old Mum. I don't think anyone is following me for reviews. I'm not a writer so why on earth would I even attempt to write a long review - it would be awful.

When I post reviews, I'm only ever expecting / thinking about my followers reading them tbh. I can sympathize with 龜's irritation (though I think ivy is right that this style not native to LB), but yeah I probably would never post if there was a minimum length. Also, the single most annoying review I've encountered was longform: a lengthy, suspiciously detailed personal story about a high school missed connection that didn't reference the movie until the final line. I wouldn't have cared really, but it was the most popular review for the film.

While I'm here, I watched Kenji Misumi's Kiru (Destiny's Son) over the weekend, and Daniel if it's true that you haven't seen that yet, check it out! I was very impressed, should be as/more famous than his Lone Wolf and Zatoichi films imo (not that I've seen all of those), just one beautiful shot after another

That sounds right up my alley too, Rob. Added to watchlist.

I was pretty surprised it's not more well known (it's on Criterion Channel as part of his Sword Trilogy, though it's a thematic trilogy not a plot/character one). My only cavil was that it's def too short at 70 mins — it feels like there could have been 3 hrs of story in the novel or the screenplay, and there's a certain Dickensian quality to the plot that might have benefited from more time passing— but on the other hand what you get is a supremely condensed aesthetic experience.

Pithy one sentence reviews get more likes than longer reviews unfortunately

Thanks rob, that movie seems to have 5 star ratings across the board from my mutuals, and I'd never even heard of it!

As for the one line reviews, it should also be pointed out that as with the example 龜 posted most read reviews will often be by big critics. Ehrlich writes for IndieWire, of course he's not gonna give you a full review for free on his LB. Same for most paid critics, and that includes those who don't have publications but have managed to make some cash via substack or patreon.

Outside of that yeah you have a lot of enthusiasts writing long reviews, probably hoping to graduate to a paid gig. It would be unseemly of me to mock, I was doing the same thing on Epinions back in the day, but the effort of finding someone who writes long AND well is a bit of a drag. I've mostly gathered a group of mutuals who write good capsule reviews and whose tastes I know are compatible with my own.

plus me, lol

I'm in the UK so no access to Criterion Channel.

pithy reviews are fine and good as long as they're actually expressing something about the movie and not just 'actor hot' or 'this movie has same actor as other movie'

I like that everyone finds their own groove, whether it's 10 words or 10 paragraphs. One friend gives a star rating and always just quotes a meaningful line. I stopped doing star ratings, realizing that I don't have any obligation to and my rating could change between immediately after seeing/feeling a movie and thinking about it (or not) months later.

In all sincerity as much as I do get annoyed from time to time by some of the reviewing prose styles, LB is probably the most useful social media site I've ever been on

I think there are a handful of ways people use the site and if you're expecting it to be strictly one thing it'll be an exercise in frustration. It's interesting to see the people who just use it to track their watching and pal around with others by posting a quote or something brief versus the people who think they're auditioning for prime Rotten Tomatoes placement

I stopped doing star ratings, realizing that I don't have any obligation to and my rating could change between immediately after seeing/feeling a movie and thinking about it (or not) months later.

The way I mentally deal with this is to think of my star rating as a rating of the experience I had with the movie, rather than a rating of the movie itself (although these are of course not so easily disentangled). I resisted giving ratings for a long time, but I have found that the (self-imposed) obligation to rate forces me to think more critically about the movie than I otherwise might, even if it's just "is this working on me?"

90% of my use for the star ratings is to be able to remember/sort my favorites at the end of the year or for whatever time period. the other 10% is for anyone who sees it if they care what I think

1 star: movie has at least one clown
2 stars: movie has zombies
3 stars: movie has no paranormal entities
4 stars: vampires
5 stars: there’s a frankenstein

I use both the ratings and the reviews to remind myself of what I thought of a movie. I don’t have any inkling that there is an audience for my reviews, though I only started using Letterboxed a month or two ago (username @sctttnnnt).

After many years of being much more focused on TV shows and only watching a few movies a year, I suddenly got the itch to dive back in. I made lists of the full 2022 Sight & Sound list, the AFI100, every Best Picture winner, and the recent NYT best of the 21st century. Once I crossed off everything I’d seen, I combined all the lists together in chronological order by release date, and for the last few months I’ve been loosely working my way through film history (or at least the parts of film history I didn’t already know). Once I’d been doing that for a bit I realized a Letterboxd account would be helpful.

I started forcing myself to actually write something about every movie I logged a few months ago. Most of these aren't really eloquent or insightful, but they're mostly for me anyway.

My 40 favorite first-watches of 2025: https://letterboxd.com/mondosalvo/list/40-favorite-first-time-watches-of-2025/

Barfly is underrated. Maybe my favourite movie Mickey Rourke has been involved in

Recently signed up. Logged everything that I saw at the cinema last year (most of it via Mubi Go).

https://letterboxd.com/krakow81/

Here's my list: Best first watches of 2025

Only 25 for me, but I did at least annotate them:

https://letterboxd.com/reifferschizzle/list/new-to-me-25/edit/

That link doesnt work for me

https://boxd.it/Rbls6

My fave first time watches of '25

https://boxd.it/Rghju