#2: Actually no, Letterboxd is good actually
Every few days on FKA Twitter, a perfect website that everyone loves with no issues whatsoever, someone will post a screenshot of a weird review someone else (always a stranger) wrote on Letterboxd in order to prove that Letterboxd has been overrun by drooling cretins who should be eradicated pronto. “How is this the top rated review for [iconic, possibly overrated movie]?” they might say. Or “This app has become unusable.” Or even something seriously deranged (in a way many millennials would call “irony” lol how ~random~ 🤣😝) like “I wish these people would kermit sewerside.” I broke out in hives just typing that out. Blech.
Obviously people can hate whatever asinine thing they want, and I’m aware that usually when someone does this it just means the person posting the screenshot wishes they were as carefree (or as funny, or as popular (“popular”)) as the person they screenshotted. Obviously they probably empathize with John Doe in Se7en when at the end of the movie he’s like “isn’t it soooo ~random~ that I’m jealous of you, Brad Pitt? Oopsie, sounds like I did a deadly sin!” Beyond any of that, though, and beyond the fact that being mean online is too easy to actually be cool, these people are just patently wrong. Letterboxd rules. Being stupid and saying stupid things on Letterboxd rules. Being smart and loquacious on Letterboxd rules (I never read these kinds of multi-graf reviews, in fact my eyes totally glaze over when they even load onto my screen, but I do respect them). Using Letterboxd as a simple record of what you watched and when you watched it, no reviews or bullshit, also rules—the people who do this are actually the most admirable, wish that were me, etc.
Letterboxd rules because it seems to have very little interest in serving its users. Want the algorithm to interpret how badly you misspelled a movie title or an actor’s name? Fuck off: spell it right, to the letter, or delete your account. Want to tag your friends in reviews and comments? Want to chat them privately to talk shit or connect a little deeper about movies? Get fucking real right now. We don’t do that here. We give you a database of movies and you use that however you want to. Don’t ask us any questions because we will not have the answers. It’s such a silly little app, and maybe the last true “whatever” space on the internet, especially for people who love movies. I don’t wanna discourse anymore—I just want to make an idiotic joke about an emotionally devastating movie that I’m unable to fully process in the moment.
Like a lot of people who love Letterboxd for its nerdy record-keepingness, I’ve been chronicling my own watching habits for years now. Before I discovered Letterboxd in 2017, I kept a running list of the movies I watched each year on the Notes app, and before that (thinking fondly of a life before the iPhone…) I kept a record on Google docs. I had actually forgotten that these records date all the way back to 2011, a year when I was living in relative isolation in Montana but also the year I started graduate school in Roanoke, Virginia. Nothing was hotter shit in 2011 than the A.V. Club (rip) and I was definitely the target demo (23 years old with way too much time on my hands). My favorite thing on that site was always Scott Tobias’s long-running “New Cult Canon” feature, which took seriously a whole spate of movies I’d never heard of or otherwise wouldn’t have imagined batting an eye at. I haven’t revisited the New Cult Canon in any real way in probably a decade or more, but I count it as one of my first “real” educations in “serious” film.
Anyway, this is just a lot of table setting to say that I accidentally found my 2011 movie doc a few days ago and…well…here you go. In the spirit of full transparency and because it’s way funnier that way, I’ve decided to leave this document as is, Georgia size 10 and all, so you’ll also see all (“all” as if it’s a lot) of the books I read that year, including Half a Life (underrated) and Tree of Codes (lol) and The Hunger Games (lmao) and three Adrian Tomine books (I heard that Shortcomings adaptation is good…). More importantly though you’ve got the 126 movies I watched that year; this amount is paltry compared to how much I watch now (not a brag…if anything, a cry for help) but still large enough that most people would say “Whoa!” before actually considering if that was a lot or not.
The first thing you’ll likely notice when you look at this document is that I graded the movies I watched and bolded the ones I gave an “A” or “A-” — this is where I implore you to please remember that I was obsessed with the A.V. Club (rip, again). This is actually my favorite part of this little time capsule, though, because it’s fascinating to look back to 2011 and wonder simultaneously “What was I thinking?” and “I was right all along,” depending on the movie. Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor gets a B (correct, if not generous). Matilda gets a B+ (based). Fitzcarraldo gets a B- (Herzog is shaking). Battle Royale (currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, and which I’d likely love much more now) gets a C+. I watched Avatar and gave it a B- (lol) and then five movies later watched The Notebook and gave it a B+ (lmao). As a high school teacher, obviously I’m obsessed with grades because they signify value while also meaning nothing—take, for example, my favorite stretch of this 2011 movie diary, a run of seven movies I can only classify as “hmm”:
The Kids are All Right, for the record, is a masterpiece; I was right about that. Shh.
It’s hard to know if things like this are “normal” or even “interesting” to the average human person. When I was in high school and obsessed with music, I kept two different documents on my hand-me-down, frequently-overheated bedroom desktop: one simply a list of every CD I owned (up to 2,200-something by the time I matriculated collegiately)—ordered alphabetically by artist, no articles—and the other a very detailed catalog of my CDs organized by year, with personal numerical ratings and a complicated system of bolding and asterisks that I couldn’t even pretend to remember right now. Why did I need two different documents for this? More importantly, why did I need one? I was 17 years old so obviously I’m living out of one room in my parents’ house, meaning obviously I can just look at all the shelves of CDs in my one room, it’s not like I have a warehouse in Tulsa I need to keep stock of. There’s something manic in the obsessive’s practices; something magic in them, too. I miss my CD documents; I miss my CDs; I miss my parents. It isn’t only nostalgia—sometimes a “simpler time” actually is a simpler time.
Anyway, I think at its best moments Letterboxd feels like a simpler time. Recently it looks like they’ve been flexing their shoulders a bit more over there at LB HQ, what with their podcast and their Q&As and their iconic Four Favorites red carpet sneak attack publicity film series (my favorite: a fully motorcycle-ganged up Macon Blair picking Repo Man, Frankenstein, Carnival of Souls, and Angel Heart)—all of which is great in and of itself, if worrisome. But it helps that, blessedly, the format and purpose of the app hasn’t changed, beyond introducing a sort of choose your own adventure movie poster option (which: ????). I’d like to advocate for keeping it that way, thank you very much. Please, Letterboxd, never change. Please don’t never become unusable.
Movies I watched this week: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (E.G. Daily <3) | Se7en (forgot it was a masterpiece) | Duel (Spielberg <3) | House of Usher (Vincent Price <3) | the Keaton Jack Frost (impossible to watch this movie and not think about what if Sam Raimi had directed it as planned) | All That Jazz (in serious contention for Greatest Movie Ever Made natch)
TV I’m watching: Selling the O.C. season two, which, Gio <3. Also been watching The Americans for like two years and we’re finally getting to the end of season 3. Also rewatched the first three episodes of American Vandal just to remember what it’s like to feel true joy again. Also Survivor 45 starts next week AND The Golden Bachelor AND what appears to be a truly awe inspiring Bachelor in Paradise — fall garbage season is officially HERE.