My Love Affair with Letterboxd

Category: Websites
Last article published: 9 December 2022
This is the 105th post under this label

On one of these "Websites"-tagged post, I invited people to follow me on icheckmovies.com where my capsule reviews were cross-posted, and I still update my list on that site even though I've moved on to the far superior letterboxd.com. The main attraction is really what I wasn't getting from icheckmovies: satisfying interactions with other users. It's probably in the name. Icheck is about checklists and that's what most adherents use it for. The reviews on any given film are shorter than most tweets, only awkwardly support replies (the reply just becomes another comment SOMEwhere in the feed), and that's when there are comments at all. From the latter, I suspect most users are pretty mainstream and don't watch a lot of indies or international films unless they're on the big checklists. You can PM someone - and thanks to everyone who was supportive of this or that review - but responding is limited by a paywall and I'm always having to delete stuff in my "mailbox" to simply thank a person who went through the effort of sending some kind words.

Not so Letterboxd. Not only is it prettier, leading with movie posters that can be searched and organized in many different ways (it's what I use for the top image of every This Week in Geek), but there IS worthwhile user interaction. I've almost never wanted to check a movie - even an obscure TV movie - that didn't already have reviews, and those range from the one-line joke/appreciation to multiple paragraphs of in-depth discussion. It's clear to me that most Letterboxd users (or at least those that comment on films) are cinephiles, people who love movies and love talking about movies. Unlike Icheck, it allows people to write in their own language, whatever it may be, so I've even become friendly with "French Letterboxd", users from Acadia, Quebec and France who enjoy chatting in the reply section in their mother tongue. It's a smaller pool and we're better able to find each other.

Sometimes I get asked how I manage to see so many movies each week, and truth be told, a site like Letterboxd gives me a lot of motivation. It's fun to click and track what you've watched (and give it a rating - Icheck doesn't allow more than a thumbs up or down, but note that Letterboxd doesn't have a "dislike") and encourages you to rack up movies AND reviews (which are also tracked). And it helps with research A LOT. I've just watched a movie and liked an actor or director? Click their name and there's the list of everything they've done. I can even order them according to Average Rating, chronologically or filter them according to genre, year, or my streaming services (this is a Pro function, and I don't mind paying for it).

Speaking of lists, they also help do research. Say I want to follow a certain theme like, I dunno, alligators and crocodiles. Putting that in the search bar might give me user lists of gator-related movies, there, done! I've dabbled with my own lists, and these are usually watchlists (though there is a dedicated Watchlist on the site), but I've also had a bit of fun, for example, drawing up a list of Movies with the same titles as Doctor Who episodes or Who's Who entries, as well as turning the genre filmographies at the back of GURPS sourcebooks into film catalogs (then adding to them). They don't get a lot of traction (so far as I know), but they're a great time waster on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

The app is good too, and I'll sometimes look something up while sitting in a theater before the lights go down (never during, SHUT YOUR PHONES OFF, YOU PHILISTINES!). It's basically my most visited site, more than even the usual social media platforms. So let me throw out some thanks to blog buddy Michael May for opening my eyes to its value, and if I've talked you into it, follow me over there - I'm Siskoid, as usual - and I'll follow you back.