I completely turn my phone off when I go to the movies. Not just on silent \u2013 all the way off. I say this not because I think that I\u2019m better than you, or that by doing so the ghost of Billy Wilder will come back to shake my hand. I consider it one of life\u2019s little luxuries: for at least an hour and 45 minutes, I am entirely unreachable. I keep my phone off for the duration of the credits, too. It feels decadent to stay put as my fellow moviegoers slowly filter out, illuminated only by rolling text.<\/p>\n
And, lately, the glow of the Letterboxd app.<\/p>\n
Over 26 million people use Letterboxd<\/a>, a movie-cataloguing app. Like the Criterion Collection or A24, it has become industry shorthand for a certain type of tastemaker who hypes new releases and delights in rediscovering old classics. Users rate and review movies, and the funniest or most illuminating critiques rise to the top of the page, incentivizing cinephiles to put in some effort.<\/p>\n double quotation markIf I don\u2019t get my thoughts out quickly once the movie ends, my reviews are much less coherent and articulateJosh Stern<\/p>\n On a recent trip to the movies, the credits had barely started before the man in front of me began typing his review. A few seats over, a couple sat, heads down, jotting down their respective thoughts.<\/p>\n The late film-maker David Lynch had a piece of advice: write down every great idea the exact moment that it comes. If you don\u2019t, it could slip your mind, and, as he put it: \u201cIf you forget a good idea, you want to commit suicide.\u201d Lynch was speaking to aspiring film-makers, but the same ethos applies to Letterboxd.<\/p>\n Josh Stern, a 20-year-old student in New York, always writes his reviews from his movie seat.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I don\u2019t get my thoughts out quickly once the movie ends, my reviews are much less coherent and articulate,\u201d he said. \u201cIt takes some time. I\u2019m pretty slow, and my girlfriend doesn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n Stern goes to the movies a lot \u2013 182 times last year \u2013 and is on a first-name basis with the theater employees, who sometimes have to kick him out so they can start cleaning the aisles. He thinks it\u2019s fair game to milk the credits: \u201cWhen you pay for a movie ticket, credits are a part of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n Letterboxd\u2019s most enthusiastic supporters credit the app with reviving excitement around a battered film industry, where productions are down and unemployment is up. (Letterboxd also boasts the kind of demographics brands covet \u2013 its highest cohort of users is between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25 to 35.)<\/p>\n Hype begets hype; eagerly awaited movies see a flurry of activity on Letterboxd immediately after the first screenings. The most-liked review of Emerald Fennell\u2019s divisive Wuthering Heights<\/a> \u2013 \u201cemily bront\u00eb died of tuberculosis 177 years ago yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her\u201d \u2013 has more thank 50,000 double taps. The Moment<\/a>, Charli xcx\u2019s fictionalized retelling of Brat summer, produced this comparison to tabloid enemy Taylor Swift\u2019s concert film: \u201ceras tour documentary found dead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of an addiction,\u201d said Ben Glidden, a 33-year-old New Yorker who works in marketing for women\u2019s sports. He also likes to write reviews during the credits. \u201cReflecting on what you just saw, immediately after you saw it, helps with the artistic experience. It helps you grasp the key messages of a film. If it makes you feel like a warm hug, that\u2019s not necessarily something you remember five hours down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n Glidden feels most compelled to review a film if it was very good \u2013 or very bad. Case in point: he recently sat through the Chris Pratt sci-fi vehicle Mercy. \u201cI was actually so offended by how egregiously bad it was, that I was excited to pull out my phone and give it a half-star review,\u201d he said. (Glidden\u2019s a tougher critic than the Guardian\u2019s film critic Pete Bradshaw, who gave the film three stars<\/a>, calling it, \u201cingenious and watchable stuff\u201d.)<\/p>\n Dakota Chester, a 28-year-old New Yorker who works in social media, saw Arco, the Oscar-nominated animated fantasy film, at an Upper West Side theater and stuck around to write the review (\u201cit got five stars\u201d). He\u2019s clocked worse behavior: people taking out their phones to Letterboxd the movie they are currently watching. \u201cThat gets on my nerves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One of film\u2019s most enduring urban legends recounts a screening of the Lumiere brothers\u2019 1896 silent short that showed a train pulling into a station. Cinema was in its infancy and \u2013 according to this debunked rumor \u2013 the shot of a locomotive heading straight toward the camera shocked the crowd so much that people ran away screaming.<\/p>\n A hundred-and-thirty years later, cinema etiquette remains just as bad. No one knows how to act in public any more, especially when the lights go down: viewers take pictures of the screen, bring in smelly food, and, as was the case during Barbenheimer summer<\/a>, sometimes engage in all-out brawls.<\/p>\n