I never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app\u2019s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way \u2013 such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.<\/p>\n
But after I wrote about my feelgood movie<\/a> for the Guardian \u2013 that would be Sullivan\u2019s Travels<\/a>, Preston Sturges\u2019s perfect 1941 satire \u2013 I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. \u201cHey Alaina, we heard you like movies,\u201d one of them said. \u201cWhat\u2019s your Letterboxd?\u201d I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I\u2019ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer.<\/p>\n Though the movie-cataloging app has existed since 2011, it grew in popularity during Covid lockdown, when people stuck at home had little else to do than peacock their film taste. Most Letterboxd users skew young<\/a>, between the ages of 18 and 34, and tend to spend more money on movies than the typical American. In 2024 the app hit 17 million users, around the same time that the rapid-fire, red carpet interview series Letterboxd Four Favorites started going viral. This modest popularity is set against a film industry in crisis, with productions down and unemployment up. Last week\u2019s announcement of Netflix\u2019s acquisition<\/a> of Warner Bros \u2013 or will it be a hostile takeover<\/a> by Paramount Skydance<\/a>? \u2013 felt especially depressing to those who cherish the act of moviegoing, as many fear the streamer\u2019s triumph will be the death knell for cinemas.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Letterboxd launched an in-app video rental \u201cstore\u201d \u2013 which, pointedly, it is not calling a streaming service. \u201cThink of it as curated shelves instead of just scrolling lists endlessly without being able to make up your mind on what to watch,\u201d a press release read<\/a>. The films will include festival circuit darlings that have yet to acquire mainstream distribution (such as It Ends, Alexander Ullom\u2019s horror debut about four friends stuck on an increasingly creepy night drive, which TikTok is particularly excited about), reissues and rediscoveries of forgotten classics, and limited-time drops.<\/p>\n It reminds me of the old days of social media, when you just shared your opinions with friendsGigi Leal<\/p>\n That makes sense, given Letterboxd\u2019s reputation as a haven for the type of A24-pilled film viewer who might wait in line for hours for Marty Supreme swag, or carry a Metrograph-branded tote. We have made fun of archetypal film bro since at least Annie Hall, when Woody Allen\u2019s character cannot stand the man behind him at the movies who over-intellectualizes the latest Fellini film while speaking over his date. Many of Letterboxd\u2019s users come from film Twitter, a masculine-leaning space where outrage, irreverence and purposefully bad takes run rampant. (See: the flurry of discourse<\/a> about the use of a Nick Cave song in Train Dreams, Clint Bentley\u2019s Netflix drama about the life of a Pacific north-west railway worker.)<\/p>\n Still, many of the most-followed people on the app are not your average film bro: the actor Ayo Edebiri is known for her now-deleted account<\/a> where she called Yoda from Star Wars \u201cugly\u201d and called a Fast and Furious installment \u201creally and truly post-God\u201d. The pop star Charli xcx has logged more than 1,000 films, with C\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating (1974) and Phantom Thread (2017) among her top four. Some Letterboxd reviews go viral. Zo\u00eb Rose Bryant, a film Twitter stalwart and critic recently posted a very personal take<\/a> on Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value, relating the family drama to her parents\u2019 divorce.<\/p>\n The author\u2019s \u2018crash out cinema\u2019 list on Letterboxd. Photograph: Alaina Demopoulos<\/p>\n Letterboxd likes to tout itself as a means of film discovery; users make \u201cwatchlists\u201d, some of which are hyperspecific. (One of my friend has cultivated a list of 30 movies about \u201cFucked-Up British People\u201d, while I made \u201ccrash out cinema\u201d, a collection of films to watch when you\u2019re in the throes of a maybe-unrequited crush.) You can browse a feed of your friends\u2019 activity, see what\u2019s popular this week, and search any movie to see every single Letterboxd review on it ever written by anyone.<\/p>\n In an email a representative for Letterboxd wrote: \u201cLetterboxd is less a social media platform, more a community.\u201d It doesn\u2019t have an infinite scroll, or rely on algorithms to inspire a user\u2019s next movie night.<\/p>\n Gigi Leal is a 33-year-old content creator and film horror buff who loves Letterboxd. \u201cIt\u2019s like a movie diary,\u201d she said. \u201cIt reminds me of the old days of social media, when you just shared your opinions with friends.\u201d Most people agree that Letterboxd\u2019s strength as a social networking site lies in what it doesn\u2019t have: there\u2019s no way to message people or post pictures.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s in its early stage of what it wants to be,\u201d said Chris Hite, a professor of film at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California. \u201cIf Letterboxd opens up the types of interactions people can have, then the fear is it goes the way of the toxic environment of Twitter or Facebook that we\u2019ve all witnessed.\u201d<\/p>\n Ezgi Eren writes 11am Saturday, a Substack where she interviews film people about going to the movies; she took the title from her favorite time to catch a screening. \u201cI think there is a danger in Letterboxd becoming a full-on social media platform,\u201d said Eren, who is 35 and lives in Los Angeles. \u201cMaybe people would be incentivized to take pictures in the middle of a movie, or crack jokes at a screening. There\u2019s a joke that Letterboxd should launch a dating app, but I think they should never do that.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s Letterboxd\u2019s sweet spot: finding those films that you\u2019re surprised haven\u2019t been given the light of daySpencer Turney<\/p>\n Spencer Turney runs Rewind Room, a pop-up that operates monthly screenings out of the back of a Chicago coffee and plant shop. He scours Letterboxd like a record store cratedigger, looking for films to add to the series. One of those was Chameleon Street, Wendell B Harris Jr\u2019s 1989 Sundance darling about a conman who impersonates doctors, reporters and sports stars.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Letterboxd\u2019s sweet spot: finding those films that you\u2019re surprised haven\u2019t been given the light of day,\u201d said Turney, 34. \u201cIt\u2019s cool to have this shared reference point and language for discussing movies, but you don\u2019t drown away in the brain rot of watching someone throwing Oreo cookies into a lasagne, or whatever else you\u2019d see on TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n Leal, the horror-movie obsessive, said that Letterboxd has become her \u201cfirst form of information\u201d when she is researching film, a sort of Rotten Tomatoes that prioritizes friends\u2019 takes over, say, that of New York Times chief film critic Manohla Dargis. \u201cA lot of times, I\u2019ll just go there to see how other people have perceived it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not limiting for me, because I love to watch movies people say are bad and judge for myself. But my boyfriend will see an average review of 2.1 and be like, \u2018No, that\u2019s a bad movie\u2019 and not watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n Letterboxd lives in a fractured film ecosystem; few people rely on establishment critics to make a decision about what they want to watch these days. Instead, fans digest culture through YouTube plot breakdowns or TikTok reaction videos, along with their Letterboxd network\u2019s viewing history.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ali El-Sadany, editor-in-chief of film review site FilmSlop, is an enthusiastic Letterboxd user \u2013 even if he is not the biggest fan of its basic premise of distilling a film down to a five-star rating. \u201cI hate that we exist in a world where everything has to be quantified, and I think that we should just watch movies for what they are and tell us how they made you feel as a human being,\u201d he said. Still, he believes that Letterboxd \u201cis an app that brings so many voices together, and has been platforming the better ones most of the time\u201d.<\/p>\n Leal said that she sometimes gets distracted during a movie, thinking about how she will rate it on Letterboxd. This happened during a screening of Marty Supreme, the new Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet ping-pong drama directed by film Twitter favorite Josh Safdie. \u201cEvery 15 minutes, I kept thinking \u2018don\u2019t forget this line, you want to put it in your review.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I know the feeling. A few weeks ago, while sick in bed, I rewatched Singin\u2019 in the Rain, which I first saw when I was 10 years old and have screened countless times since. In the middle of Donald O\u2019Connor\u2019s mind-bogglingly athletic performance of Make \u2018Em Laugh, where the former vaudevillian completes multiple backflips and pratfalls, I lazily opened Letterboxd to see what the audience had to say. It took about five minutes of scrolling through reviews to realize I had missed the best part of the movie \u2013 one of the best parts of any movie, ever. Sending my cosmic apologies to the long-deceased, but always legendary O\u2019Connor, I closed Letterboxd and went back to watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I never thought I would use Letterboxd. 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