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Letterboxd — Your life in film

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Letterboxd: How to Find and Review Movies Online

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Who said watching and appreciating films should be solitary? Nowadays, there are many platforms where you can talk about your favorite films (or rant about the ones you hate). You can take to Twitter, Facebook, or even Discord and find like-minded people to interact with. But what if we told you there was a place made completely for film lovers? Enter Letterboxd.

With Letterboxd, you have access to a myriad of the best movies to watch . In this guide, you’ll learn all about the social film platform Letterboxd. This includes how to find your next favorite movie and keep track of the movies you are currently watching.

What is Letterboxd?

Letterboxd is the best social platform for film lovers. Reviewers call Letterboxd the “Goodreads for film.” Thanks to its intuitive design and myriad of features, it’s the best way to keep track of the films you’ve watched and will want to watch. Made by film buffs for film buffs, you will definitely enjoy the service this platform offers if you love movies.

Letterboxd is available on any desktop browser. You can also get it on Google Play and the App Store for mobile downloading

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Letterboxd Features

Review films.

Letterboxd’s main feature would be that it lets you make reviews of films you’ve watched. You can rate certain movies out of 5 stars, list down when you watched it, and post it for everyone to see. As a film community, Letterboxd will also let you see the reviews of other users.

From trusted film critics to casual film enthusiasts, you’ll find a diverse range of reviewers. Hopefully, their reviews will lead you to your next favorite film in no time.

Add Films to Watchlist

If you’ve found other movies that pique your interest, Letterboxd has a handy “Add to Watchlist” feature to let your keep track of all the films you want to see. Letterboxd’s film roster is not just limited to the United States; you can find a great wealth of films from all across the globe, all for your perusal.

You can even view the watchlists of the people you follow. It’s a useful way to find movies you haven’t even thought about or known of before. The next time you find yourself wondering what to watch on movie night, all you need to do is pull up your watchlist and make your pick. Problem solved.

Find Specific Lists

Letterboxd has a plethora of very specific lists where you can find categories of various films. These lists are curated and compiled by Letterboxd users themselves. You can find these lists from the Lists category on the Letterboxd menu, which we will teach later in this piece.

What’s great about this feature is that for every movie, you can find lists where the movie is included in. You can usually find the top-liked lists voted on by other community members. And when we say “specific lists,” we really mean it. One of our favorites include a list about critically acclaimed films that are available to watch on YouTube. If you want to watch these films offline, you might need to learn how to download YouTube movies .

View Details About Each Film

When it comes to movie details, Letterboxd has you covered. The app lists down all of the basic information you need to know about a certain movie. You’ll find a list of the cast and crew, and you can even view each individual profile made for them. These individual profiles contain a list of other movies you may be interested in seeing from them.

You can even find other metadata, such as studios involved in the filmmaking process and the genres the movie encompasses. Not only that, but Letterboxd also provides a list of all the streaming services you can find the films on. If you’ve ever wanted to see how great a movie is yourself, you can do so here. In just one click, you’ll have access to each film at your fingertips.

How to Use Letterboxd

How to add a review on letterboxd.

Adding a review on Letterboxd is easy. Thanks to the app’s intuitive interface, you can add reviews at any time.

• Look for the movie you want to leave a review on.
• On your desktop browser, there is a gray box on the left-hand side. Simply click “Review or log…”, and a review box will automatically pop up.
• On mobile, tap the green “+” button on the bottom-right corner.
• The review box has various blank slots you can fill out details such as when you watched it, your star rating, and tags.

How to Upload Your Profile Picture with Gravatar

When you set up your Letterboxd profile, you may notice that there are two ways to upload your profile picture. First is through the regular way, and the other is through Gravatar. If you already have an existing Gravatar account, there is an easy way to link your profile to Letterboxd.

To do so, you’ll have to connect to the third-party app, and create a personalized vector avatar provided by the site. To do this, follow these easy steps.

• On your desktop site, click on your username on the bar at the top. A drop down list will appear. Click on Settings.
• Click on the Avatar tab in the middle, and the site will redirect you to the avatar uploader page. On the bottom, click on “Load from Gravatar” and fill in your log-in details.
• On mobile, click on the three-line menu icon on the top left of the app. From the menu, choose Settings.
• Scroll down until you see the “Avatar” section. The app will give you a choice on whether you upload your own profile picture or Gravatar. Clicking on the Gravatar link will take you to your phone’s browser and to the Gravatar website. From there you can sign-in and update your profile picture.

How to Create Lists and Add Favorites

As mentioned earlier, users can create their own lists on Letterboxd to further categorize movies beyond the site’s genre listings. As of writing, lists are not collaborative yet. However, CEO Matt Buchanan revealed that a plan is in the works for more collaborative features.

Creating lists are pretty simple and easy.

• On desktop, you can find the lists on the menu bar at the top. By clicking on “Lists”, you can view the most popular lists in the community.
• On mobile, you’ll find the “Lists” option by pressing on the hamburger menu icon on the top-left corner.
• To find lists from friends, you can click on their profile and go to the lists on the menu tab. You should see this on your Letterboxd homepage.

To make your own, follow these steps:

• On desktop, hover over your profile and choose “Lists” from the drop-down menu.
• There you will find a button on the right saying “Start a New List.” From there, a box will appear with various fields that you can fill out, such as the list name and description.
• To add movies, simply type in the movie of your choice in the corresponding box and it will appear on the list. You can even import movies from IMDb by clicking the “Import” button.
• On mobile, click the hamburger menu icon button once again and choose “Lists.” Click on the green plus sign at the bottom, and it should be the same as the desktop version. The only difference is that you can’t import from IMDb through your mobile device.

Highest Scored Films on Letterboxd

Little women (2019).

This remake of an old classic is one of the best films of 2019. It’s no wonder why it’s rated so highly on Letterboxd. Set during the Civil War, Little Women is about the four March sisters. It’s a coming-of-age film that centers on love, family, and loss. Many Letterboxd users lauded the movie for its charm and heartwarming vibe.

The movie has an excellent score, set design and has won six Oscars in various categories. Director Greta Gerwig and actress Saoirse Ronan are an absolute dream team in this movie. The two have previously worked together on another excellent coming-of-age movie called Lady Bird.

Steven Universe: The Movie (2019)

This thrilling silver-screen adaptation to the beloved cartoon series has fans weeping. From the talented mind of Rebecca Sugar, Steven Universe: The Movie was a much awaited film in 2019. The movie dives deeper into the world of the Crystal Gems, Steven’s lineage, and the Diamonds. It takes place after the main series, a few years into the future. It is one of the best movies for kids and adults, making it a perfect choice for your next movie night.

Even Letterboxd fans agree that the movie itself was much better than they could have expected. Aside from the wonderful world-building and brilliant cast of characters, the movie perfectly reflected what Steven Universe has always been about, compassion and caring.

The Godfather Parts I and II

Even if you haven’t seen it yourself, chances are you’ve heard of The Godfather trilogy. This series of movies is so iconic that it is deeply embedded into pop culture, and rightfully so. The films explore morality and family dynamics all in the backdrop of the 1940s mafia scene. Its signature dark lighting even pioneered an entire movement of cinematography.

There’s really nothing more that we can say that has already been said. This movie will put you in shock and awe, and leave you questioning your own moral beliefs. It’s no wonder Letterboxd critics rave about this movie: it is simply an offer that you can’t refuse.

Parasite (2019)

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is an absolute film critic’s dream. The movie is riddled with hidden symbolisms and brilliant camerawork that it’s not hard to love. One of the most popular movies of 2019, Parasite is a film about class divide and privilege. The story revolves around the Park family’s blissful ignorance of the turmoil going on quite literally beneath them.

The movie grew in popularity, even rating higher than the Godfather trilogy on Letterboxd. The film won six Oscars for its direction, cinematography, writing, and more. With artful set design and well-thought dialogue, Parasite is surely one of the best movies you’ll ever see.

Spiderman: Into The Spider Verse (2018)

His name is Peter Parker, and he is the one and only Spiderman… at least he thinks so. In this action-packed and fun animated film, we follow the hijinks of multiple Spidermen from multiple universes. But most importantly, we follow the story of the young Miles Morales as he realizes what it means to be a superhero.

With an amazing musical score and unique animation style, this movie quickly became a 2018 favorite. It’s a movie that brings to life one of the most beloved comic book series of all time, and Letterboxd fans completely agree.

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The Funniest Movie Reviews From the Depths of Letterboxd

When Letterboxd first came onto the scene, I rolled my eyes and groaned at the idea of yet another social media app that aggregates opinion into an oblivion of general consensus. Can we not just have human experiences anymore without turning them into bitesized pieces of digestible content? But then I downloaded the app anyway and was instantly hooked. C'est la vie. What made me change my tune? Well, the fun thing about Letterboxd isn't really the reviews in and of themselves—it's the wild diversity. You can find the wannabe Roger Ebert who posts 2,000 word critiques on the latest Palme d'Or contenders just as easily as the guy who rates movies based on the actors' foot sizes. Some of the most entertaining reviews on the app have little to do with the movies they're purportedly reviewing. One of my favorites is a review of A Good Person, which is just a personal story about why the poster hates Zach Braff so much. We've collected some of our favorite funny and weird reviews that prove Letterboxd is a comedy goldmine. 

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What is Letterboxd? Meet the social media platform for movie buffs

Published on February 3, 2023

Finding honest movie reviews and reliable recommendations for what to watch next can be challenging. Out of the various movie review sites, Letterboxd has become a popular social network for many film lovers to discover and share their favorite flicks. The app offers more engagement options than IMDb and more off-the-cuff reviews than Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s everything you need to know about Letterboxd and why it’s become so popular.

Read more:  10 best social media apps and five other interesting options

QUICK ANSWER

Letterboxd is a free social media platform for movie buffs. Notable features include the ability for users to keep track of films they've watched, write and share reviews, and compile a watchlist of films they want to see.

KEY SECTIONS

What is Letterboxd, and who is it for?

How does letterboxd work, why is letterboxd so popular.

Letterboxd was first launched in 2011, designed to serve a gap in the vast offering of apps; where was the social media site for movies? Founders Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow described how before then, they used Flickr  to share photos and Last.fm to share their taste in music, but there was nothing similar for movies. While IMDb has an extensive database, it’s not social in design. That’s why they created the social media network known as Letterboxd , which they describe as the “Goodreads for movies.”

In its infancy, Letterboxd was largely a niche for passionate cinephiles eager to track their movie-watching habits, create lists of favorites, and write and publish reviews. But in recent years, the app has gone mainstream, doubling its growth during the pandemic. Many people flocked to the site searching for something to watch while isolating at home, and the increased usage is a testament to Letterboxd’s ability to recommend something great.

A look at reviews on Letterboxd

On Letterboxd, you can discover new movies to watch and new critics to follow, and it doesn’t differentiate the opinions of professional critics into a separate category.

A first glance at the review section for any movie on Letterboxd will give you a taste of the off-the-cuff candor on the app. The top-rated reviewers aren’t worried about the professional formatting of typical film critics; they range from making jokes and references to aspects of the industry to offering short personal quips. You can also access Letterboxd via mobile and desktop should you wish to use a keyboard for lengthier reviews.

To use Letterboxd, you must sign up for a free account. Once registered, you can search for which movies you’ve seen or ones you’re interested in watching. Or, you can browse popular movies from the Films tab. You’ll find lots of information about a film on its dedicated page. In the middle, you’ll find a film synopsis, a list of cast and crew members, details such as studios involved and languages available, and which genres the movie fits in.

On the left-hand side, you’ll find the film’s official poster, and underneath stats for how many users have watched the movie, how many lists it appears in, how many people have liked the film, and where it ranks in Letterboxds top 250 film list if it made the cut. Below, you’ll find a list of available platforms to watch the movie in your region, similar to the sought-after feature provided by JustWatch.

Let’s look at the options in the box on the right-hand side. The eye icon indicates whether or not you’ve watched or reviewed the film (though, in this case, it is the iconic googly eye from the movie Everything Everywhere all at Once , an example of some of the fun easter eggs waiting to be discovered on the site). You can click the heart icon to like a movie or click the clock icon to add it to a watchlist.

You can rate and write a movie review here if you so wish. You’ll also find a chart showing the proportion of people who rated the film between one to five stars with an average score. At the bottom, you can see if your friends have reviewed the movie to read what they thought.

What else can you do?

The little lighting bolt symbol beside the Films tab will show you recent activity from friends and those you follow. The Lists tab on the other side will show you the top trending lists and allow you to create your own. From Halloween horrors to cheesy rom-coms, organizing movies into different categories or quickly finding something in the mood to watch can be fun and convenient.

The Members tab is where you’ll find the top-trending reviewers if you’re looking for some avid moviegoers to follow. Lastly, the Journal tab is where you can read industry news, interviews, film analysis, and listen to the Letterboxd podcast. The green Log button on the far left side gives you quick access to write a review, start a new list, or find your friends.

Most movie review sires only run on aggregated reviews and ratings, but what sets Letterboxd apart is combining a film database and a film diary that uses a social network-style follower model. Users can write whatever they want about a film, and others can upvote their reviews. The unedited spirit of Letterboxd can be both hilarious and liberating. It gives readers an immediate sense of the movie without beating around the bush.

Another large part of why Letterboxd has become so popular is due to the intuitive user experience. Popular reviews are short and bite-sized, making them easy to scroll through and more shareable. Many reviews have gone viral since the text can easily fit within the length of a tweet or an Instagram story. You can link your Letterboxd account with your other social media accounts to publish everywhere.

Joker (2019) pic.twitter.com/R4iF9WWFua — Lebbertoxd (@InsaneLetterbox) May 19, 2020

The rest of the information is clear and accessible; the bright star rating is tucked beneath the title, and the poster is perfectly formatted to the right. The co-founder Matthew Buchanan explained. “One-sheet design is one of the many aspects of film craft that we adore, and putting a version of this front and center as a navigational approach has become part of the fabric of Letterboxd, and in turn, encourages lots of social sharing.”

The more Letterboxd reviews go viral; the more people become aware and interested in the platform. Today, Letterboxd has roughly five million monthly visitors and is still growing. The freeform nature of reviews and lists allows for nearly as much creativity as the artistic films waiting to be discovered. On Letterboxd, the saying that “everyone’s a critic’ isn’t a bad thing — it’s its biggest strength.

Read more: 10 best photo-sharing apps for Android

You can’t watch movies directly from Letterboxd. However, you can find a complete list of where a movie is available to stream or rent in your region.

Letterboxd isn’t only for film. You can find reviews for series, shorts, and documentaries as well.

Yes, Letterboxd will recommend movies based on your watch history and other films you’ve liked. It will also show you recent movie reviews from accounts that you follow.

Yes, there is! Letterboxd was inspired by just such a site, Goodreads , the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations.

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The Future of Film Talk Is on Letterboxd

As the pandemic and expansion of streaming changes how and when we see a movie, one unassuming social media site is positioned as a haven for the film-crit community

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One of the most popular reviews ever written on Letterboxd, a social media site for cinephiles, was posted about David Fincher’s Fight Club in early 2018. It was authored by Mia Vicino, a 24-year-old from Los Angeles who posts under the handle Brat Pitt . Vicino writes a repertory column for the Willamette Week , an alt-weekly in Portland, but her entry for Fight Club dispenses with the formalities. She writes in lower case. She doesn’t italicize the title. (If you’re posting directly to the site, you have to put in the HTML code yourself.) There aren’t even periods. Yet this 183-word nugget perfectly captures the film’s turbulent two decades in the culture, where it’s been celebrated as a barometer of masculine outrage and vilified as an instigator of the same. And it’s the type of writing that could have a home only on Letterboxd: a casual, personal shorthand that’s aimed squarely at the cognoscenti.

Vicino has been on Letterboxd since she was 19, when she had a developing passion for movies and wanted to keep track of everything she watched. “I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of the stuff I said in 2016,” she says, but the habit of logging titles and reviews, creating what the service calls a “Diary,” has allowed her to track her evolution as a moviegoer—and, to some extent, as a human being. That Fight Club review is a reflection of how our understanding of art can change as we do, reshaped by our own experiences or by the perspective of others, or how it settles in the culture.

“The diary aspect is my favorite part of it,” says Vicino. “Just having something that charts your life. For me, the movies and my life really intersect.”

“Diary” was one of the words Matthew Buchanan focused on when he and his cofounder, Karl von Randow, were conceiving Letterboxd in the years before it launched in 2011. The other word was “Lists.” Those were the building blocks of the service, and they’re almost embarrassingly true to how the cinephile mind works to compartmentalize the films that pass through it. The common denominator among Letterboxd users tends to be a compulsion to log and order the things they’ve seen, which many of them were already doing using spreadsheets or pen and paper. Letterboxd is a social media site that opens up those habits to public scrutiny, but the trade-off is that it also functions as a vast warehouse of opinion and hard data, an opportunity both to survey reactions to popular films and head down various rabbit holes. “Social film discovery” is how the homepage labels it—a phrase that’s in keeping with the no-frills, unassuming nature of the site.

For as long as users have trickled onto it, Letterboxd has seemed less like a dot-com than a utility—something that is simply on the internet , changing so incrementally that it never appears to have changed at all. There was never a time when its presence was trumpeted to the world, no event or scandal that suddenly drew attention to it or led to an eye-catching spike in membership. Most people either stumbled upon it themselves or had it recommended to them by a friend, and its growth to 2.5 million users (1 million of them active) over the past eight years has been slow and organic. Modesty is a defining aspect of Letterboxd: It’s the rare social media site that could be described as self-effacing.

Still, even though a site like Letterboxd could never have “a moment,” the winds of film culture are shifting in ways that are favorable to it. The pandemic has hastened the migration from theaters to home viewing, as well as the migration of film criticism from vocation to hobby. Fewer people are watching movies at the same time, and the traditional windows that used to separate theaters, home video, and cable television were already eroding before they collapsed entirely during the COVID shutdown. Whatever non-virtual ways we used to talk about films before—in college clubs or post-screening dinners or run-ins with fellow obsessives—are all but canceled for the time being. Letterboxd is suddenly positioned to be that place.

Release dates don’t matter at Letterboxd, and conversations can happen about any film at any time, which gives it an advantage over formal publications, which peg their coverage around embargo dates—often before the general public has access to a film—and quickly move on to the next thing. For the writer and comedian Demi Adejuyigbe, who approaches Letterboxd with a lightness of touch that fans will recognize—from his musical riffs on Will Smith and his annual video for Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” —the diminishing significance of when people watch movies is part of the site’s appeal. “One thing I’ve always not liked about watching old TV,” says Adejuyigbe, “is that it feels like the discussion aspect around it is done. It’s like the day a show drops, you have that day to discuss it with people on the internet. Whereas with Letterboxd, it feels like I can watch a movie whenever and luckily there will be a forum around it right there if people want to discuss it with me.”

As a source for aggregate opinion, Letterboxd has an advantage over sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic because users can draw from hand-picked sources: The information page for a film on Letterboxd gives the average of all ratings on the site and the range of opinion, too, so it’s possible to know whether a title gets, say, three out of five stars on average because it’s a love-it-or-hate-it proposition or just an agreed-upon mediocrity. More helpful still is the chance to look at ratings and reviews exclusively from trusted friends and contributors to the site, who may have a more common sensibility. It’s not the most reliable source for criticism per se, but as a thumbnail sketch of what you might want to see or avoid, it’s uniquely personal and helpful.

Letterboxd began as a side project. In 2001, Buchanan and von Randow cofounded an Auckland, New Zealand, firm called Cactuslab, which remains the parent company of Letterboxd and an active builder of apps and websites, from cultural enterprises like New Zealand International Film Festival to corporate work in health care and accounting. Even today, Letterboxd doesn’t consume all of Buchanan’s time, and his team is still fewer than 10 people. At the time they first conceived the site, around 2008 or 2009, Buchanan was frustrated that there were social tools for sharing music, like Last.fm, or sharing photos, like Flickr, but that film didn’t have a good home. So he created one.

“The IMDb existed, but didn’t have profiles,” says Buchanan. “It had no follower model. We really wanted to graft an experience that was a little bit of Twitter and a little bit of Tumblr and a little bit of IMDb, and put those together and see if we could create a space that people would feel comfortable sharing their experience with film.” Buchanan confesses to having the “collector mentality” that defines many Letterboxd users—he used to log his own huge DVD collection on Delicious Library, a Mac OS X software app that arranges titles on a shelf with covers, like a video store. That simple design aesthetic has been the foundation of Letterboxd from the beginning, with entries arranged against a black backdrop like a poster gallery. Click on a poster and a wealth of information appears: the cast, crew, and other production details; stats on how many users have seen it, how many lists it appears on, and how many people like it; a graph of aggregate ratings on its five-star scale; profile thumbnails of friends who have seen it (or want to see it) and their ratings; and a sampling of popular and recent reviews.

Little has changed about Letterboxd over the years. It’s been a site of minor tweaks and refinements, rather than the aggressive, pageview-courting overhauls that have crippled IMDb or Metacritic. There’s something charmingly Old Internet about having to use HTML to italicize titles on diary entries—the mobile app has ironed out that quirk—but also a sense of stability and sustainability that’s absent from the boom/bust model of Silicon Valley start-ups. Because so much of Letterboxd is user-generated and operated on a relative shoestring budget—even the film data is imported from The Movie Database, a crowdsourced site, rather than IMDb, which was deemed too expensive—it never seems like there will be a day in the future when years’ worth of diaries and lists will be vaporized.

In terms of monetization, Letterboxd has a model more common to nonprofits. Free accounts are subject to the occasional third-party ad, but “Pro” and “Patron” accounts are ad-free and provide mostly greater profile-page flexibility and advanced statistics. If you want to know the genre you watch the most or the stars or directors whose films you’ve rated highest, that information is there for you, along with the number of hours you’ve spent watching films and the countries you’ve sampled. There are bar graphs and pie charts, and a detailed spread of ratings given and breakdowns of films watched by weeks in a year or days in a week. Statheads may pore over the forensics of their raging cinephilia, but most of the power users I talked to tend to think of Pro and Patrons subscriptions more as support levels than essential services.

“There’s value in our data for sure,” says Buchanan, who says that the model supports future expansion, but hastens to add that the site is “fiercely protective” of its members and wouldn’t want to do anything they would consider “creepy.” “People can sniff out bullshit pretty quickly, especially in our community. There are other ways to run a business like this, but this is the way that works for our members.”

IndieWire critic David Ehrlich considers himself “the MySpace Tom of Letterboxd.” At over 74,000 followers, he’s currently the most popular user on the site, an early adopter whose reviews have surfaced on the home page for seven years, which in his words are “a self-sustaining mechanism” to reinforce his ubiquity on the site. Letterboxd does have an “Activity” stream that’s similar to the feeds on social media giants like Twitter and Facebook, but it’s mostly a decentralized culture where users curate their own space—who follows them, who they choose to follow—and conversations are limited to the comments below an individual review. Ehrlich is the rare exception, which has turned him into a kind of mascot for the site, and occasionally a target.

Ehrlich says he’s the type of guy who keeps a messy apartment but orders his Criterion Blu-rays by spine number. “Film lovers are sick people,” he says, knowingly quoting François Truffaut. “I think it has something to do with having affinity for a medium that is so ubiquitous but also so young. There’s still the delusion that you can see everything, that you can really have an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire expanse and breadth of the medium, which is not really on the table when it comes to literature or art.”

The compulsions that Ehrlich describes certainly apply to Sean Baker, the director of independent films like The Florida Project , Tangerine , and Starlet . Since high school, Baker has written down all the films he’s seen—first in notebooks and later on a log he kept in his email. Letterboxd was a user-friendly platform that was “as easy as writing myself an email”—and it could show him whether any of his friends had seen a film in question as well. He likes the chance to communicate with other cinephiles, finding out about titles that he hasn’t seen before, and, in rare instances, connecting with users who link him to obscurities. “I had one filmmaker reach out and give me the original cut of Boaz Davidson’s Lemon Popsicle , which was the original coming-of-age sex comedy, the one that spawned all the Hollywood rip-offs,” he says.

Baker approaches Letterboxd as if it’s a personal database. He always notes how he sees a movie—specific streaming services or movie theaters, screener links, and various physical media, often with special features listed—and will occasionally offer a drive-by opinion, though never anything negative. The only film he’s ever rated is a one-star review of his own movie The Florida Project , which was his way of announcing that he was deep in development on his next film and wouldn’t be doing much more on Letterboxd than logging titles. “As a filmmaker who’s working right now,” he says, “the last thing I could ever want to do is criticize another filmmaker. So I really just lean toward what I find positive about the movie.” This has led some commenters to speculate on their own. “If I write too little,” says Baker, “if I write just like, ‘I watched this on a DVD,’ people say, ‘Oooh, Sean didn’t like it because he has nothing to say about it.’ That’s not true.”

The community aspect of Letterboxd isn’t easy to define, because it can vary greatly depending on where conversations take place. Each member can build a mini-fiefdom out of followers, like interacting with a circle of friends, but there’s not a mechanism for calling attention to any one review post. Links can be shared on other social media platforms—the popular Twitter account Lebbertoxd (@InsaneLetterboxd) screengrabs absurd reviews that get referred to it—but it’s mostly a closed circuit for those without a big following. That limits the amount of blowback that regular members can get from strangers, since they’re mostly interacting with a friendlier core of followers.

At times, Letterboxd can seem like a million small tributaries without a river, in that it’s better understood as a collection of subcultures than one big, definable culture unto itself. No one is getting paid to write for the site, so the majority of diary entries are drive-by reviews or jokes, or perhaps an isolated observation or memorable quote from a film. Enough likes will elevate entries from average members to “Popular Reviews,” just as likes or retweets would on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites: One popular review of Tenet quips that director Christopher Nolan is “so scared to flop he designed a movie you have to see twice”; a Mulan pan simply lists better ways to spend $30 (“buy your mom some flowers”); and one user gives Charlie Kaufman’s new Netflix film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things , an elegant one-word response (“same”). But individual pages also have options for spoiler-filled reviews, which can naturally lead to more substantive discussions of details that cannot be mentioned in formal reviews or bandied about on open forums.

If ordinary members want to expose a lot of people to their opinions, however, they usually have to congregate on heavily trafficked accounts like Baker’s, where the comments section can become a free-for-all. For better and worse. Though Baker has interacted frequently with fans on the site, he doesn’t believe the site is removed from the problems that affect other social media platforms. “Somebody is going to have an issue with something you’ve written, or perhaps even what you’ve watched , which is mind-blowing to me,” he says. “I understand we’ve gone through a time when some filmmakers out there are starting to be seen as problematic, and perhaps even canceled by certain people. And therefore, if you watch their films, you’re looked at as supporting these filmmakers. And then suddenly you’re attacked. People literally want to destroy your livelihood because you’ve watched a Louis C.K. movie.”

Moderating any social media network is a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, and Letterboxd is partially populated with the abusive reply-guys present on other sites. There are community policies in place, enforced by an anonymous volunteer team of moderators who pore through flagged comments. “For every public spat that blows up on Twitter about Letterboxd,” says editor-in-chief Gemma Gracewood, “there have been 500,000 things dealt with behind the scenes swiftly and quietly and very deliberately.”

The closest Letterboxd has come to a major public controversy is its decision to pull a review of Inglourious Basterds from its site because its author wanted the soldiers from Quentin Tarantino’s WWII epic to come back and take up arms against the Nazis currently living in the United States today. The company’s explanation via Twitter—“We don’t wish to promote any form of violent hatred on our platform, no matter which side you come down on”—drew a backlash. There was then a follow-up tweet that the people behind Letterboxd were not, in fact, Nazi sympathizers, and an update to its policies to make its rejection of white nationalist ideologies absolutely clear. It was obvious that Letterboxd was guilty of a too-literal application of its moderating policies, rather than providing an unexpected safe space for genocidal cinephiles. But it was a lesson in how difficult moderating a community can get. “Part of the job is to basically wake up and do a sense check of how America is feeling today,” says Gracewood.

Up until this year, members had no ability to combat abuse on their own review pages, other than to flag ugly comments and hope for the best. Now they have the option to curate their own space. They don’t have to wait for moderators to make judgment calls.

Yet it can still be a hassle—the culture of Letterboxd is still messy. (Buchanan estimates that there’s about a 60-40 split between men and women on the site.) Adejuyigbe will occasionally mix it up in the comments, but he’s become more wary of the drain on his mental energy. His two-star Joker review underwent multiple edits in response to a barrage of responses (nearly 500 comments), with Adejuyigbe finally sighing, “Alternatively, I can just agree with whatever you guys think if it means you’ll stop yelling at me.”

“There was a time where I was like, ‘If someone’s gong to have a fight, let’s fucking hash this out,’” he says. “Now I’ll block them or make a pissy comment about how dumb I think it is that they’re yelling at a stranger because I didn’t like Joker or whatever.”

With Gracewood on board as a full-time editor-in-chief, however, Letterboxd has started to discover its voice and shape the conversations that happen on the site. Before she took over social media, the Letterboxd Twitter page was just technical support. (“I was like, ‘You’re not even into movies, you weirdos,” she says.) Now it can encourage film enthusiasm and lead people back to a site that has an editorial voice, with a new podcast , filmmaker interviews and lists, and calls for crowdsourced list-making “showdowns” on topics like underdog sports films or L.A. stories . In the past, Letterboxd could seem like a warehouse of opinions; now it has a more human identity.

Adejuyigbe and Vicino have formed a close friendship through Letterboxd—Vicino makes an appearance in Adejuyigbe’s new video for Eric Slick’s “Over It.” When Vicino moved to Los Angeles in January, Adejuyigbe was one of the only people she knew in the city, and they’ve been part of each other’s quarantine pod for the past six months. (“It’s been totally worth the mean comments,” says Vicino.) Though Gracewood emphasizes the “friendships and romances and marriages” that have grown out of the Letterboxd community, the site now seems well-suited to a time when such real-world connections are put on temporary hiatus. In the most literal sense, it’s the safest space for film discussion we’ve got.

Scott Tobias is a freelance film and television writer from Chicago. His work has appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , NPR, Vulture , Variety , and other publications.

An earlier version of this piece misspelled Demi Adejuyigbe’s name.

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Letterboxd 12+

The social app for film lovers, designed for ipad.

• #44 in Social Networking
• 4.8 • 86.6K Ratings
• Offers In-App Purchases

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Description.

Letterboxd for iOS puts the popular social network for film lovers on your iPhone or iPad, so you can log films and catch up on your friends’ activity with ease. Sign in with your existing account (or create one for free) to enjoy our native app interface. These features of the web experience are supported, with more to come: – Sign in (with 1Password support) or create an account – Browse popular, highly rated and most anticipated films (including our official list of the Top 250 Narrative Features) – Log films with date, rating, review and tags – View film info (including cast & crew, popular lists and reviews) and rate, like, watchlist or mark as watched – View (and filter) your activity feed – Read and comment on reviews and lists – Create and edit lists – View member profiles including films, reviews, diary entries, tags, stats and more – Follow members to see their activity in your feed – Filter and sort collections of films based on specific criteria – Search for films, content and people – Edit your profile settings Our app offers account upgrades: – Upgrade to 1 Year of Letterboxd Pro or Patron – Pro tier adds annual and all-time stats pages based on your account activity, advanced activity and streaming service filters (including the option to pick and filter by the streaming services you subscribe to, powered by JustWatch.com), list cloning and removes third-party ads. – Patron tier provides all the benefits of Pro, plus the option to customize film posters, backdrops on your profile and content (if available), additional stats, a listing in the Patrons directory on our website and early access to new features. – Payment is charged to your iTunes Account when you confirm purchase and your subscription automatically renews unless auto-renewal is disabled at least 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. Your iTunes account will be charged for a renewal up to 24 hours before the end of each current period, at the same annual fee. – You can manage your subscription and disable auto-renewals in the App Store app following purchase. – Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited if you purchase a subscription to that publication, where applicable Our terms of use are always available at: https://letterboxd.com/legal/terms-of-use/ We welcome your feedback regarding Letterboxd for iOS. Please email us: [email protected]

Version 4.2.4

– Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Ratings and Reviews

86.6K Ratings

Editors’ Choice

The first thing we want to do after seeing a movie is talk about it, and Letterboxd is the place to connect with fellow film buffs. With this slick app, we can easily share lists and reviews—and comment on friends’ updates—from the couch or the movie theater lobby. If you’re serious about cinema, you’ll feel right at home.

I love this app so much

I cannot sing the praises of this app enough! I love it so much and it came at a great time in my life because just as I found myself getting more and more invested in film and whatnot a friend of mine introduced me to it. I’m a big fan of the idea of being able to write reviews as well as rate movies and denote whether or not you liked them. The app/website as a whole is a great experience and I wish more of my friends would get it. The only thing I would suggest is that you guys implement an ability to turn on notifications for when certain accounts have certain interactions. For instance, I would like to be able to turn on notifications on my friend’s account so I can know when she writes a review, adds a movie to her watch list, has just seen a movie, or even just rated it. If you guys could add this feature I think it’d go a long way and people would like doing that with some of the more notable users on the app or even just their followers/following. Beyond that though, like I said I absolutely love the app and have next to no complaints about it!

THE Film Companion

This app is incredible. If you’re a casual film fan or a dedicated film buff, everyone can find something to love about this app/service. The app itself is clean, modern, and easy to use. I continue to recommend it to all my family and friends who love discussing movies that they should get on the app. You get to search for movies, log when you’ve seen them, review them, and see what your friends or family have seen. In fact, a few times, my Letterboxd reviews are used against me when we have in-person discussions. All in good fun though. My favorite feature is the Film Diary. I started using this app around the time I got MoviePass (RIP, not really) and AMC A-List. It gave me a way to keep track of the movies I saw without relying on ticket stubs. It allowed me to easily tag the movies with things like where I saw them, what type of theater (Dolby, IMAX, etc...), and what chain. Another great thing about it is the ease and portability. I used to always want to review movies, but after driving or commuting home, I would forget some of what I wanted to say. Not a problem with the app as I can sit down for a few minutes after the movies over and jot down my thoughts. One thing I would like to see, though I understand why they haven’t implemented, is the ability to review TV Shows. I understand it would be hard because of the fact that it’s hard to review a show with multiple episodes since each episode may be of different quality. But maybe someday.

App Privacy

The developer, Letterboxd , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:

• Identifiers

Data Linked to You

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

• Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

• Letterboxd Pro (1 Year) $18.99
• Letterboxd Patron (1 Year) $48.99
• Developer Website
• App Support
• Privacy Policy

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The 10 Best Comedy Thriller Movies of All Time, According to Letterboxd

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There might be a gut instinct to reject the term "comedy/thriller movie." Comedies tend to be intentionally easy to watch; more often than not breezy movies to laugh at for 90 to 120 minutes while forgetting about one's real-life troubles. Thrillers, on the other hand, tend to succeed when they're not relaxing to watch, and are generally at their best when they're able to deliver moments of great tension and sustain a level of suspense (or even dread) throughout.

Yet the comedy and thriller genres can in fact be combined to great effect, and there are plenty of memorable movies that inspire equal parts laughter and stomach-churning intensity. What follows are some of the best that strive to do just that, according to Letterboxd genre tags. They all blend these two genres with immense success , and such films are ranked below according to their average Letterboxd scores from user ratings on the site.

10 'Survive Style 5+' (2004)

Letterboxd rating: 3.9/5.

Though Pulp Fiction was acclaimed for combining four different storylines and having them intersect over 2.5 hours, Survive Style 5+ is arguably even more ambitious, telling five (occasionally intersecting) stories in just two hours. The comedy is broad, but the pace is fast, and there are feelings of danger and excitement present across most stories here.

There are hitmen, murder victims who won't stay dead, and powerful hypnosis, among various other wild instances spread throughout the stories on offer here. It's a movie that's never boring, thanks to the fact it'll jump to somewhere new seemingly every couple of minutes, and though the result can be exhausting, it's tiring and overwhelming in a (mostly) good way .

Buy on Amazon

9 'The Man Who Stole the Sun' (1979)

Letterboxd rating: 4.0/5.

The Man Who Stole the Sun is one of the strangest science fiction movies of the 1970s , and arguably one of the best. Of course, it combines its sci-fi elements with a thrilling story and plenty of dark comedy, centering on a high school teacher who's building an atomic bomb in secret, and eventually uses it to get his way in life, mainly by threatening to detonate it if the government doesn't give in to his demands.

The central character in The Man Who Stole the Sun doesn't seem as interested in big-picture things, like most bomb-wielding characters might... he seems more concerned with short-term goals and getting more luxuries in life. Things get more intense as the film approaches its climax, but much of the journey there is surprisingly funny, and certainly offbeat .

Buy DVD on Amazon

8 'Sleuth' (1972)

Michael Caine's filmography is filled with countless great films , but few are quite as dynamite as Sleuth . This is a movie starring just Caine and Laurence Olivier , with the film taking place in a mansion owned by Olivier's character, who's called a meeting there to discuss the affair Caine's character is having with his wife.

A complex battle of wits then plays out, with Sleuth managing to remain riveting despite its small cast and very confined setting. The two actors are both stellar, as is the screenplay and atmosphere of the film, all of it adding up to a mystery/thriller that's unpredictable and often surprising, but also filled with plenty of humor .

On his sprawling country estate, an aging writer matches wits with the struggling actor who has stolen his wife's heart.

7 'The Player' (1992)

Playfully bouncing between genres that include comedy, mystery, and thriller, The Player is an inventive and overall intelligent satire about Hollywood from acclaimed filmmaker Robert Altman . It stars Tim Robbins as a Hollywood executive who's made numerous enemies, due to his job involving him rejecting scripts, though things get more serious when one mysterious writer begins sending him death threats.

It's always fair game for a movie to show the darker side of Hollywood , given few people know the film industry quite like filmmakers do, and that's one reason The Player really succeeds. It's perhaps one of Altman's most engaging films, and it inevitably excels in telling a solid mystery and being an efficient blend of genres.

The Player (1992)

Watch on Max

6 'Safety Last!' (1923)

Letterboxd rating: 4.1/5.

It's a little surprising to see Safety Last! get given a thriller tag on Letterboxd (alongside more expected genres like comedy and romance), but there's a case to be made it functions as a thriller. After all, it is a film most well-remembered for the stunts pulled off by its lead star, Harold Lloyd , particularly the spectacular and iconic tower clock climb.

Fittingly, the whole movie builds up to that extended sequence at the end, given the plot here is about a contest that involves single-handedly scaling a tall building. It's an iconic silent film, and stands out as one of the best releases of the 1920s because of how well it balances death-defying stunts with good-natured laughs .

Watch on Criteron

5 'After Hours' (1985)

Of all the great films Martin Scorsese has directed , After Hours is up there as one of the best, and is likely his funniest, too. It's a movie that's essentially about one young man having a particularly bad night, agreeing to go on a late-night date with a girl but ending up falling into misadventure after misadventure.

For a comedic non-horror movie, After Hours has a surprisingly nightmarish feel throughout, feeling like something of a fever dream even at its funniest. It's a movie that always keeps the energy up, and finds darker and funnier places to go with every passing scene, succeeding in being equal parts comedic and nauseating, uncomfortable/disorientating.

After Hours

Rent on Prime Video

4 'Wild Tales' (2014)

Like the aforementioned Survive Style 5+ , Wild Tales excels by telling numerous stories across its runtime, though here, each one is presented on its own without stories intersecting. It's a film that overall feels like the darkest of dark comedies, with each of its six stories revolving around disagreements - seemingly big or small, and sometimes between strangers - that turn violent.

Wild Tales is all about placing straightforward characters in extreme situations, following those who seem to be cursed with bad luck, resulting in a little bit of cinematic schadenfreude. Much of it's very uncomfortable, and some of it's very violent, but much of it is also very funny, making Wild Tales - even with its relatively recent release - one of the best comedy/thriller movies of all time .

Watch on Starz

3 'The Long Goodbye' (1973)

Letterboxd rating: 4.2/5.

Not to be confused with the 1980 gangster film called The Long Good Friday , The Long Goodbye is another example of a Robert Altman movie that excels at being funny and exciting. It's centered on famed fictional detective Philip Marlowe (memorably played here by Elliott Gould ), and sees him taking on a case for a friend after that friend's accused of committing murder.

The tone here is unique, and the film unfolds patiently but without ever feeling boring. As far as movies featuring Philip Marlowe go, The Long Goodbye is among the most comedic (compared to how Humphrey Bogart played the same character ), but it's an approach that Altman and Gould undeniably - and somehow - make work .

The Long Goodbye

Watch on Tubi

2 'Fargo' (1996)

The Coen Brothers have made some funny movies in their time, and though Fargo might not have the most laughs of any of their comedies, it can be pretty funny in parts. It's a somewhat farcical crime thriller about a scheme that goes very wrong, thanks to incompetence all around, enabling the hyper-competent Police Chief Marge Gunderson ( Frances McDormand ) to sweep in and make things right again.

Among the laughs is some seriously grisly violence, and the ending also ratchets up the tension, ensuring Fargo probably feels more like a thriller than a comedy in its final act. Still, the balancing act is well-executed throughout, and the combination of humor, tension, and even a little heart makes this Coen Brothers film a classic , and one that's overall hard to resist.

Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.

1 'Parasite' (2019)

Letterboxd rating: 4.6/5.

It's shocking how well-written Parasite is , managing to provide heartbreaking drama, expert social commentary, genuine laughs, and some incredibly suspenseful moments all within the confines of a single film. Bong Joon-ho had made some exceptional films before 2019, but Parasite exceeded them in quality, and was rewarded when it came to acclaim and awards, as a result.

Unlike most comedy thrillers, Parasite is a movie where one half feels comedic, and then the other half feels mostly concerned with being a thriller/drama. The switch-up works, and the halves feel coherent together, which can't have been easy to execute convincingly from a screenplay perspective. The plot of Parasite is thrilling, funny, exciting, and tragic, and it does indeed deserve to be considered the greatest comedy/thriller hybrid of all time .

NEXT: The Best Movie from Every Year of the 2010s, According to Letterboxd

25 Movies With Surprising Letterboxd Scores

T here’s something fascinating about the human need to quantify subjective opinions. We rate movies with stars (and even half-stars), we give them thumbs up or down, we aggregate their reviews until we determine if they are “certified fresh.” (What could be more authoritative than certified freshness? Who could argue with that?!?)

These numbers sometimes fly in the face of our own personal opinions — and occasionally seem to defy what we understand to be the wider consensus based on our conversations with other movie lovers, or from reading reviews, looking at box-office charts, and following what movies win at the Academy Awards each year. While I look at the great film-based social-media website Letterboxd , I always glance at a movie’s average score based on users’ zero-to-five star ratings. Sometimes I find myself downright flabbergasted by those numbers.

After keeping a running list of surprising scores on my computer for a while, I’m now sharing it publicly. It’s sorted by average Letterboxd score from lowest to highest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the first couple movies are underrated and the later ones are overrated. Each entry is included for different reasons. One may routinely get treated as a punchline by cinephiles, but you wouldn’t know that from its Letterboxd score. Another is a hugely influential and commercially successful horror film, yet its score is shockingly low. And so on.

What does all of this mean? For me, it’s a reminder that everyone has an opinion, and sometimes ours colors what we believe is true of others. See how your own opinions mesh with these 25 movies that (at least to me) have very surprising Letterboxd scores.

READ MORE: The Worst Superhero Movies Ever Made, According to Letterboxd

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Letterboxd: It’s like Facebook, but for movie lovers

The film-centric social media outlet saw its membership nearly double since the start of the pandemic and now has over 3 million members.

By Nate Schwartz

Between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m, Monday through Friday, Seth Turek is focused. He works all day at Qualtrics, the famous software company in Utah, and the grind is real.

But when the clock strikes 5:01 p.m., he transforms into a film critic. Only it’s not in the traditional way. Turek — who has penned over 1,000 reviews since he began writing them in 2017 — doesn’t write reviews as a second occupation, though. His words aren’t printed in any local magazines or for the Deseret News. And the movies he reviews usually aren’t new.

All of Turek’s reviews are available to read online, not on a blog, but rather on an up-and-coming social media site called Letterboxd.

He’s not alone either. According to The New York Times , Turek is one of over 3 million people actively using Letterboxd, and that number is growing. In January, the Times reported that Letterboxd’s user base had nearly doubled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Compared to the thousands of other posts that Letterboxd users publish on the site every day, Turek’s 1,000 reviews are a raindrop in an ocean.

But what is Letterboxd? And what does it tell us about the future of reviews and film criticism?

What Letterboxd is

Some might consider Letterboxd to be a site where amateur movie critics post their reviews, but that doesn’t paint the full picture. On its own FAQ page , Letterboxd defines itself as “a global social network for grassroots film discussion and discovery.”

Put differently, Letterboxd is a social media site for people who love movies, and you don’t need to be a full-fledged film critic to use it. The site values both discussion and discovery equally.

The mantra on Letterboxd’s homepage reads:

“Track films you’ve watched. Save those you want to see. Tell your friends what’s good.”

While Turek, the die-hard cinephile that he is, mainly uses Letterboxd for that third sentence, there are thousands of people who use the site for the first two sentences — they track what they watch and bookmark movies to see later.

Letterboxd has been offering these services since 2011, but its popularity snowballed in 2020 as the the pandemic confined us in our homes, the Times reports.

How Letterboxd works

Rachel Wagner, a member of the Utah Film Critics Association , aptly compares Letterboxd to the popular online book review service Goodreads .

Similar to Goodreads, Letterboxd members have their own personalized profiles that showcase their favorite movies and display recent activity.

Here’s what Wagner’s profile looks like:

Like other social media sites, Letterboxd profile pages feature a space for avatars and bios.

On this page, members can access a series of tools. Users can search for certain movies, make a diary entry, write a review, create a list, add titles to a watchlist and so on.

While Turek mainly uses his account to post reviews, Wagner uses hers to make movie lists. As of Jan. 22, Wagner has published 93 lists. She makes lists to rank her favorite Jane Austen movies, superhero flicks, Hallmark specials and more.

Wagner first became aware of the site in 2014 when she saw a Letterboxd movie list on Twitter. It piqued her interest because Letterboxd lists are formatted to look like a gallery of movie posters neatly positioned side-by-side.

The Ringer reports that Letterboxd’s sleek visuals-first aesthetic is a part of the site’s core since Day 1. Movies are a visual medium, and the site’s founders wanted their platform to reflect that. For reference, here’s one of Wagner’s movie lists:

The lists are also interactive. For example, if you were to click on the “ Toy Story .” poster on Wagner’s list, Letterboxd would redirect you to a separate page dedicated to that movie.

There, you’d find info about the movie’s plot, its release date, the cast, where you can stream it. You’d also find a bevy of reviews written by other users.

This is how Letterboxd creates rabbit holes. A visit to Wagner’s profile could lead you a list. That list could take you to a movie’s page. That page could introduce you to a review which could take you to someone else’s profile, then the whole cycle starts over again.

Are there any issues with Letterboxd?

While the site is constantly growing, its backend team is small and not immune to controversy.

The Ringer reports that in 2019, a Letterboxd moderator decided to remove a review of Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 WWII epic “ Inglorious Basterds ” because it suggested the movie’s violent protagonists time travel to the present and kill Nazis living in the U.S. today.

In a Tweet that is now deleted, Letterboxd attempted to explain why it took down the review. It read:

“We don’t wish to promote any form of violent hatred on our platform, no matter which side you come down on.” (via IndieWire ).

That explanation was met with a backlash that prompted the site to post a follow-up message:

“Yesterday, we replied with stupidly chosen words to a Twitter query, without stopping to consider the wider social context, or the similarity between the tweet’s wording and an egregious and harmful statement from a political figurehead. It was wrong and we’re sorry. ...We’ve changed our community policy as of today to reflect this, adding in an explicit line rejecting content that ‘expressly praises, supports, promotes or represents white nationalist ideology.’” (via Indiewire )

For Letterboxd’s managers, the incident proved to be an invaluable lesson on how difficult it is to monitor an online community.

Before the incident, Letterboxd users didn’t have the power to remove hateful comments on their posts. All they could do was flag it and hope a site moderator would see it and take it down.

Letterboxd is expanding, but its progress hasn’t come without a few growing pains.

Is it the real deal — or just a fad?

All signs seem to be pointing toward the real deal. The Times describes the site’s recent growth as “explosive,” with the majority of new users coming from the 18- to 24-year-old demographic.

Gemma Gracewood, the site’s editor-in-chief, sees Letterboxd as not only a form of entertainment for users but also a means of education. She told the Times that Letterboxd’s new users are “coming on having watched ‘ The Princess Switch: Switched Again ’ and discovering (classics like) ‘ The Umbrellas of Cherbourg .’”

Matthew Buchanan, one of Letterboxd’s founders, said the site is not only experiencing an increase in users, but it’s seeing an increase in use as well. “We’ve seen more activity per member,” he told the Times . “Our metrics are up across the board.”

At a time when several industries, including the movie theater business , are struggling to make ends meet, Buchanan had expanded his staff to manage his site’s growth.

The pandemic may have permanently changed the way consume and discuss movies. As our viewing habits continue to trend online through streaming and video-on-demand services, it only makes sense that our discussion habits follow suit.

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22 Of The Funniest Movie Reviews From Film Fans Of 2021

"Favorite Letterboxd review of 2021?"

Over on Twitter , Letterboxd asked film fans for their favorite reviews from the site in 2021. And they did not disappoint.

Over the year, the social media site for film lovers garnered quite a few hilarious reviews for both new and old movies. Here are just a few examples of the hilarity. Vote up your favorite film review for 2021. 

Don't Look Up

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No Way Home

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Chicken Run

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The Lighthouse

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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Tick, Tick... Boom!

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The Amazing Spider-Man

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The Power of the Dog

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10 Divisive Movie Sequels That Completely Split Their Fandoms

8 movie franchises that deserved a better legacy, 9 high-rated comedies with low-rated sequels, according to letterboxd.

• Finn from Star Wars had a rushed conclusion in The Rise of Skywalker , leaving many fans disappointed.
• Wanda Maximoff's arc in MCU is ruined in Doctor Strange in the Mutliverse of Madness , tarnishing her character and story.
• Agent Smith's iconic character in The Matrix lost his essence in later sequels, largely due to a casting change.

The worst parts of the most disappointing movie sequels of all time are the moments that ruin characters the audience had come to love. This is especially common with movie franchises that get worse with every sequel . It is hard evidence that the director or writer of the given sequel was chosen poorly, as it showcases how they don't understand the characters or the story. In some ways, ruining a character is worse, because the audience has formed a personal attachment to someone they possibly relate to.

Some "bad" movie sequels are still worth watching if the characterizations are at least consistent. However, iconic movie characters have been ruined when they do something completely inconsistent with their character in a sequel, acting changes do not serve them well, or the writers just didn't put in as much effort into their arc as before. As a result, fans were crushed when their favorite character's story came to a lackluster conclusion.

A few movie sequels caused their fandom's reactions to split, with some praising the movie and others claiming it ruined everything.

10 Finn (John Boyega)

Finn, along with Rey and Poe, were set up as the new Star Wars trio to parallel the original heroes. However, by Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , the writers were clearly only interested in writing about Rey and Kylo Ren /Ben Solo. Finn and Poe's arcs are rushed in the last movie, trying and failing to give the impression of a meaningful conclusion. The first two movies of the sequel trilogy set up several subplots for Finn that are left unfinished, including his potential romances with both Rey and Rose.

Finn's character connoted many never-before-seen story possibilities for Star Wars . After his first movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi continues to form an interesting discourse around Finn, showing him realizing more truths about his world and the conflict he cannot escape. The final movie tries to resolve his story by showing him meeting other First Order deserters, but it is clear that the director didn't want to spend time tying up everything to do with Finn's character.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise that started in 1977 by creator George Lucas. After the release of Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope (originally just titled Star Wars), the franchise quickly exploded, spawning multiple sequels, prequels, TV shows, video games, comics, and much more. After Disney acquired the rights to the franchise, they quickly expanded the universe on Disney+, starting with The Mandalorian.

9 Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen)

The marvel cinematic universe.

The introduction of Wanda and her brother Pietro Maximoff was an exciting moment for the MCU that showed the official Avengers roster expanding to include other superheroes from the comics. While Quicksilver was done wrong by the MCU with his early death, Wanda's power and character continued to grow. Wanda finds herself in the middle of several complicated ethical dilemmas concerning how she feels about Tony Stark's actions and how the rest of the world views her and her power.

The MCU features a compelling depiction of Wanda's relationship with Vision, adding more emotional and tragic elements to her story. However, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is where her character falls apart. At this point, Wanda is the objective villain in the story, undermining years of character development — her alleged death comes across as the only way for her to make up for what she has done.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

The monolithic franchise that kicked off with Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), is one of the industry's longest-running and largest cinematic franchises. Based on the heroes from Marvel Comics, the MCU is a new way for fans and newcomers alike to enjoy the ever-expanding universes of some of the world's most famous superheroes. Releasing as "Phases," Marvel Studio's first three Phases came to be known as "The Infinity Saga," which surrounded the formation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes and their showdown with the Mad Titan known as Thanos as he sought to collect the Infinity Stones. With his ultimate goal of indiscriminately wiping out half of all life in the universe, this plot ultimately reveals itself over ten years of films, ending in a two-part finale that changed the world's fate - and the core cast forever. Currently, the MCU is preparing to enter the fifth phase, focusing on Kang the Conquerer as the new core series villain.

8 Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving/Jonathan Groff)

Hugo Weaving's performance as Agent Smith is one of the highlights of the original Matrix trilogy, and the character is doubtlessly one of the most iconic movie villains of all time. Smith serves as a foil to Neo, constantly prompting the hero to question his free will. Smith is the embodiment of all the doubts the main characters have about their world and the war they are fighting, regularly monologuing about destiny and choice in some of the most philosophical scenes of The Matrix .

While the first two Matrix sequels have been criticized for their needless philosophizing, this is characteristic of Smith's persona and mostly works for him. However, he is a considerably weaker character in the legacy sequel, in which he is played by Jonathan Groff. Trying to convince the audience that it is the same Smith taking on a new form was a mistake because this particular persona is not Groff's strength. Groff is a talented actor, and if they had given him an original character to make his own, The Matrix Resurrection's Smith character might have been better.

The Matrix is a sci-fi action franchise that launched with the Wachowskis' 1999 film. It depicts a dystopian future where humanity is unknowingly trapped in a simulated reality by sentient machines. The protagonist, Neo, discovers this truth and that he is "The One," a being that will lead a rebellion against the machines and restore freedom to humanity.

7 Dewey Riley (David Arquette)

Dewey was set up as a comedic figure in the Scream franchise — the bumbling but well-meaning cop who somewhat surprisingly became a fan-favorite character, when the concept is based in cheap slapstick and is usually relegated to side characters. However, the repetitive jokes about him being the "dumb" team member are worn out by his last movie, given that he is competent enough to have survived up until then. In some scenes, Dewey is actually one of the smartest characters in the Scream movies .

While the franchise could have found a better source of humor, Dewey's divisive death is also to the detriment of his character. After being repeatedly stabbed and injured but somehow surviving throughout the series, he finally succumbs to a stab wound in 2022's Scream reboot. The event is fitting given the movie's darker tone, but it is also arguable that the movie needed to do more work to properly kill such a beloved character.

Created by Kevin Williamson and originally helmed by Wes Craven, the Scream franchise takes a meta approach to the slasher horror franchise, centering on teenagers well-versed in the genre who find themselves hunted and killed by figures donning the Ghostface mask. The first four movies revolved around Neve Campbell's Sydney Prescott as she frequently found herself the target of different Ghostface killers, while the fifth and sixth installments introduced new protagonists, sisters Tara and Sam, with their own dark past connected to the original Ghostface killer.

6 John Connor (Multiple Actors)

John Connor looms as a major figure in the Terminator story in The Terminator , although he is never seen in person. He is officially introduced as a rebellious, cynical kid in T2 , who leads the movie through his funny and heartfelt dynamic with the friendly T-800. John's characterization is a major part of what makes T2 the undisputed best Terminator movie . In the sequel, Nick Stahl does a decent job portraying John as a young man with complicated feelings about his supposed destiny, even if he struggles to support a mediocre movie.

John's character in Salvation is a generic, gritty fictional war movie hero whom the writers likely based on Bale's recently famous role as Bruce Wayne. He has some compelling moments with his teenage father, but his hostility towards Marcus doesn't make sense when he knows about the possibility of friendly machines. Genisys then completely destroys John's character, making him a comical villain whose death has no emotional effect on his would-be parents. Apparently feeling that there was nothing to salvage after this, Terminator: Dark Fate kills John off to focus on new characters.

The Terminator franchise, launched by James Cameron in 1984, explores a dystopian future where intelligent machines wage war against humanity. The relentless pursuit of key human figures by time-traveling cyborg assassins known as Terminators is central to the narrative. John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance, is the core target of the malicious machines.

Often the legacy of a great movie franchise can be tarnished over the years, with substandard sequels diminishing the overall impact of the series.

5 Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp)

Pirates of the caribbean.

When he first appeared on-screen, Captain Jack Sparrow was the beating heart of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, despite having relatively little effect on the outcome of the story. Jack's razor-sharp comments and unexpected brilliance were the spark the basic action-adventure plot needed to stand out. In the sequels, the story started to become more dependent on Jack's character and backstory than before, but Johnny Depp mostly carried on the legacy of his Oscar-nominated performance.

The fourth movie truly started to derail his persona with the introduction of Penélope Cruz's character, who carried more emotional implications for Jack's arc than audiences ever wanted him to have. Additionally, the humor associated with his character grew lazier. By the time the franchise arrived at its fifth and most recent installment, Jack was delivering a constant stream of ridiculous, unintelligent jokes — yet the story continues to treat him as though he has the gravitas to support the entire plot.

4 Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)

Luke Skywalker is an iconic hero of cinematic history, whose arc in the original Star Wars trilogy follows a fairly predictable but reliable trajectory, which is credited with popularizing the hero's journey in pop culture. In the beginning, Luke is an untrained but eager apprentice, who becomes more cautious due to the events of the first two movies. Despite people's complaints about Return of the Jedi , it shows a satisfying fulfillment of Luke's character arc, as a skilled Jedi warrior who is completely sure of his moral stance.

The Last Jedi dramatically divided Star Wars fans; one of its most controversial storylines focuses on Luke, who has abandoned the new Jedi Order and the Resistance following Kylo Ren's turn to the Dark Side. He is unlikable because of his objectively selfish decision to leave behind others to fight a war he contributed to. Rise of Skywalker is even worse, because it reverts Luke to a generically wise Jedi mentor ghost, making people wonder why this couldn't have just been his character in the legacy sequels to begin with.

3 Alan Grant (Sam Neill)

Jurassic park.

Alan Grant is a strong lead in the original Jurassic Park , and it is impossible not to like someone who faces off with a T-Rex to protect two children. Alan shares the breathtaking scene of seeing the live dinosaurs for the first time with Ellie and Ian, where they all properly convey the awe-inspiring nature of what they are seeing. He contributes to the dialogue of the main trio's concerns about meddling with nature, before being launched into his solo arc showcasing his level-headness as he makes his way across the park with the kids under his protection.

Alan's two other movies in the franchise are generally counted among the worst Jurassic Park movies . Jurassic Park III is dependent upon Alan not being as intelligent as he should be; he is still a clever protagonist once he is facing off with dinosaurs, but other characters have to trick him into going back to the island first. Years later, Jurassic World Dominion completely misunderstood the original characters , who work together as a group throughout the movie to the detriment of their individual characters.

The Jurassic Park franchise is an action-adventure sci-fi series that began with Michael Crichton's original novel. The series explores the dramatic repercussions of resurrecting dinosaurs through advanced genetic science. Set primarily in a disastrous theme park, Jurassic Park explores the profound ethical dilemmas about tinkering with the DNA of long ago extinct creatures and the manipulation of the natural world through science.

2 Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon)

Legally blonde.

Legally Blonde was never cut out to be a franchise, something the producers involved should have realized after several poorly-received sequels and spinoffs. Fans can only hope that Legally Blonde 3 will finally do justice to Elle Woods' character, which no movie since the original has been able to accomplish. In her iconic rom-com that serves as a perfect standalone adventure, Elle is a relentless, bubbly sorority sister who follows an ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law, only to discover her own aptitude for the profession.

People found Elle's determination and confidence oddly empowering, making her one of the quintessential characters of the decade. However, the ill-advised sequel failed because it did nothing more for Elle. The story acts as though the first movie has done everything needed to make Elle an inspirational, intelligent character, and she can now be used only for comedy. In the process, she becomes completely obnoxious, leaning into the stereotypes she originally subverted.

Several mainstream comedies of the late 1990s and 2000s received scores above 3.0 on Letterboxd, while their sequels underperformed with audiences.

1 Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire)

It is generally agreed upon that Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies are good, while the final installment in the trilogy is what ruined the story. In the first two movies, Tobey Maguire's Peter Park is a lovable nerd who becomes an unlikely hero, exactly as the character is in the comics. This is accompanied by engaging, perfectly cast villains and fantastic action sequences that doubtlessly influenced the later boom in superhero movies.

Spider-Man 3 is oversaturated with villains, in part due to studio executives overruling what Raimi thought was best for the story. However, the movie is especially mocked because of its hilariously unlikable Peter — while there is an in-story reason for it, the consensus is that they went too far. The downfall of a character as iconic and beloved as Peter Parker was incredibly disappointing for fans to watch, especially when the movies had managed to do right by him for the first two installments.

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Critic’s Pick

‘Robot Dreams’ Review: A Friendship That Is Far From Mechanical

This animated film from Pablo Berger is a silent wonder that says everything about love.

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By Amy Nicholson

Decades after Philip K. Dick asked if androids dreamed of electric sheep, we have an answer. This android — one of two nameless leads in the Oscar-nominated charmer “Robot Dreams” — envisions a small, lonely dog in his third-floor walk-up, microwaving a depressing dinner for one. Set in 1980s Manhattan, Pablo Berger’s all-ages, wordless wonder of a cartoon kicks into gear when the mutt assembles a self-aware, spaghetti-limbed robot companion ordered from an infomercial. You might be thinking that sentient artificial intelligence didn’t exist 40 years ago, and you’d be right. But dogs don’t rent apartments, either.

This fanciful vision of New York is populated by animals: sporty ducks, punk rock monkeys, buffalo mail carriers, penguins shouldering boomboxes, and a disproportionate number of llamas. Mechanical beings are sparse and some creatures consider them lower in status, a brutal development when our robot’s relationship with his dog begins to break down. But Berger isn’t interested in science fiction. He’s made a buddy film that’s as relatable as two friends bonding over slices of pizza (but the robot eats the plate, too).

Berger, who also adapted the screenplay, expands Sara Varon’s short graphic novel of the same name into a minor epic. To describe the plot — a dog and a robot are best friends, until they aren’t — the film sounds pitifully small. But the world inside it feels huge, a sprawling landscape of joy and heartbreak and mixed emotions and stinging dead ends.

It’s hard to make out the dog and robot’s attachment. Is it platonic? Romantic? Does the dog consider himself the robot’s partner or his owner? The leads remain resolutely mute. In their silence, we fill their relationship with our own memories of loved ones, present and past: partners, best friends, siblings, even long-lost pets. The music steers the mood, a mix of Alfonso de Vilallonga’s jazzy score and a track by Earth, Wind & Fire that’s heard in endless permutations from the full original to a stripped-down, jaunty whistle, like that gag about a butcher who uses everything but the oink.

The film is structured as a series of vignettes. Some are designed to break your heart; others exist just because. In a low moment, the robot imagines himself taking the place of the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” which he and the dog rented on VHS from Kim’s Video . His dreamscape, however, squeezes the Empire State Building and the twin towers into Emerald City’s skyline, and on his yellow brick stroll there, he’s engulfed by giant, dancing flowers who stomp their stems at him in choreography that’s Busby Berkeley by way of Riverdance.

These tiny stories are microscopic examinations of personal connection: fledgling, fleeting, confounding, awkward, idealistic, forced. Even at the dog and robot’s happiest, things are never perfect. (The dog gets annoyed that the robot always beats him at Pong.) Mostly, though, Berger illustrates shades of intimacy that transcend dialogue, say when the dog introduces the robot to the subway and seems to appreciate his station’s regular street performer — a drumming octopus — for the first time through his new friend’s eyes.

It’s marvelous how the film is able to sketch so much soul from such simple lines. The characters are drawn bluntly, just as they are in the book. Yet Berger, directing his first animated feature (but not his first silent film ), already boasts the creativity of a master. He frames images from inside a grimy microwave, or looking up from the bottom of a candy bowl as it’s being filled with jelly beans. One dizzying shot comes from the point of view of a snowman who’s popped off his own head and hurled it like a bowling ball. I was even more impressed by Berger’s finesse, particularly his playful use of glass. We see the dog’s reflection in everything from TV screens and bus windows to the inside of a crystal ball as the mutt obliviously pads past a tarot reader’s shop — a delightful flourish drawn only for us.

“Robot Dreams” leaves us to ponder what its voiceless leads leave unspoken: Is opening our lives to others worth the pain? There will be blubbering and, at the ending, a surge of feelings that can’t be expressed in words. And they don’t have to be. It’s all said in a tentative tail wag.

Robot Dreams Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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The director Pablo Berger broke down how he brought a New York street scene to life  in “Robot Dreams,” his Oscar-nominated animated film about the friendship between a dog and a robot.

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The documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” directed by Ron Howard, doesn’t ignore the Muppet mastermind’s faults, but the tribute has a lot to teach creators everywhere .

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Where to watch John Wick: Stream all four movies online

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Keanu Reeves has been thrilling audiences as the title character in the "John Wick" films since 2014. The action franchise has grown to include four movies, and two spinoffs are also in development. We'll show you where to watch John Wick from home, including streaming options for all four movies.

"John Wick" follows the exploits of an assassin who comes out of retirement when his dog is killed by Russian gangsters. Wick, played by Keanu Reeves, then sets out for revenge against the criminal organization he once worked with. The "John Wick" franchise has become one of the most celebrated action series of all time, enjoying both critical and commercial success.

Since 2014, the first three "John Wick" movies have accumulated a collective worldwide box office gross of over $587 million. On Rotten Tomatoes, each movie holds an "86% Certified Fresh" rating or above, with the latest film debuting with the highest rating of all with a "94% Fresh" score.

If you're looking to catch up on the franchise, you're in luck. All four "John Wick" movies are available to stream, rent, or purchase online.

• See also: Where to watch Mayor of Kingstown | Where to watch Criminal Minds: Evolution |  Where to watch Five Nights at Freddy's

Where to watch John Wick

"John Wick: Chapter 4" is currently streaming on Starz , but you can watch the first three "John Wick" movies on Peacock . A Peacock membership costs $6 a month for ad-supported streaming or $12 a month for ad-free streaming. Starz subscriptions start at $10 a month, but you can currently get your first three months for $3 a month. The "John Wick" films can also be rented or purchased from digital retailers like Amazon , Vudu , and Apple TV . 

Will there be more John Wick movies?

"John Wick: Chapter 4" isn't the end of the franchise. A fifth film has been announced, though no other news has emerged. The franchise is already set to continue with an upcoming spinoff film called "Ballerina." The action movie starring Ana de Armas is scheduled for release on June 6, 2025. A spinoff TV series called "The Continental" is also streaming. The show is a prequel to the movies and is available to watch on Peacock . 

How to watch John Wick from anywhere

If you have any of these streaming services but you'll be traveling outside the US when you want to watch John Wick, you can use a VPN (virtual private network) to stream. VPNs allow you to change your virtual location so that you can circumvent geo-restrictions to access your usual websites and apps. This rec is best for Americans traveling abroad since the streaming services we've highlighted need US forms of payment to sign up. If you're interested, you can check out ExpressVPN , which comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

With its consistent performance, reliable security, and expansive global streaming features, ExpressVPN is the best VPN out there, excelling in every spec and offering many advanced features that makes it exceptional. Better yet, you can save up to 49% and get an extra three months for free today.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

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