My phone addictions are constantly shifting. I have a short attention span and am chronically bored, so I’m always on the prowl for new distractions. Sometimes, they are useless and brain-numbing, like the Watermelon Game (which plagued my entire house for nearly a month), and other times, they are stimulating and arguably mentally healthy, like the New York Times Spelling Bee.
My current app hyperfixation is Letterboxd. This app is a movie lover’s dream. Letterboxd is pretty much a one-stop shop for everything related to movies. On the app you can rate movies, like and see other users’ ratings of movies, see the cast and crew, investigate the other projects they’ve done, create curated movie lists, and so much more. I can go down the longest two-hour rabbit hole reading millions of strangers’ thoughts on Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon or Avatar. Honestly, I think this is my favourite part of the app.
There is something so exhilarating about getting to hear what someone else was thinking when watching the same movie as you. It’s so beautifully vulnerable and intimate. It feels like reading a complete stranger’s diary. When someone has the same take on a film as me, I feel this comfortable sense of alliance, so wholly validated. And when someone’s take on a movie is starkly different from mine, I feel excited about the new perspective. I watch as the narrative flips and jumbles in my mind, and I begin to understand the plot through a new lens. I have also just been completely blown away by the poetic and beautifully nuanced reviews I find on Letterboxd. I have been brought to tears reading about how some of my favourite films have affected others and the extreme attention to detail of my fellow viewers. When I’m having a bad day, I simply open up the app and scroll through the reviews of my favourite movies. I immediately feel a sense of warmth wash over me.
As a film major, I sometimes get movie fatigue. I come home from watching movies all day with a keen focus, and I yearn to watch trash, melt into TikTok, read celebrity gossip. Sometimes, movie-watching can feel like doing school work; it stops providing relaxation. Letterboxd has relit the spark of recreational movie watching for me. I feel so excited to watch the new critically acclaimed movies at home, on my own time, and to really think about them. I fill up my Letterboxd account with overflowing lists, and I slowly work my way through. The second I finish watching, I open up the app to rate and jot down my purest, most unfiltered thoughts. Sometimes, I think on the watch, go back onto Letterboxd and re-enter my more developed review after a few days. Sometimes, my immediate thoughts just stick. I now have a diary of the nearly twenty movies I watched over Christmas break, and I know it will only grow.
I feel it’s important to mention that I have a whopping three followers on Letterboxd: two of my other movie-nerd friends and my father. So, needless to say, I am not writing my reviews for others. I am keeping these entries to hold onto my own thoughts and ideas, and to release the creative excitement that movies ignite in me.
If you are a lover of movies, an appreciator of good writing, or just a person looking to fall in love with cinema all over again, do yourself a favour and get on Letterboxd. It is every drop as magical as a movie app should be.