When it comes to movies, I’ve always been a casual enjoyer. I don’t often find movies to be bad and overall have a good time no matter how cringy or poorly made they may be. I like to take movies in, I’ve never thought about being pretentious about it. With this, I’ve never really been a movie girl. I’ve been a book girl, a YouTube girl, and a TV girl, but not movies. There’s nothing wrong with them, I just found that if I have a choice, I’m never picking to watch a movie.
This changed back in March. I went on a date and the guy I went out with was a huge movie buff. We went and saw Dune 2 (even though neither of us had seen the first one) and while watching it I could understand why people love movies. A film like Dune is an experience. You can just tell the amount of work and craft that went into making such a huge project. After the movie, I went back to my apartment and decided to make a Letterboxd account.
Now it’s not like I’ve been living under a rock: I knew what Letterboxd is, I just never bothered to make an account because I watch maybe one movie a month. I quickly figured out that Letterboxd is just Goodreads for film bros. When you first make your account, you’re able to swipe through popular movies and mark ones that you’ve watched already and mark others as ones you’d like to watch, those go to your watchlist (TBR for us reader girls).
When you go to anyone’s profile on Letterboxd you’re met with four movies listed as “favorites.” I wasn’t around for MySpace, but your four favorites are similar to the top eight friends. Picking your four favorites is a daunting task for some, and you can tell a lot about a person based on what they selected. I immediately knew what my movies were going to be: Miss Americana, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and Tangled. I left my fourth spot open because I really couldn’t think of another movie that was on the same level. All of my favorites are movies I’ve seen multiple times and can continue to rewatch them.
Once I started my account, March continued to be a month of movies. I did a rewatch of the first Transformers movie to feel nostalgic and it still holds up (partly because of Linkin Park). I followed up with The Choice, a rom-com based on the Nicholas Sparks novel. I’m not a Nicholas Sparks girl by any means, but I needed a good cry, and boy did it deliver. The last 30 minutes of this movie absolutely broke me and then put me back together. The following day my movie buff date came over and we watched Bottoms. This Movie! I was dying the entire time, Rachel Sennot and Ayo Edibri are comedic geniuses and they maximized their joint slay in this movie. I love that at the end of the movie they killed an entire football team, yet no one was talking about it. We need to bring back unhinged comedies like this.
To close out my month, I watched Priscilla when they were playing it in the University of Connecticut Student Union Theatre. I’d meant to watch it last year when it came out, but I never got around to it so I knew I needed to take this opportunity. It was amazing. I had never watched anything by Sofia Coppola and now I need to go on a deep dive because the movie was beautiful. I’ve been a Jacob Elordi girl since The Kissing Booth but Cailee Spaeny had rent due! The way she was able to portray the innocence of a 14-year-old and move through the ages of the relationship was phenomenal. I look forward to seeing what else she does in the future.
The Letterboxd app itself is very similar to Goodreads, but a few things are different that I love. The first one is that you can give half-star ratings. So many users on Goodreads give book ratings with point fives that implementing a half-star would be greatly appreciated and widely used. I also think the overall layout of Letterboxd is easier to use. Maybe it’s because there is less on the app compared to Goodreads, but I find it simpler to find what I’m looking for and the layout looks nicer.
I don’t think I’m a completely changed woman, I’ll probably go back to never watching movies once the excitement of a new app wears off but Letterboxd itself is such a fun app. I love the side that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The reviews and lists users have made that I’ve found are actually funny. It’s nice to know that it’s not completely taken over by film bros who love The Wolf of Wall Street.