The first ever films were enjoyed in crackly, black-and-white silent exclusivity, and have since evolved to be vividly scripted and scored visual masterpieces with greater diversity and range. From the reign and saddening demise of Blockbuster Video, the invention of Netflix and the birth of online streaming platforms to the wittily-ruthless Rotten Tomatoes reviews and the Tomatometer for professional film critics, enjoying movies has become a pillar of global pop culture.
Created in 2011, the free-to-use app and website Letterboxd has recently skyrocketed in popularity — the brilliant no-brainer idea for a social media platform for cinema lovers across the globe. Similar to Goodreads, a platform with the same concept but for books and other literature, Letterboxd focuses less on arbitrary critic approval ratings and more on casual, quippy user reviews.
Letterboxd users can invite their friends and follow their profiles to see what movies they’ve recently watched and how they rated them — whether the plot was riddled with clichés, how well each movie adds to the actors’ repertoires or simply poke fun at the characters and cinematography. They can create their own lists of movies for different genres and categories, like family favorites or greats for date nights, for personal safekeeping or to publicly display on their profiles.
The app’s most beloved feature is the user’s freedom to express every feeling about each movie, from enamored to confused to repulsed, their nitpicks on every detail large and small and their deliberations on plot, cinematography and casting in every review they write.
There is an argument to be made about how unromantic the digital cinema revamp has become — yes, a night beginning with standing under the neon marquee outside your local cinema while deciding on showtimes and indulging in tubs of popcorn on your way to the theater is a momentarily mundane but undeniably magical experience. However, gathering with friends and family to binge movies — forming popcorn brigades from the couch to the microwave and scrolling through titlecards on Netflix, Hulu and Max until you decide on the perfect movie for the evening based on whoever’s Letterboxd reviews had the most intriguing conviction — may just very well be what establishes digital cinema as an equal to its traditional in-person beginnings.
