Position Paper #4 | Wild Card

Letterboxd

For our first position paper, we were assigned to write a paper on mobile apps. At the time, I was thinking “Hmm, what is an app I can work Harry Styles into?” So, I chose the Calm app since he was involved. It wasn’t until about a week later I remembered my new favorite obsession, the mobile app Letterboxd.

Letterboxd in summary is a social network for people who love movies. On the app, you review movies you’ve watched. The best part about the app is you can see other reviews from everyone else. I don’t have a lot of friends on there, because I only value a few people's opinions, but occasionally it is fun to see what strangers have to say about a movie. Users can mark movies they’ve already seen as watched without having to review them. 

It was founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow. Users can make lists, similar to a music playlist. Some people sort them by genre and others just sort them by relevance to their personal preference. A few lists I’ve been slowly making my way through are i’m just a girl and 101 Films You Must See Before You Die. There are so many more lists that I spend hours going through.

In 2021, the user base doubled by more than 3 million from the previous year. The site, in 2013, introduced a tiered structure, where they offered a free and paid membership. The only difference in the paid membership is ads are removed, users can comment on other reviews and add profile stats. Paid members also have the feature to change movie covers when making lists. This list titled Horror!!! ordered their movie posters by color, which I think is really cool.

Everyone is able to access the content on the site, but in order to interact users would have to create an account. Members can rate films on a five-star scale, write reviews and tag them with keywords. They can also make a watchlist of movies they haven’t seen but want to see. Letterboxd is available for download on Android and iOS. 

Initially, Letterboxd was created for cinephiles and big movie buffs, but since the pandemic when people were watching movies more than ever, it has expanded its audience to anyone who has watched a movie lately. Now most of the time when you look at reviews it's not long film analysis from critics. Usually, the comments left are funny little takeaways from the movie. The reviews for Cocaine Bear and Top Gun: Maverick are particularly funny.

Here is a link to my profile. I don’t take it too seriously, but I love that I can finally log all the movies I’m watching. Up until this past December, for the past two years, I had been typing out every movie I had seen in my notes app just to keep track of all the movies I had seen. Now I can log the movie and then also leave a little description so I don’t forget what the movie was about. When I decided I wanted to minor in Film, I told myself I would watch more movies and I did, but Letterboxd lets me do it in an organized manner.