Letterboxd

I got Letterboxd upon the suggestion of a friend a few years ago. I had never been a huge movie guy, but I figured I’d give it a shot anyways. From that point forward, watching movies became one of my favorite hobbies. Never before have I used an app that is not only enjoyable for those already interested in its subject, but that fuels and creates interest to this level as well. I remember spending hours finding every movie I’d seen and rating them, and then feeling a wonderful sense of excitement towards logging future movies, writing reviews, and creating every list I could think of. Every feature feels intuitive, and every friend I showed the app to went through the same process of building a robust profile simply for the fun of it, even without a pile of followers. This is a form of social media that is fun to use without ever feeling like you need a ton of people to see your work, and that is a sign of a great platform. Of course, Letterboxd is really starting to blow up now, and it’s been fun having more and more friends, buffs and casual viewers alike, hop on. The app’s top 250 and other official ranked lists? Amazing. The endless ways to sort movies? So good. The streamlined creative profiles? They’ll send you down rabbit holes. The reviews? A balanced discourse where you’ll find all sorts of perspectives. The pro subscription? So cheap, and seeing your detailed movie-watching stats is so gratifying. The general layout? It’s everything you’d want on a logging app like this. Overall, I must thank Letterboxd for getting me into movies and creating a space that encourages it like this. It’s hard to do it better than they have

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!

I really love the interface of the app, it makes logging films and exploring the reviews other people leave really simple and intuitive. What ruins the experience are the egregiously intrusive ads that constantly interrupt you while you use the app. I’m not stupid, I can accept that if you don’t pay for premium, you’re going to have ads. That’s fine. What is not fine is the extent to which those ads force their way past the actual content of the app. The videos that cover almost a quarter of the screen while you’re trying to browse are bad enough, but it’s the recent development of pop-up ads that cover THE ENTIRE SCREEN periodically, with no discernible reason or warning during the time I’m using the app, including WHILE I’M TRYING TO TYPE A REVIEW that really make me reconsider using this app at all. It also doesn’t help that the app has a lot of struggles not crashing at times. For example, I just logged and rated a movie and the app crashed: 1) after I logged the movie as “watched,” 2) after I “liked” the movie, and then finally 3) after I published my review. It boggles my mind that, despite all the money they must be getting from absolutely assaulting you with ads, they can’t make an app that reliably works. It doesn’t make me so annoyed that I want to pay to get rid of the ads, it just makes me more adamant that I should never ever give letterboxd any of my money. If this sounds like something that you’d hate as a user, I’d honestly say don’t download the app. It’s a really awful time.