Letterboxd’s most passionate reviewers change cinema etiquette: ‘I was excited to pull out my phone’ | film

I Turn off my phone completely when I go to the movies. Not just in silent mode, but all the way. I say this not because I think I’m better than you, or that by doing so, the ghost of Billy Wilder will come back to shake my hand. I consider it one of life’s little luxuries: for at least an hour and 45 minutes, I’m completely inaccessible. I keep my phone off throughout the credits too. It feels decadent to remain in place while my fellow moviegoers slowly filter through, illuminated only by the rolling text.

Recently, Letterboxd appeared.

More than 26 million people use Letterboxd, a movie cataloging app. Like the Criterion Collection or A24, it has become industry shorthand for a certain type of tastemaker who touts new releases and delights in rediscovering old classics. Users rate and review films, and the most entertaining or illuminating critiques rise to the top of the page, motivating cinephiles to put in some effort.

On my last trip to the cinema, the credits had barely rolled before the man in front of me began writing his review. A few seats away, a couple sat, heads down, jotting down their thoughts.

The late film director David Lynch had a piece of advice: Write down every great idea the exact moment it comes. If you don’t, it may slip away from you, and as he puts it: “If you forget a good idea, you’ll want to kill yourself.” Lynch was speaking to aspiring filmmakers, but the same spirit applies to Letterboxd.

Josh Stern, a 20-year-old student in New York, always writes his reviews from his seat at the movies.

“If I don’t come up with my ideas quickly once the film is finished, my reviews will be less cohesive and clear,” he said. “It takes a while. I’m very slow, and my girlfriend doesn’t like it.”

Stern goes to the movies often — 182 times last year — and is on a first-name basis with theater employees, who sometimes have to fire him so they can start cleaning the aisles. He believes credits are fair: “When you pay for a movie ticket, the credits become part of the movie.”

Letterboxd’s most ardent supporters credit the app with reviving excitement around the faltering film industry, where production has fallen and unemployment has risen. (Letterboxd also boasts the type of demographic that brands look to – the highest group of users are 18-24 year olds, followed by 25 to 35 year olds.)

Noise begets noise. Eagerly anticipated films see a flurry of activity on Letterboxd immediately after their premieres. The most favorable review of Emerald Fennell’s divisive novel Wuthering Heights — “Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that ever happened to her” — received more than 50,000 double-takes. The Moment, Charli xcx’s fictionalized account of Summer Pratt, spawned this comparison with the concert film of tabloid enemy Taylor Swift: “The Tour for the Ages documentary was found dead.”

“It’s kind of addictive,” said Ben Glidden, a 33-year-old New Yorker who works in women’s sports marketing. He also likes to write reviews during the credits. “Thinking about what you’ve just seen, right after you’ve seen it, helps with the artistic experience. It helps you understand the main messages of the film. If it makes you feel like you’re being embraced in a warm hug, that’s not necessarily something you remember five hours later.”

Glidden feels compelled to review a movie if it’s very good — or very bad. Case in point: He recently sat in Chris Pratt’s sci-fi vehicle Mercy. “I was so insulted by how terribly bad it was that I was excited to pull out my phone and give it a half-star review,” he said. (Glidden is a tougher critic than The Guardian film critic Pete Bradshaw, who gave the film three stars, calling it “witty, watchable stuff.”)

Dakota Chester, a 28-year-old New Yorker who works in social media, saw the Oscar-nominated animated fantasy film Arco at an Upper West Side theater and stopped by to write a review (“It got five stars”). He’s recorded even worse behavior: people taking out their phones to watch the movie they’re currently watching on Letterbox. “This gets on my nerves,” he said.

One of the most enduring urban legends about film recounts a showing of the Lumière brothers’ 1896 silent short film that showed a train approaching the station. Cinema was in its infancy, and according to this false rumour, a shot of a locomotive heading straight towards the camera shocked the audience so much that people ran away screaming.

One hundred and thirty years later, cinematic etiquette is still just as bad. No one knows how to behave in public anymore, especially when the lights go out: Viewers take screenshots, bring smelly food, and, as was the case during the Barbenheimer summer, sometimes engage in all-out brawls.

Some took to social media to discuss the appropriateness of Letterboxding during the credits. When a TikTok user posted about the “small, quiet moment” she wrote a review at an AMC theater after the credits rolled, movie theater employees chimed in. “Please do this in your car, as soon as the credits stop rolling we have to clean up there or we will be way behind on our scheduled cleanups,” one person wrote. Another added: “Take this to the hallway.”

“Anecdotally, we’ve heard from members who struck up conversations after noticing someone nearby was on the app, which sometimes led to continued friendships or just a great conversation about what they just watched,” a Letterboxd representative wrote in a statement. “This impulse to record your thoughts while they’re fresh is something we understand — it’s part of many people’s rituals… and phones being unplugged during the actual movie is clearly still a cardinal sin — we’re not monsters.”

Other Letterboxd users like to let the film soak before posting. Irene Vasques is a 22-year-old film student who joined Letterboxd in 2018 and credits the app for helping her take films more seriously.

“I’ve seen it become more popular,” she said. “It’s a movie simulator for people, and everyone seems to be competing to watch as many movies as possible.” “I get frustrated with all the people who immediately pull out their phones to rate movies, because I really appreciate sitting down with a movie and letting it sink into my mind. I value that experience.”

Professional critics used to be arbiters of taste, but in a fractured media ecosystem, post-Gene Siskel or Pauline Kael, Letterboxd reviews will probably do more to get young people talking to each other about movies than any written article in the New York Times does. Rafael Martinez, 43, who manages and programs a movie theater in Chicago that caters to a “very hardcore” art-house audience, is comforted by the app’s live reviewers. “Within 20 minutes of the movie ending, we had a few ads on Letterboxd for the movie,” he said. “It helps attract people to the theater and gauges the community’s reaction to what we’re showing.”

In the 2000s, Marvel films conditioned millennials to linger for post-credit scenes that provided breadcrumbs or revealed plot for future films in the universe. Martinez found it even more annoying than the movie fans who stayed to jot down their thoughts. “People weren’t doing anything, they were just waiting,” he said. “Now, people are spending their time and interacting, and it’s more about feeling alive, rather than just consuming.”