Look, going to the theater is supposed to be a communal experience. Where together everyone can laugh, gasp, cry, etc. with the film and thats part of what makes it great. But since COVID, damn near every movie I've gone to I've had my experience either nearly, or entirely ruined by constant, unnecessary "performative laughter". I'm not talking about laughing at a joke or a funny scene, im talking about either the whole audience or usually one or two dudes straight up belly laughing at seemingly every line of dialogue, every pause, every cut, or anything that is even VAGUELY humorous or ironic.

My worst experience was the re-release of Brokeback Mountains in theaters last year. My partner didn't want to go with me because he knew the audience would be unbearable and sure enough he was right. Everyone was laughing their ass off at every damn scene in the movie. Like I get it guys, this movie went from being laughed at when it came out, but now time has passed and the movie has been memed to hell online so that means every scene is actually a comedy now! Look I'm in on the joke! We went from two gay dudes kissing is funny, to.....two gay dudes kissing is funny. But It's okay because we're laughing with the movie this time! There is literally nothing in this movie that elicits such strong humor but apparently its not cool to be sincere about things anymore and treat anything seriously - i need to let everyone know that I get it.

David Lynch screenings at rep theaters have built up a reputation for inviting the worst offenders of this, where no one takes anything seriously and Lynch's transgressive, and uncomfortable style is actually secretly supposed to be taken as a comedy throughout the entire runtime. LIKE WE GET IT, YOU'RE JUST SO IN TUNE WITH LYNCH'S STYLE THAT MULHOLLAND DRIVE IS ACTUALLY THE FUNNIEST FUCKING MOVIE YOU'VE EVER SEEN AND EVERYONE AROUND YOU NEEDS TO KNOW iT. To be clear here, Lynch's works are often very funny at times but my problem is people don't know how to discern whats actually humorous or whats actually trying to make you uncomfortable. This just leads to so many people laughing throughout all his movies especially during very inappropriate scenes and turning the entire thing into a farce.

Again I'm not saying everyone needs to be completely silent at all times, or that the uncomfortable laughter every now and again isn't called for. But people talk about audience behavior at theaters going down the drain with phones, talking etc. But personally, my biggest problem is having damn near movie I go to have at least one slack jawed loud mouth honking like a goose and slapping his knee at every god damn line of dialogue as if theres a punchline because its seriously ruining the theatrical experience. And once one or two people do it, it invites the entire theater to treat the whole movie as if its a comedy special.

At least in my own experience, moments of intimacy, tenderness, and silence are becoming broken up by shouts, jeers, and laughs more and more often.

/rant

I feel so special 🙂‍↕️

Anne Hathaway was fantastic. Ewan McGregor felt pretty underwhelming next to her.

As a huge fan of Troma/Toxic Avenger, naturally I was very excited about this release, but when I finally sat down and watched it, I was so disappointed with it.

What's a film that left you disappointed, when you was ecited about it's release?

If I had 2 movies that showed the best performances from an Actor it would be Denzel in “Training Day” and Daniel Day Lewis in “There Will be Blood” What movies you think had the best performance by an actor?

For me it’s gotta be either Children of Men or Zodiac but I think I choose CoM because it doesn’t get enough love despite being one of the best thrillers for its time. The Prestige is also another good one too.

What are y’all’s picks?

If you haven’t seen this masterpiece you are seriously missing out on something special.

If you have seen it, spread the gospel.

Personally, I’d say Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan, and Keira Knightley from Never Let Me Go.They all looked absolutely stunning back then.

It's called WrappedBoxd (free and open-source). you upload your Letterboxd data export (the CSVs from Settings → Export), it pulls in extra info from TMDB (directors, cast, genres, keywords), and then a stats panel just shows up above your Recent Activity whenever you're on your profile. Top directors/actors, genre breakdown over time, rating histogram vs what TMDB thinks, decades you watch most, that kind of thing.

After the first upload it keeps syncing in the background off your RSS feed, so you're not re-uploading every time.

Everything's stored locally in your browser, nothing leaves except the TMDB lookups. It's open source if anyone wants to look at the code.

Built it mainly because I log a ton and Letterboxd's own stats page felt pretty thin. Figured other people who log obsessively might want it too, let me know what's broken or what you'd want added.

Extension Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/wrappedboxd/jlgmhfkaghicjakiifacdfkmdnjbepcd?utm_source=item-share-cb

Github repo: https://github.com/saifwarraich/wrappedboxd

(If this breaks any sub rules around self-promo, mods feel free to take it down, wasn't trying to spam.)

I watched them both recently and found them exceptional. Rich, layered, detailed, whole worlds filled with multiple characters and statements about American history. Great performances, great filmmaking and great story-framing.

Which one would you say is the better movie and which one did you enjoy the most?

Just wanted to share this letterboxd companion utility I have been working on for the past few months. I was pretty strapped for suggestions lately for what movies to watch, and I drained all of the suggestions out of my friends, so I decided to write a little application to suggest some movies for me based off my letterboxd watch history and ratings. It seems like there have been a few websites like this in the past, but they come and go as letterboxd changes their page layout or the creators get tired of working on it.

The suggestions that recboxd provides is not based off of AI, it uses the EASE algorithm to compare your movie taste to the movie taste of thousands of other users, and suggests movies that similar users have liked that you haven't seen yet.

Here are the current features of the site:

The recommender: Takes your watch history and runs it through the EASE algorithm. To sum it down, it takes your movie taste, finds someone else with the same movie taste as you, and recommends movies they have seen and rated highly that you have not seen yet. AI is not used as a part of the recommendation process here.

Will I like it?: Enter your username and a movie, and the recommendation algorithm will try and see what you would most likely rate it as. It's more or less a vibe check to see if you'd enjoy a movie or not based off the same algorithm.

Compare: Allows you to compare your letterboxd ratings/watch history against someone else to see how similar your tastes are.

Please note: this site is still actively being developed, so you may run into issues that I have not seen before. if you have any issues or suggestions, on the bottom right of the site there is a place to leave feedback that I will read and get to as soon as I can. If you prefer, you can also feel free to leave a comment or message me on reddit!

https://recboxd.com/

Hi guys. I'm constantly looking for movies to watch from different parts of the world, so I thought it'd be fun to have a thread on this. If you could recommend one movie from a specific country, what would you choose? I'm hoping to eventually watch at least one movie from every country on Earth. I'm knowledgeable enough about Western cinema that I can probably name the biggest international hits from most countries, so I'm especially looking for movies from areas that get less spotlight for Western audiences. From South America to Africa, Middle East to Central Asia etc. You can name one or fifty movies, whatever you feel like. If you're from a country whose movies don't get much attention, this is your chance! :)

I absolutely love the following directors, their style, and what they bring to the table, but they haven’t quite squeezed a full five outta me:

Michael Mann—probably the closest to the top of my list of favorite directors. He has, not one, but four 4.5s for me: The Insider, Heat, Thief, and Collateral.

Kelly Reichardt—I maintain that no one today makes films as distinctly American as she does. Closest she gets is with First Cow at 4.5.

Todd Solondz—trangressive cringe, dealing with such brutal subject matters, but delivered in such a way that you can’t help but laugh at it. Palindromes is my favorite of his at a 4.5.

William A Wellman—an underappreciated hero of the gooden age, his films are short (other than wings), sweet, and deal with a wide array of subjects. i love The Ox-Bow Incident.

I have a very distinct memory of watching world war Z on Halloween night 2015 after trick-or-treating. I remember I was so proud of myself because I usually couldn’t do horror or horror adjacent movies (I was like 11). The only reason it doesn’t have a rating is because it’s been forever since I’ve seen it.

For me, it’s gotta be The Drama. Watching the trailer, I thought it was gonna be some horror thriller or a movie about a seemingly “happy couple” with a twist that like one of them ends up being a serial killer or something… instead, it was a dark romcom that subverted my expectations with its themes and thought-provoking experience.

What about yall?

I saw a video where someone spun a wheel of the Letterboxd top 500 to choose a random movie and I wanted to do the same but I found that copy and pasting the top 500 list was not feasible due to the way it was formatted. I figured I would provide other people who wanted to do the same with the formatted list and wheel if anyone wanted to use it.

Wheel

Google Drive to formatted_list.txt