So I Opened a Letterboxd
A.K.A. Why do we insist on reinventing the wheel when we have a perfectly good wheel?
My latest self ascription is “My tastes are so epicurean they border on indiscriminate.” And I like it because it has this air of scholarship that is immediately undercut the recognition I will undoubtedly watch anything with very little prompting.
After struggling to think what my favorite *things* were in 2023, I ended up keeping a manual list on my personal Discord server as well as keeping fairly decent notes on any newly released movie in 2024 via BlueSky mini-reviews. This was helpful. I wish I did it for all of the movies I watched.
So, the start of the 2025 made as much as sense to finally open the Letterboxd (ChimericNotion, the same online tag I’ve used since middle school), especially once I saw there was limited television support. Both my passive and active television consumption are legendary among my circles because during the pandemic, I did manage to get current with both One Piece and White People’s One Piece, Grey’s Anatomy, (which was after I finished fifteen seasons of ER but before I got invested into the totality of Dick Wolf’s One Chicago). And when there is a framework that can help you process all of this, you should… use it.
Now, while I wait for proper television support, I have enjoyed the process of backdating movies. I already managed to see five movies during the opening salvo of January, so that easy enough to backdate and then came the fun process of going through my BlueSky account. My BlueSky ending up being much more comprehensive than my manually kept list which is confirmation that Letterboxd was always going to be a good decision (although I did miss a couple smaller releases, so redundancy!).
At baseline, I managed to backdate 41 movies in 2024 (and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to backdate at least one more), and a handful of movies in the Q3/Q4 of 2023. Nothing before then, but that’s largely because I started my Bluesky in Q3 of 2023 and I have subsequently deleted my Twitter because I don’t want that data to be mined for their bots and I can’t be bothered to figure out how to view my archive at the moment. And then I managed to snag a handful of dates based on reviews I did for Black Nerd Problems.
The look back was fun for a variety of reasons. Seeing which movies I clearly was infatuated with and which movies I reviled for different reasons. Digging through the BlueSky timeline was akin to a stroll through memory lane while digging through my bylines at BNP was a straight archelogical dig that also managed to reflect I reviewed a lot of single issues comics and now I am reading *two* ongoings (Saga and The Power Fantasy).
Also fun was the back grading on the five star scale. I was meticulous with what got the coveted five stars. I was sure to establish baselines for each of the increments. I discovered that there was no zero star option otherwise that’s what I would have given Venom. I was expecting to struggle with the 1 star and the 1.5 star struggle and then remembered I voluntarily watched Atlas on Netflix in 2024 and that Megapolois was also a movie I saw. I think I’d prefer a traditional 10 point scale, but I think that’s the former slam poet in me.
I also immediately knew which movies I was going to list as my favorite.
Jurassic Park for being the most influential film of my life
Belle because it made me cry so much and I made everyone watch it
Pacific Rim because Mecha x Kaiju is timeless
Everything Everywhere All at Once for being the best multiverse story ever to do it.
Posters for Jurassic Park, Belle, Pacific Rim, and Everything Everywhere All at Once
It’s nice having an app to help probably chronicle everything and I look forward to digging through my emails to backdate as many films as I can before I have to start scouring wikis and discord channels before giving up on maintaining an accurate diary.
But still, nice having projects. Nice being able to share it with folks. I’m not a great archivist, but I do appreciate an archive for sure.