I first started using Letterboxd along with everyone else in the film program at my university. It felt like an insider’s community, a way to gain deeper access to the taste profiles of my peers. It offered an easy, mobile, and social way to engage with something that I love: movies. But as I continued to use the platform, seeing the average star rating and the same bell curve of ratings next to every film, the entire system began to seem like a betrayal of all the reasons I joined the platform. It was a crass reminder of the calculated and lifeless side of the film industry and the one-dimensional scales by which we measure a film’s success. This realization took all of the fun out of the discussion.
When you reduce a film to a number of stars, you transform art into a commodity. Your personal reaction to the work and the impression it has left on you is flattened into a number. We lose valuable discourse when we do this, and film stops being a dialogue between creator and audience; instead, it becomes a consumable product, like something sold on Amazon. Movies aren’t products, they’re expressions—declarations of the very things that make us human. When we treat the entire medium like that toilet brush we bought online and gave two stars to because it broke after one use, as a culture we’re losing the significance of everything that lies in between.
via @missremiashten
As much as we love to dismiss art critics as either a bitter or sycophantic species, they play a useful role. More than just helping us decide what movies are worth our time and money, they open up dialogues about art. The best critics aren’t just reviewing movies, they’re creating art about art. Their pieces digest and respond to the works with which they engage. I, for one, only read criticism about movies that I’ve already seen. I don’t want spoilers or to be told how I should think or feel about a movie before I’ve seen it, but I do want the chance to engage deeply with something that I’ve experienced. This is far more valuable to the world of art than a shorthand rating system for determining whether we thought something was "good."
Rating systems, though, are far from uncommon practice in the world of film reviewing. Legendary critics Siskel and Ebert gave their reviews on a binary scale, either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The respected British outlet The Guardian rates films on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. Review aggregates like Rotten Tomatoes synthesize large swaths of reviews into a single percentage point. While these rating systems might be useful in quantifying an audience’s reaction to a film, they’re not valuable ways to engage with the art itself. A Rotten Tomatoes score, a thumbs up, or a star rating are not reliable ways to predict whether or not you’re going to “like” a movie. Furthermore, the word “like” might not even be relevant here. I’ve been revolted by movies that I will never forget. I’ve had a pleasant time watching movies that I don’t think hold much artistic value. I’ve loved movies that I’ve later revisited and questioned, and I’ve hated movies that have grown on me with time. We run to the cinema for an array of reasons- to be comforted, challenged, provoked, inspired, swept away, educated... the list is infinite. These reactions can’t be distilled into a number. It would be unfair to the films themselves to do so.
via @letterboxd
When I watched Interstellar in theaters at fifteen years old, I thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen. I thought it was faux-pretentious, stupid, and a gross misuse of Matthew McConaughey. Then I watched some of Christopher Nolan’s other films, listened to countless dudes on podcasts and in my own life talk about how much they love the film. Ten years after that first viewing, I rewatched Nolan’s sci-fi epic, wondering if I had been wrong about it the first time. As it turns out, I still hated it, but I also kind of loved it?.. Whatever I felt, it made me cry, thinking about how Matthew McConaughey is one of the last true movie stars and how the fourth dimension really is love. All to say, I can’t sum up my feelings about Interstellar with a star rating. I'd like to discuss it with you over coffee for about three hours, and then I’d like to watch it again.
via @tripp_ppeaks
I can, of course, write a paragraph-long review about the film in Letterboxd’s text field if I so choose. But why would I attach a star rating to that? To provide a “too long, didn’t read” shortcut for those who don’t have time for the full review? We don’t need tl;dr’s on platforms like Letterboxd. That’s what Rotten Tomatoes is for. And if you’re relying on other people to tell you what you’re going to like, you might be a movie liker, but you’re not a movie lover. You might be interested in consuming a good movie, but you’re not interested in engaging with it.
I still love Letterboxd. It’s why I feel the need to critique the way we use it. I love that you can make lists, read funny reviews, and figure out who's probably dating because they both watched The Lorax last night. However, I don’t love being asked to turn all of that into a rating—a rating that will follow a film around, might help determine its success, and will either encourage or discourage others from watching it. Social media is ripping away complexity and nuance from almost every sphere of interest online and in real life. We shouldn’t let that happen to the movies.