The rise of Letterboxd, and my growing film collection

(This is part of an assignment for my university course.)

For New Years Eve last year, I went and visited some old friends in Kingston. We went out for drinks and food, and then went back to their flat, drank even more (as is tradition!) and watched films until we passed out.

It might not be the traditional 'wild party' that many people tend to go for on a new years, but I had a great laugh regardless.

Sitting in my friend's living room, I was fascinated by the shelves filled with various DVDs, blu-rays and box sets. It was like walking through a museum, my eyes scanning through each title enthusiastically. They are possibly the biggest film fan I know, and I'd guess that they'd probably been accumulating their collection since they were very young.

From DVDs...

...to 4K blu rays, and vintage TV box sets

It was amazing. Feeling strangely inspired by their stash, I then decided that one of my new years resolutions was to watch more films. I do enjoy watching films, but for whatever reason the amount of time I dedicate to watching them is quite small. 

I'd also somewhat disregarded physical copies of films, and stuck only to streaming services when I was in the mood for a film. Of course, the catalogs of films on the most popular services are broad, but they don't cover everything. 

My original, slightly optimistic target was to watch a film every day. I did keep this up for just over 2 weeks, before work got in the way and I missed a few days. However, my total for this year (as of writing) is 51, which averages out to a film every 2 days, which I'm very happy with.

My delve into watching more films has also introduced me to Letterboxd. 

Letterboxd is essentially a social media where users can log and track the films they've watched, as well as adding a star rating and text review for each entry. 

There's also some very valuable features, searching for a specific actor or director and browsing their filmography to discover a new favourite, or keeping a watchlist of films, with the option to get notified whenever they are available on a particular streaming service, or a link to purchase the film on a selection of services.

It's even attracted some famous faces, with a few publicly advertising their pages for people to follow and keep up with their watch history.

Letterboxd has become incredibly popular, particularly this year, thanks to their YouTube series 'Four Favourites', an interview series where celebs name their four favourite films.  This parallels the app feature, in which you can list your own four favourites on your profile page, alongside the last four films you watched. 

By limiting it to four, it means you can really be subjective in the films you want to shout out and gives people a good scope of the kinds of films you enjoy the most.

To me, I love the simplicity of the app and it's close knit community of users, and it's become a really good way for me to keep track of what films I've watched and what I thought of them, as well as seeing what my friends have been watching as well. 

Crucially, it puts the films first and doesn't try to hook the user in with doomscrolling feeds or needless features, and reviews are somewhat laid-back and less critical or detailed than on other sites like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes, with users on Letterboxd often providing one or two light-hearted sentences explaining their thoughts.

So far this year I've been slowly starting to build up a DVD shelf, collecting a mix of my all time favourites as well as some films I've been wanting to watch for a while. It's been great to revisit some that I hadn't watched in years, and it feels great to own them as a physical item I can pick up and rewatch whenever I want.

Mostly, I've been able to find most of my current collection from charity shops or second hand, while others have been bought new. 

I organise them by colour just to keep things interesting

My overall goal for this year is 200 films watched, and I'm sure that come the end of this year, I might have a collection that rivals that of my friends!