Letterboxd: What Is It And Why Are Movie Buffs Obsessed With It?

Letterboxd is a popular app used by film lovers. It’s a safe space that allows them to review and discover films. It’s a creative outlet for cinephiles to nerd out as much as they’d like.

Some of the best features on the app include displaying your top four favorite films and following friends and actors to judge their film taste. From Charli XCX to Ayo Edebiri, Letterboxd has become the hot new app for film lovers and celebrities alike.

How Do You Use Letterboxd?

When creating an account on the app, it helps you find your favorite movies and browse around them. Once this is done, you’re free to be as creative as you want with your profile by adding a profile picture and bio. You can follow other users on the app, like your close friends or even some actors who use the app as well.

After a profile is set up, the fun starts. You can start logging movies as you go. Once you’ve finished watching a movie, you can search it up on Letterboxd, rate it, and, if you want, add it to your “diary” by leaving a review. Users can also view other users’ reviews of movies and even see the average rating of a film from all its users.

Another fun feature on the apps is “lists.” You can create lists with different topics or themes and add movies to them. You could build a list of Rom-Coms, must-watch horror films, and everything in between. Under this section is a feature called “watchlist” which helps movie lovers keep a list of everything they want to see.

Top Four Favorites

Now that you’ve gotten the gist of Letterboxd and how to use it, it’s time to talk about its most popular feature. Letterboxd is known for its “top four favorite films.” When creating a profile, Letterboxd has you display your four favorite films of all time. This is a very important feature for Letterboxd users, giving everyone else a quick summary of what your taste in film is like.

The best part about this feature is knowing what famous directors, actors, and other people in the film industry’s top four films are. Two actresses who actively use Letterboxd are Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott. Their Letterboxd accounts are public, and a lot of users have become big fans of them, not just for their acting roles, but for their reviews.

However, not everyone has a Letterboxd account, yet Letterboxd has attended movie premieres to ask stars on the red carpet for their four favorite films. When celebrities are asked this question, they’re usually very excited to answer because of how much of a safe space it has become for movie buffs. While most actors answer, some are simply too nervous and don’t answer the question since picking four favourite films is surprisingly challenging.

Ratings and Reviews

On Letterboxd, users can rate a film as high as five stars or as low as a half star if a full one isn’t what they’re feeling. You can also favorite a film, shown by a small heart beside the poster if you don’t want to give it a numbered rating. Once you rate or favorite a film, you can decide if you want to leave a review or not.

Reviews are important on Letterboxd because you can get as creative with them as you’d like. Some users prefer to leave witty one-liners, while others leave an in-depth three-paragraph critique. The fun part about this is seeing all the reviews left on any film. Many of these reviews gain a lot of likes on Letterboxd and become viral on X because of how funny they are.

When leaving a review, you can also create “tags.” Tags are similar to bookmarks in the sense that they help you keep your reviews organized. For example, if you find yourself crying to a lot of films you could create a tag called “cried.” So now every time you log a film that had you sobbing, you can label it with the “cried” tag. This is a fun way to remind you and show others your experience with a film.

Letterboxd Journal

Letterboxd is an app created for movie lovers, after all, so it is only fitting that it has a section for articles on movie content. Much like Trill Mag, Letterboxd writes reviews on films and news involving Academy Awards, casting, and any other kind of film-related buzz.

This section is found in the app on the home page. It’s a perfect way to tie in an app that revolves around celebrating cinema and cinephiles.

Letterboxd Pro and Patron

While the app is free, Letterboxd also offers two different types of subscriptions with added benefits. “Letterboxd Pro” comes with the ability to change your username and the app icon. It also allows you to pin reviews to your profile and track films you own. The second subscription is “Letterboxd Patron.” This subscription comes with everything in “Pro” plus, the ability to change the posters in movies and being able to add a movie background to your profile.

“Patron” is probably on every movie buff’s Christmas list. Not many users are Patrons, but those who are usually have a very aesthetically pleasing profile. This is because being a Patron means you can change the movie posters that are displayed on your profile. Instead of the original poster set for a film, a Patron can choose a different, more niche one that Letterboxd offers. A Patron can also have a customizable backdrop on their profile or film reviews. This is usually a still from a movie.

Also, the label “Patron” appears next to your username, which is pretty cool.

The Love for Letterboxd

Rating and reviewing movies is a fun hobby for movie buffs. Having an outlet like Letterboxd to do so can feel liberating. Even though Letterboxd is a social media app, it’s pretty private and has no direct messaging or commenting. This creates a safe space and place for film lovers to keep their movie-watching memories.

If you’re a movie buff, chances are you already have a Letterboxd account. But if not, I suggest you create one. Feel free to give me a follow on there: @auroragax!