What makes a 'perfect' Letterboxd top four?
Can personal favourites ever be pretentious or basic?
As an active member of both book and film spaces online, predominantly TikTok, I am familiar with the debates of anti-intellectualism and disingenuous online personas. Although these discussions have floated around ‘BookTok’ communities for a while, online film spaces have begun to adopt them as their new way to critique the way others watch and review movies.
Letterboxd has cornered the film review market with its easy to use interface, infamous one line reviews, and great community features that allow users to see what their friends are watching and loving. I myself am an avid Letterboxd supporter, I pay for Patron and do check it more than I would like to admit. The success of Letterboxd however has given rise to similar apps that track other forms of media; Serializd for TV shows, Musicboard for albums, StoryGraph for books, and an almost accumulation of them all, Shelf. Although none of these apps have attracted as large of a cult following as Letterboxd, they all perpetuate the same issue. Gen-Z cannot consume any form of art without tracking it for our followers to see.
Many people have noted the decline in hobbies since the pandemic that don’t revolve around watching, reading, or listening to some time of ‘media’ so it makes sense that we have gravitated towards these apps that allow us to feel productive and accomplished. The experience of learning from, or enjoying, the film or book isn’t the hobby anymore, it’s the satisfaction of pressing ‘finished’ on Goodreads or Letterboxd. It’s the completion of a list or a goal set by yourself at the beginning of the year. It’s the careful selection of the four films that you think best encapsulate the ‘aesthetic’ you want to fit into online.
Letterboxd has become synonymous with its ‘top four’ feature which allows users to display their top films on their profile as a first impression to other users. Not only has this concept been mirrored on some of the other aforementioned apps, but it has also become Letterboxd’s most well-known interview technique when at award shows and film premieres. Videos featuring actors’ and directors’ favourite films have been watched over 10 million times on Letterboxd’s TikTok and have become such an integral part of red carpets that stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Jesse Eisenberg, and Scarlett Johansson have mentioned how they even prepared their answers in advance just in case they were ever asked.
The idea is simple yet fun, it allows people in the film industry to share the art that has inspired their work and breaks down a barrier between stars and fans. It feels personal yet doesn’t cross any boundaries. It shouldn’t cause debate, after all it’s just people talking about the films they love, right?
Perhaps the most controversial four favourites videos is with the cast of Poor Things (2023), featuring stars Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Kathryn Hunter, and director Yorgos Lanthimos. The top comment has over 100k likes(!!!) and reads, ‘the way i’ve never seen a single movie anyone listed’. This comment isn’t necessarily a criticism of the films chosen by those mentioned but does summarise the issue many had with the video - it wasn’t catered to them. Although widely beloved and watched films are mentioned (Apocalypse Now, The Favourite, O Brother, Where Art Thou), the majority are lesser known, non-American films.
The most common word used in the comments of this video is ‘pretentious’. The idea that Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos are lying about their favourite films to appear ‘fancy’ or ‘sophisticated’ by mentioning films that aren’t modern blockbusters is, quite frankly, absurd. I find it interesting that instead of people using this video as a resource to find new films and explore world cinema, the overwhelming reaction was offence and ignorance. To reject the opportunity to hear from greats of their craft, people who work in this very industry, and instead believe they must be hiding their ‘real favourites’ shows just how far people will go to avoid education.
However, the video that really caught my eye recently was that of the Brooklyn Nets. I’ll be honest here and admit I have no clue why the basketball team was interviewed by Letterboxd but I do know that this video was received with much more positivity than the usual actor and director ones. The films mentioned most by the players were The Dark Knight trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Interstellar, and Wolf of Wall Street, all highly regarded yet popular movies. The comments are filled with appreciation for individual picks and excitement that they share favourites but it was one reply on Twitter that really took me by surprise.
Richard Martin, video editor for Letterboxd, quoted the post saying that it was his favourite video to edit as ‘there’s not an ounce of pretension, no one is trying to impress anyone with their picks’. Now……I can understand the joy from commenters that people are showing love towards their favourite films and franchises in these videos but the audacity for a member of staff to imply that actors in previous videos are being disingenuous just further perpetuates the anti-intellectualist approach towards insult over education.
Of course, like with all of these videos, there is always an aspect of performance. There is an inherently performative nature in picking which films you want others to know that you like, whether you’re Ariana Grande at a Wicked premiere or a Letterboxd user with 2 followers. Curating an online image is a part of life for many of Gen-Z and Millenials who have had social media accounts for the past decade. But what is the perfect balance?
Millie Bobby-Brown made headlines last year for admitting she doesn’t watch films due to her attention span and her inability to ‘sit and look at the screen for that long’, and whilst I do think Millie came off rather dismissive of her own industry in the interview, if she had said she loved films and listed favourites similar to Emma Stone, she also would have been judged. Additionally, a group of film students went viral earlier this year for sharing their favourite films as they were seen as ‘too popular’ despite mentioning films by highly respected directors, films not in the English language, and films from as far back as the 1930s - all of which are commonly referenced when others refer to what makes a choice ‘pretentious’.
A personal top four favourites should be just that, personal. Whether you switch it up every month depending on what you’ve recently seen, or if you haven’t changed it since you downloaded the app. Whether you want to show off a wide variety of the films you love, or stick exclusively to one genre. Whether all the films are recent releases, or are all foreign language, or are the top four films with the most fans.
A perfect top four is one that is genuine to you, one without judgement, but with room to grow, learn, and expand your horizons.
One of the things about Letterboxd that jumps out at me is the bringing together of people who passively enjoy film (me), and people who actively study them. There are these two types of people, but the app makes the passive enjoyers feel like they are film students because they can now be a film critic by clicking a few buttons and writing a one-liner. So, especially in this anti-intellectual age, maybe it's a shock to those people that others actually take the time to engage more deeply with films, and enjoy genres outside of 'best picture nominees'?
I'm no film critic, but this sort of attitude towards studying for pleasure is definitely the same as is popping up pretty much everywhere. I'm also not quite sure why it is seen as pretentious to attempt to actively engage with media that you consume, but I suspect it is something to do with the fact that learning about the arts rarely leads you to a girl-boss career. And all you should want to do is hustle, obviously. :)
Anyway my top four are Life of Brian, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Flushed Away, and Silence of the Lambs. Think I nailed it.