Is Letterboxd ruining movies?

I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this is no such thing. The show where we answer our dumb questions and yours by actually doing the research. Today we're talking about letterboxed and how it's changed the ways we watch movies, possibly for the worst.

The part that freaks people out is.

That, uh, maybe it's for people who are like staring at TikTok or something.

My god, everyone is so hot in this very.

True that creeps me out.

There's no no such thing, such thing, such thing.

All right, so we all love movies, that's right.

Yeah, yes, accurate, and letterbox has many great uses. But my concern is that turning movie watching into social media data logging might hinder our.

Engagement with the movies themselves.

So on this episode, I want to dig into how we use letterboxed and try to find out what, if any impact this has on our movie watching experience. Do we like movies more or less by committing to this cataloging and rating system. But first, let's back up in case you have no idea what we're talking about. Letterbox is a social media app for logging movies. It was started by a couple of red designers in New Zealand.

Thirty five set, of which we're proud members.

Still In twenty twenty three, when a majority stake was sold to a Canadian company called Tiny, Letterbox was valued at over fifty million dollars. The reputation Letterbox carries is that ski is a little bit more indie or art house versus something that's kind of more.

Broad like IMDb.

Our former colleague Graham was the inspiration for this episode because his ratings are insane insane.

They kind of lean.

He leans pretty heavily on like the five are rating versus something a little more modest.

Yes, I love movies. I love to watch them. I'm happy when I'm watching them. Sometimes, yes, they're disappointing, but thankfully, for the most part of the movies that I choose to watch usually make me very happy. And I'm sorry if that offends people, but thank you so much for having me and good luck, good luck.

Thank you Graham. Yeah, thank you Graham.

So to start off, how do you guys each use letterbox?

I have some sympathy for Graham because I also have a rating system that people think is crazy. I'm pretty much grading the movie on how well it was made, like the production quality of it, and also screenplay, apply all that stuff. But then it does mean that like a movie I didn't like that much will get a high rating because I thought that they did they had a vision.

Yeah, so you're not rating on your personal enjoyment as much as the technical side. Yeah, Like I can acknowledge that a movie was good without liking it, without having.

To like it, But that's what your rating system is based on.

Yeah, Because then the part that freaks people out is that that means some of my favorite movies end up being like two.

Star three stars.

An example one of my favorite movies ever is the second rush Hour movie Rush Hour Too.

I don't even know why the hell.

I mean, I ain't need chiny.

I think it's hilarious, it's got good action sequences, But you want me to grade the screenplay on that one's like not good, it's like so that. So I'm like, all right, as a movie, this movie's whatever. It's fine, it's a two or three star.

But so in your letterbox, you're giving your favorite movie a two, two or three stars.

In this instance, it would probably be like a three star movie, two and a half three stars. It's not a five star like bet one of the best movies ever produced.

Okay, so I have I have the opposite rating system, which is this is my letterbox. If we just rating the quality of the movie, that's when you go read

You know, in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then there's.

Stuff that is just really bad that you're like, oh my god, what is just gonna be finished? At the end of the year, I may have four or five movies at the top level that I've given fives to. Most of the movies I see are not getting fives. But I also think most of the movies that I'm seeing are just not three.

I think when I look at ratings, maybe this is because I'm a good citizen. I feel like my rating system is in service of other people. Perhaps your review, your five star review is Trap does not help me at all. But that's okay. I don't think it needs to do that. But that's what I try to do with my ratings. But I'm not a critic on.

Read my ring because if you see me give Trap five stars, you got to click in and Rew, Yeah.

Yeah, but I know.

Yeah, so what did you write for this?

My first line is, and there's a heart on this one?

Is a heart?

Do you do hearts? I don't do hearts. I don't know what they are.

Really hearts will actually be helpful for you? Yeah, I wrote this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. No notes. Then I talk about specifics from the movie that don't actually make sense. But yeah, it's very dumb.

My system is I don't put a number rating on things. I'll just heart something. There's no point in that. I keep a watch list, which helps me if I just want to throw a movie on.

That's mainly how I use it.

I don't look at other people's things so much, except for like what pops up when I open it. If I see Devin's reviewed something or I've had after I've seen something, I'm curious, like, oh, I wonder you know if my friends have seen this, or what they think or that sort of thing.

Aside from what I'm just.

Curious, like what the worst reviews of something?

Or I'm not reading other random people's reviews really, so yeah, I'll throw a heart on something if I like and then otherwise I just if I didn't love it, then there's no heart.

And that's all.

Here's a fun experiment because many of the movie we log on letterbox, the three of us have seen together.

Yeah, I'm seeing the Killer here.

If I'm effective, it's because of one simple fact.

I don't give.

What are your guys's reviews are rankings of the Killer? I think we all had. We all came out thinking pretty much the same thing, so it'd be interesting to see how the reviews vary. I'm pretty sure that that was a no heart from me because my immediate reaction was low, but certain friends had such positive reactions. And then afterwards I haven't rewatched it, but I then softened on it in my mind.

At least.

Yeah, I gave it a higher reviewed than I remember. I gave it three stars.

Okay.

One issue I had was just the way the viewing experience of seeing this movie.

You saw the para theater, horrible theater. Everyone's big ass head.

Yeah, It's like I didn't even notice was still a thing. You go to movie theater and if you have to be worried about the person sitting in front.

Because you can't see.

That's to say I gave it a higher rating because I was like, part of the reason why I was frustrated by this movie is just the way I was watching it. But I thought it was like, Okay, yeah, not probably not something I'm gonna watch again or even really think about.

Our reviews weren't that far off. You had three.

I had two and a half, and my review was that it was really well made and underscores the value of simplicity, but it didn't leave much of an emotional impression. Yeah, the first twenty minutes or so would have been an incredible short film.

Yeap, Yeah, that's fair enough.

With these things in mind, do you think it changes how you watch movies knowing you're gonna put a number or a star rating on it.

Yeah.

I think the letterbox has become such a staple in social media that like, when I go into a movie, maybe subconsciously I am thinking about what I would say in a letterbox review. I think that's been a change in the past couple of years, especially when I was watching Challengers, all the Challengers reviews, and I was like, Okay, what am I going to say when I get.

Done with this spee? It's like reacting to the hype.

Yeah, Yeah, I definitely think about it. I think I use it as a gauge for how much I'm liking the movie. Especially when I don't like a movie, I feel like I think about it more.

I'm like, this is like and like during the movie.

Yeah, I think that's kind of part of what inspired me to stop doing the Stars, because it was like, why am I thinking about this at all?

Well, it only happens in movies where yeah, that's good because otherwise you're just engrossed in the movie. But it's usually when I'm like, okay, this is gone from the two to one and a half, We're going to lose another star if it keeps going for another twenty minutes. Yeah, And especially like these last couple of bad movies I've seen, I've like actively been like, all right, what star rating are we at? And what did we just lose? Based on how bad that scene? A constant yes, or like

Yeah, even if you're thinking about it during it, do you think it helps you engage with the work knowing that you're going to do that versus Okay, you're not going to raid anything. You're not going to do anything, are you actually then just coming to terms on it on its own, because I think part of what I

Like, well, why is that five and this is three?

Even though this is great, And then I'm not actually I'm just thinking about numbers and I'm turning a piece of art into data basically instead of just like, oh, like, this was very evocative of some feeling for me as an actual thing, and it's like, why does it make me feel that way?

Xyz whatever?

That's why?

To me, it's like thinking and talking about it. That's where the review part writing can help put that into words. And even just like okay, whoever you saw the movie with talking with.

Them out of bar afterwards.

That's what I love when you can have the fun where we're just picking it apart and plot holes or whatever, and maybe my friend or someone has some idea and so I didn't think about that, but I actually agree or yeah, yeah, and so I think that that's kind of more helpful for actually like engaging than like, well that's three, you know, which is so reductive. But you can easily do that and then deduce the number afterwards.

How they feel about letterboxed.

And for me, I want to start assigning some star ratings some movies I've watched. Finally writing some reviews and seeing how I feel about it.

Welcome to the dark side, Yeah, wish me to like.

So I talked to a researcher from the Netherlands. His name is Rude Jacobs. His master's thesis from twenty twelve is titled Everybody's a Critic Influenceability of Motion Picture of Valuations from expert and consumer reviews. Of course this was a bit before Letterbox became so prominent, but his paper looks at a few of the things that we were talking about, as far as just how reviews and ratings can impact your experience.

Here's how he explains it.

So the paper was from quite a long time ago. It was my master thesis back in the day actually, and it's since been published. The paper was about trying to understand if movie reviews create a more or less interest in people to actually see those movies, and also to change whether or not people are enjoying the movies as they're seeing them. So I was trying to see if if you read a movie review beforehand and then you watch the movie, if you have a worse or

So the experiment went like this, five groups of people or assigned to read either a professional positive review, a professional negative review, a consumer positive review, or a consumer negative review. And in this case, a consumer review is the equivalent to a letterbox review. It's written by a normal person, not a professional critic or something. Or they were given no review at all. They were just given some very basic information about the film without any evaluative statements.

And we designed those reviews based on a short content analysis of reviews that we found online, both on the consumer side and on the professional critic side. So there they took elements from reviews of that movie, and they were kind of matched together in a way that fit our manipulation, so that they are identical except for the evaluation, and they're identical except for the tone professional or consumer.

So they were watching this short Spike Jones film I'm here, great movie?

Do you mean?

Recondryclusey can make it up? Says like it's kind of an issue because the movie's just good. So it kind of skews the results almost like they need to find something maybe more middle of the road.

But yeah, college staple.

So that's how they did the experiment, and these are the results they found.

So the only effect that we found was of a negative consumer review. Those were the ones where the grade went down from what we found in a control condition to I think at one point out of ten lower or something or zero point seven points out of ten lower. And that was mostly because of the emotional engagement that people had with the movie after reading the review, because if they read a negative emotional review, they distanced themselves from the movie. They did not allow themselves to be

So there's pretty clear evidence that reading a review paints what your experience what the movie is going to be if you read it beforehand.

And as you heard, he says, these negative, more emotional reviews which are going to skew towards the consumer side, So letterbox and other things are going to have more impact than the more distant, sort of straight writing style from a professional who's not going to probably try to engage you on that yeah, intense level, as like this sucks, you're wasting your time and money, Like a newspaper review probably isn't going to talk about like the money you're

You know when he's talking about there. Basically reading a negative review makes it so that you go into the movie not like already.

Not invested, right, Yeah, like standoffish exactly, that you already create a distance which rings true to me, right, Like there are movies that if you hear about ahead of time being particularly bad.

You go in with the let me see what this dumb ass movie is going to be, and like you don't give it a ants to be sucked in.

Yeah, a recent examples like I heard how people thought Megalopolis was bad, and then I went to go see it and I was like, yeah, that was bad.

It's funny because for me, I feel like it goes both ways, where in some level I hear something's trash and then I'm like, oh, it can't be that bad, almost.

The contrarian thing.

Yeah, So like Megalopolis and Joker Too are to both movies that were totally disparaged by critics and normal people. Yeah, I was like France for Coppola's a legend he can't be totally worthless.

Yeah, and you think one year of medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Amersonian mind.

And then Joker not a movie I was that interested in, but I saw and also did terribly box office wise and critically, and I was like, well, this isn't as horrible as you would think.

Maybe he did.

Mention that reading reviews afterwards can also impact your opinion, even if you don't think so. So this is about something called the third person effect.

One of the things that I see is that people who read reviews after watching a movie, they tend to think that those reviews do not change what they thought of the movie. So they feel like there other people might be affected these by reading these reviews, but not they themselves. This is called the third person effect. It's very broadly found when you're looking at advertising research, that kind of stuff, but I think it's also there a

Actually, certainly my feelings on movies have changed after reading a review or talking to people.

Oh, for sure, have you had the opposite happen?

Do you think you come out of a movie thinking you really like it and then someone's like, oh, this sucked, and then you're like, oh, yeah, okay, it wasn't actually that good.

Yeah, because I'll be like, I won't fully flip my opinion, but I'll be like, yeah, I can see how some people think that's dumb. It's also subjective, yeah, of course, but definitely it feels like your peers can influence how you feel about something.

Yeah, which is why I always write my letterbox review first before I look at other people's reviews.

Oh interesting, you want a peer review?

Yeah, I read reviews before I write mine. But like, I don't think I've ever changed my mind, Like I'll go into it knowing what I want to say, but I just want I'm curious.

We need to do run a study on Manny's reviews. So I also talked to a movie critic as I was myself planning on writing some ratings and reviews, so I talked to it Tasha Robinson. She's written and edited at a bunch of outlets. Currently, she's the entertainment editor at Polygon. She and some other critics have a great movie podcast called The Next Picture Show. I asked as far as her approach to star ratings. Here's what she had to say about that.

The rubric that I've always used and tried to get other people to use is what was this movie doing, Does it do it well? And is it worth doing? And you know, if what the movie was trying to do is sell toys and sells the toys pretty well, that's probably a two and a half star review. If all the movies trying to do is sell toys and it does it badly, then we're probably looking at.

Like a star.

If the movie makes you feel not only that you've wasted your time, but then everybody who touched it in any way is wasting their time. Then you can go lower than that, But that kind of well I added half a star for this and subtracted half a star for this. That creeps me out. That just sounds like the kind of person that walks into a restaurant and puts ten dollars and ones on the table and looks at the waitress and says, every time you make a mistake,

Tasha mentioned a similar issue to me as far as once you're reducing movies to a number grade, you kind of end up with some weird, unfair comparisons that can kind of paint you in a corner.

I certainly think a lot in terms of, well if I if I give this three stars, what are people immediately going to pull up from my past that I gave two and a half stars too and say you think that's just better of them?

There.

If somebody made me sit down in a locked room with every movie rating that I've ever made and told me to reorder the rankings until I found they were perfect, I'd probably be in there for ten years and wouldn't come out any happier than I am right now.

I have definitely had the issue where I've rated something after watching it immediately, and then a couple days later look at my letterbox and look at like the last movies that I've watched, and I'm like, this movie was definitely better than this movie. Yeah, have the same rating or house is higher. I hate to admit it, but I have changed ratings.

You've edited them, yeah, yes, wow, retroactively.

Retroactively. It's not like I go back six months later. It has to be within the same week for me. Yeah, and after that it is what it is. Yeah, I'm not like changing the older rating, I'm adjusting the new one.

I think a pro for consumer or letterbox reviews is you're not in this promotional bind, even if you, as a professional critic, don't want to be. It's like you don't want to be punished quote unquote by studios or whoever who are getting access to previews or other things. Like there's obviously like a political element to how a major website or publisher reviews things.

Yeah, but I think there is also just the weight to studio pressure aside, like there's a weight to writing something. Don't at the end of the day's it's all art, and if you're writing a review that could actively stop people from experiencing this piece of like she says, art for yourself. There's a lot of weight to that. Yeah, there are obviously movies that we all seen that are just like this is just despicable from beginning to end,

So after taking in all this research and talking to professional critic, I wanted to kind of do some reflection on the movies I've seen recently.

I work without caring what happens to either of us. So go back to the club, bear it all, and stock the kind of people that you.

Enjoy Megalopolis, I found, is probably the movie I've wrestled with the most as far as thinking about it, probably because of all the lore I know he's been working on this in different form since the eighties. I really wanted to love it, but I for a movie that's about grand ideas. I found it didn't really have many great ones to back it up with. And there's some really cool expressionistic stuff and some cool visuals, but a

Damn.

Yeah, he said a lot of it is pretty hideous to me. That's crazy.

I mean some of it was like green screen in the basement quality, Like really.

I haven't seen him, boy ad him.

He's great. I mean, the performances are great.

Everyone's doing what they're asked to do, but it just doesn't come together to me. Yeah. Yeah, And then when you add in he's been working on it for fifty years, it's like, this is this is your masterpick, you know what I mean? And like then everyone throws out, oh, it's one hundred and twenty million dollars.

It's like it doesn't.

Doesn't look great.

Look like that.

Yeah, let's hear a joker too, because that was one that a lot of people hated.

So this is for joker. Fully, I'd do my life.

I feel so alone anymore.

I'm not a big superhero guy. I thought the first Joker movie was totally fine. This one I was actually surprised, based on maybe all the bad reactions. I thought it was actually pretty thoroughly entertaining and interesting.

I heard it was boring.

A lot of it is rehashing the first movie and a core ram sort of thing. And then I think they underused Lady Gaga, who I think is a great actor obviously a great singer.

They don't do as much of the musical stuff as I.

Expected, honestly, and I wish they leaned in even further, like if you're gonna do it, do it.

Yeah.

Instead it felt like one one foot out sort of thing. And yeah, they do some bold choice as far as the arc of Joker and what the Joker means to society.

Not gonna be one I revisit.

But I mean I kind of walked out of it like, oh, that was actually pretty fun.

I think I'd give it three stars.

Wow, that's good care Okay, considering the rest of them, I mean.

Is that choice as good as Megalopolis? I don't really know if I can say that, But now I was entertained.

Interesting, and then it does end up you put a number on it that you because they're so limited as five options exactly. Yeah, you have to start thinking about whether you did think it was twice as good as Meg.

Yeaholis and I don't.

All right, let's do what I've seen. Let's do Anura. I am coming you.

You do not annoy this guy Anora Again. I was thoroughly engaged throughout. It does a great job of kind of it moves really fast in the beginning, and then it kind of traps you in one location for a long time and then flips some.

Things on you. I thought the performances were great.

There's some good actors who've never seen before and things, so that was fun. And it has that good kind of intensity. So I was kept on my toes in that way, and I liked it. And I thought it had a very strong, interesting ending that I wasn't necessarily expecting, even though looking back it's obvious some of the things that happened, but in a not in a bad way, in a to me satisfying way that said, I'm not dying to watch it.

Again or I'm not really mulling over it so much. In my head. I guess for that reason.

I'll give it a.

Three as well.

Now this is where the rating system gets interesting.

Yeah, because it's that Joker.

Too and Noura have the same rating and the Noah review system.

Four and a half.

Four and a half.

Yeah, I know, it's pretty good. Yeah, it was really good.

I think to me, if I think if I had rated it right when I walked out, it would have been higher. And I think just in the you know, two weeks, I'm just not that drawn back to it now. If I watched it again, I don't know if I would gain so much more necessarily, Which doesn't mean it's bad even It's just it's a movie.

Which is fine most movies are.

Yeah. So I mean, after doing all this and writing these reviews and doing the ratings, I still feel like I end up painting myself into a corner of making strange comparisons. But at the same time, it's kind of like who cares? Is kind of my feeling. It's it's it is kind of objectively fun to just say, like, fuck it, that's a one point five, and it does garner a much more intense reaction than kind of thoughtfully talking.

Through my feelings on a movie.

So for that reason, I am maybe leaning towards opening it up and let a few reviews and ratings spray.

Wow.

Do I think it's, you know, for the better of my movie going? Probably not, but it's fine. And I think, you know, you kind of need to let things go sometimes.

And just let it rock.

Yeah, just let it right.

And the other thing is like, I'm glad to hear this because there is a very tiny community of us who have been wanting to see reviews like we get them in real life if we want them to see them on the app more often. So I don't know, I'm happy to hear this.

I won't be starving you all anymore. So there's that. And then we had a few reviews in this.

If you want to hear a few more reviews, we talk about the Substance and Manny's controversial Challengers review and Gladiator two. We're gonna throw those up on our substack. You already know, but go to www dot No Such Thing dot show to subscribe and you can check that out. No Such Thing as produced by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devin Joseph. The theme song is by Manny and this song is by nine Inch Nails. Thank you to our guests Rude Jacobs and Tasha Robinson.