It’s the time of year we’ve all been waiting for… not Christmas, no, the release of Spotify Wrapped! Time for our music-listening stats, trends and oddities to be revealed to us in pleasing graphics and gratifying titles. But forget about being in Taylor Swift’s top 0.5% of listeners or learning that May was your goblincore twinky skateboarding pink pilates coastal grandmother era – have you ever wondered which director or actor you’ve spent the most time with, what day of the week is your go-to for movie nights, and just how many hours you’ve put into films this year? If so, then it may be time to download a little app that has exploded onto the pop culture scene in the last few years: Letterboxd.

(And in case you were wondering, yes, those Spotify genre names were taken from the actual Wrapped results of myself and some peers.)

I’ve been using Letterboxd since 2021, and have used it to record 426 viewings of over 300 films. Safe to say, it’s my favourite media diary app out there; while the basic premise can be summarised as a GoodReads for films, I find it so much more dynamic and fun than any other media tracking apps I’ve tried over the years.

Your personal Letterboxd profile has your standard profile picture and bio, and then a section to display your four favourite titles (big decision, I know, which is why I compensate by regularly changing my four so nothing gets left out) as well as your four most recent watches. The diary section records everything you watch, including the date, your star rating, whether it was a rewatch, and your recorded review. There is also a variety of stats, such as how many films you’ve watched in total, how many were this year, how many reviews you’ve written and so on. As with most apps of this nature, it also has a social element where you can follow your friends and see their recent watches on your homepage, as well as generally popular titles this week.

The review feature is my personal Letterboxd hero, because it feels much more inviting and laid back than other platforms. I could never get into writing GoodReads reviews because I felt like I had to have something substantial to say. But Letterboxd? My recent review of Alien simply reads ‘ellen ripley be my wife.’ And that’s the fun of it! There’s no pressure to be an academic, or even to have coherent opinions; reading the silly reviews of other Letterboxd users is my favourite thing to do after finishing a movie. Personal favourites I’ve dug out from the depths of my ‘Liked Reviews’ section include reviews of American Psycho: ‘gotta respect a man with a hobby’, and 1917: ‘his fitbit numbers would’ve been through the roof’.

Now onto Letterboxd Wrapped, or rather, Letterboxd’s Year in Review. Letterboxd isn’t the only service that took to providing a yearly wrap-up inspired by Spotify’s success, and the Year in Review was perhaps the highlight of my Wrapped period last year. With a cute layout incorporating the app’s signature orange, green and blue circles, it held the app’s usual stats such as how many films watched or logged that year, as well as deeper dives. I discovered that I spent 183 hours watching films in 2023, my most watched director was Ridley Scott and my top actor was Luca Marinelli. I discovered which films I’d rated highest (Nimona and Barbie among them), which week of the year I watched the most films in, and which day I watched films on most often, which turned out to be Friday. I learnt that I started the year with The Menu and finished it with a cinema trip to see new romcom Anyone But You. Last, but not least, is the most watched theme category, which follows the tradition of Spotify’s oddly specific (and, dare I say, kind of made up?) genre assignment. My most watched theme of 2023 was apparently ‘Powerful poetic and passionate drama’ – whatever that means.

I’ve found Letterboxd an awesome site that puts the fun of community back into watching movies, especially in a post-Covid world that isn’t quite so oriented around theatrical releases. Enjoying movies feels more solitary than it has in the past, so connecting with people through silly reviews and keeping up with your friends’ movie-going habits is, to me, a wonderful thing.

Letterboxd’s Year in Review 2023 released in the first week of January 2024, so there’s still time to get in those last minute watches ahead of the 2024 Review! I hope the fun of Spotify Wrapped can last a little longer for any cinephiles out there as we move into a new year.

Image by Focal Foto on Flickr