Is Letterboxd ruining movies? 🎞️🎬🍿

A star system is born.

Hi again,

This is Noah. I love watching movies. I love talking about them, reading about them, even just knowing they exist and that I’ll never even have the time to see all of the movies that I want to. In many ways, Letterboxd has been a great tool for me. I keep a long watchlist, and frequently use its shuffle feature to pick out what to watch.

But there’s a problem: star ratings confound me. The idea of connecting with a movie (or not) only to throw some arbitrary number on there just doesn’t feel right. If I give Movie X a 4, how can I justify giving Movie Y a 2? Sometimes they just don’t add up.

So for this week’s episode, we set out to learn just how much ratings and reviews can impact our feelings on a movie.

How I feel when forced to rate a movie.

(Apple, Spotify, Acast, YouTube, Pocket Casts)

I spoke to Dr. Ruud Jacobs from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, who walked me through his master’s thesis on the power of expert and consumer movie reviews.

And then I chatted with movie critic and Polygon entertainment editor Tasha Robinson to hear her approach to ratings and reviews. Check out her movie podcast The Next Picture Show.

Since we went long on some movie discussions, we broke a few bonus reviews out as a little bonus episode where we talk about Challengers, The Substance, and Gladiator II. You can check that out here:

You can find us each on Letterboxd: Manny, Noah, Devan.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thanks for checking us out, and please leave a positive review and rating wherever you listen to podcasts. Only 5 stars applicable here! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Let us know your rating criteria in the comments below, and as always, feel free to reach us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com