Allow us to wish you a happy Star Wars Day if you’re in an applicable timezone. Here’s the second edition of our new-look newsletter — looks like we’re getting the hang of this. Unlike Ang Lee, we haven’t quite figured out yet how to deliver it at 120fps, but if you were to put on your non-recyclable 3D glasses, that might do a passable job of immersing you in our world of cinematic newsiness for a bit. See you in the Cantina.

Cheers,
The Letterboxd crew

FilmFestBuzz at Tribeca

Maggie

Gemma was again on the ground at the Tribeca Film Festival and is buzzing about Schwarzenegger in zombie family drama Maggie (not the film so much as his understated performance), and The Wolfpack documentary. The latter is one of those unbelievable true stories in which six brothers have been kept in a small Lower East Side apartment by their father for their entire lives. To amuse themselves, they recreated epic films like The Dark Knight Rises and JFK, typing out entire scripts and creating costumes from cereal boxes.

We caught up with our pal Adam from Film Pulse, who reviewed a truck-load of TFF films. Adam’s hot tip: he keeps a keen eye on Letterboxd in order to recruit new writers for his site.

TFF trend-spotting #1: The anti-binge-watching movement is here. We heard it more than once at TFF: binge-watching is over, bring back serial viewing. A theme emerged around the damage that full-season Netflix-style dumps of new shows can wreak for viewers’ storytelling experiences. Various charges we heard were that binge-watching isolates viewers from their communities, lowers anticipation, reduces conversation and doesn’t allow time to brood on an unfolding plot. (Maybe that’s why the Serial radio series was such a hit.) Ah, but what do we care? That’s television. We’re all about film, and…

TFF trend-spotting #2: …Cinema is back! Again! Tasked with discussing the possibilities of storytelling in an age of VR tools like Oculus, a panel on immersive entertainment concluded that cinema is still the “number-one immersive experience”. It’s the only time that we really turn our phones off and pay attention.

The Insider

Behind the scenes at HQ

Work continues on our iOS app, but we’re a little way from inviting beta testers. We’ll have more on that when the time comes. Here are a couple of updates that may be of interest: in your Settings there’s now an option to hide your profile from the People section, for those members less comfortable in the limelight. From this week, Pro members who are opted into receiving email from us will start receiving a customized weekly “Rushes” email summarizing the week’s activity from those you follow. We’re also very close to shipping a retina poster update for the whole site, which will deliver sharper poster images on high-definition screens. The rest of our interface (excluding film backdrops) is already retina-ready.

Regarding Facebook connectivity: we’re waiting on Facebook to approve some new code following a required change to the API version we use to talk to that platform. Once they’re happy with the way we request permissions on your account, Facebook auto-publishing will be back in action. Our sincere apologies for the interruption to this feature.

Opening Credits

In cinemas over the past month
Avengers: Age of Ultron

Superheroes are super awesome! James Spader voices the eponymous villain in Marvel’s latest extravaganza Avengers: Age of Ultron. Hollie Horror has done the important work for the rest of us, ranking Spader’s films on a hotness scale. And Diego Crespo has bravely ranked superhero movies (starting from Blade) from best to worst. (If you prefer to see how we rank these same films as a community, here you go.) Our crew member Ryan called Ultron “the Audioslave of comic book movies”. What did you think?

The Water Diviner

Russell Crowe’s directorial debut takes him from the Australian Outback to the Turkish coast in this WWI tear-jerker The Water Diviner (shot by the late Andrew Lesnie). “More watchable than technically proficient, with the locales, surprising genre-blend and generous stature of the ensemble bringing the most delight” says Ruth.

The Boy Next Door

The Boy Next Door: “It’s the 90s erotic thriller I’ve been missing in my life. It has sex, cheesy dialogue, JLo. Everything you need.” — StevenFisher22

Slow West

Slow West: “The ending. It’s [expletive] bonkers in all the best ways. It’s one of the most gratifying, both visually and emotionally, shootouts I’ve ever seen rendered on screen. Goddamn brilliant.” —Kev.

In what will be the first of many filmmaker contributions to Letterboxd, John Maclean, writer-director of Slow West, kindly indulged us with this list of westerns that he referenced for his debut feature. Keep an eye on our blog for an in-depth interview with John later this month.

Unfriended

Unfriended: “After years of seeing movies where characters search the Web with ‘Boogle’ or use computers in totally unrealistic ways, it’s deeply gratifying to see a movie that actually features Gmail and Spotify, and grasps how people use them in real life.” —JimmyGeurts. (That made us Boogle “internet films” but there was no need — there’s already a list.)

I’ll Be Back

Sequels, remakes and reboots
Mad Max: Fury Road

How freaking excited are we about George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road? “As of right now everything else in life is secondary to staying alive until it is released in May.” —Kyle Poling. “I haven’t seen the movie, but I watched the trailer 105 times, if that counts.” —The Gaming King.

Zoolander

Zoolander 2 is in production with Mr Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux, on writing duties. Revisit the original blue steel. And then ponder this: nobody has made a Billy Zane list yet. What?

Star Wars

One star vs five stars, fight!
It Follows

It Follows

★ “Yet another overhyped, overrated horror slop that I’m so sick and tired of hearing and reading about.” —Steven Millan

★★★★★ “Visionary in its storytelling, unique in its concept, insanely confident, and completely astonishing from the first frame to the last.” —SilentDawn

The Long Goodbye

In memory of our cinematic heroes
Andrew Lesnie

Farewell Andrew Lesnie, the Oscar-winning DP for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, the Babe films, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I Am Legend among many. A heart attack took him at only 59 years of age, and Peter Jackson paid him a fitting tribute.

Richard Corliss

And goodbye to longtime Time magazine film reviewer Richard Corliss who died on April 23. He was represented by list after list on Letterboxd, including: 10 Greatest Movies of The Millennium and Top Ten Films of 1981. Corliss also championed Hong Kong cinema.

Old School

Recent reviews of the classics
Mad Max

As we mentioned above, George Miller’s fourth entry in the Mad Max franchise is upon us. CinemaClown recalls where it all started: “On an overall scale, Mad Max is a cleverly envisioned, expertly crafted, brilliantly directed and superbly paced example of its genre that’s brutal, violent and crazy.”

The Dam Busters

Michael Anderson’s The Dam Busters earns a ★★★½ review from Ruth: “…an excellently controlled war mission film, and one of the most realistic and captivating films to date on fighter terminology and manoeuvres. Its influence over a range of films, but most particularly A New Hope (which pays loving homage to this film in its third-act trench run scenario), becomes immediately apparent, and this aspect of the film is almost impossible to shut off.”

This is the End

Adam Cook

Long-time patron Adam Cook is bowing out for the time being, but he leaves us with a tantalising glimmer of hope in this farewell message: “I won’t be deleting the account so I could always return in the distant future.” Some of the Adam Cook style we’ll miss: a thousand words to describe A Thousand Words; the time Adam thought he’d seen a different version of Frances Ha from the rest of us; and his pain that Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta! — “a provocative and subversive masterpiece” — might “go unnoticed and unloved by the dumb masses”. His name is Adam Cook and he is a hopeless romantic. So long, Adam, and thanks for all the film reviews.

Polytechnique

Curious about Quebec Cinema? Steve50’s first-ever list will start you off right.

Never Sleep Again

Why watch a film when you can watch the making-of?

How to Train Your Dragon

This Singalongalist is a beautiful thing. This list is an ingenious list of other people’s lists, and so is this one.

The Fault in Our Stars
Letterboxd Tee on Cotton Bureau

Merch Alert. Our ‘Neverending Film Title’ tee (and sweater) is back for a limited time, so snap yours up now. It’s inspired by Doug Benson’s Build-A-Title game, and designed by Jez Burrows. Here is the list of all the films in question.