Hello film lovers,

Welcome to 2018. We’re looking forward to another year of over-sharing our film passions with each other. 2017 was a fascinating year, and we’ve greatly enjoyed watching many of you share your top stats over the past few weeks—we emailed a very brief summary to everyone at the start of the month.

For those wondering why you didn’t get the same full, detailed 2017 summary as some other members, it could be because you haven’t upgraded your membership to Pro or Patron level. If you have, thank you. Here’s the quick soft-sell: Letterboxd is independently owned and operated by a small team of film lovers; it’s free to belong, so upgrading your membership is one of the few ways we make money. In return, we bring you our apps, new features and regular service upgrades, and editorial treats like this recent Q&A with Paul King, director of the Paddington movies, and this one with The Florida Project’s director Sean Baker. If you’re wavering, there’s no better time to step up your game than the start of a new year.

Today, we are pleased to announce that we’ve shipped Letterboxd 2.0 for iOS, a universal app with native iPad support that brings the richness of our community to Apple’s larger form factor. It was no small task, and we’re immensely proud of our small iOS team for delivering such a polished update. Read all about it from us or over at MacStories.

iPad

With February 14 fast approaching, may we encourage you to consider a gift of Pro or Patron status for the movie lover in your life? (Drop us a line and we’ll send you a PayPal link you can use to purchase an upgrade as a gift.)

Happy watching,
The Letterboxd crew

Opening Credits

In cinemas and coming soon
Black Panther
Black Panther

Ry Coogz takes on the legend of King T’Challa/Black Panther, opening in February. It’s a hell of a cast: as well as Chadwick Boseman in the title role, Black Panther’s homeland of Wakanda is also populated by Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Forest Whitaker, Angela Basset, Sterling K. Brown, Phylicia Rashad… and Gollum and Bilbo. Black Panther first made his Marvel appearance in a 1966 Fantastic Four comic.

Early Man

Aardman Animations genius Nick Park is back on the claymation scene with Early Man, a full-length feature about a prehistoric football game, starring Eddie Redmayne, Richard Ayoade, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams and Timothy Spall. “Silly, inventive and hilarious,” says Ian. “Aardman’s first own-goal since Flushed Away,” argues HotDonkeyBear.

The 15:17 to Paris

Clint Eastwood’s newest based-on-fact thriller The 15:17 to Paris stars the real-life trio of remarkable friends—Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone—who thwarted a terrorist attack on a moving train in 2015.

Fifty Shades Freed

You could watch the final instalment in the Fifty Shades trilogy next month, or if you prefer to watch some other “stalking for love” films, dive into this list of erotic thrillers, this list of acid erotica, or subscribe to the Fatal Attractions podcast for in-depth reviews of erotic thrillers.

Star Wars

One star vs five stars, fight!
Phantom Thread

Phantom Thread

★ “A film about a shitty man who treats women like wallpaper and a woman who is willing to foster a f*cked-up concept of love and marriage in order to be shitty man’s forever wallpaper. A disgusting portrayal of relationships that worsens midway through, where it becomes a constant dull drone of watching them hate to love each other.” —amber

★★★★★ “One of the things I love so much about PTA’s most recent films is how much their form enhances the content, to the point where it becomes the content itself… The relationship between Woodcock and Alma is strange and complex and mercurial, and you can basically gauge the temperature of [it] at any given point in the film simply by looking at the way Anderson films them. When they first meet, the frame practically swoons. The score swells. The camera glides gracefully as they navigate the nascent stages of their relationship. Then as the rot sets in, as things start to sour, the camera begins to calcify… this movie is an absolute powerhouse and Paul Thomas Anderson is a truly masterful filmmaker. Most directors couldn’t even dream of making something this good and it might not even be in PTA’s top three!” —Antonio Whitehead

The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water

★ “Holding all the nuance and emotional maturity of a fifteen year old girl’s Twilight fan fiction, The Shape of Water is a heavy-handed, lumbering and overly anvilicious parable about outsiders, and how America is actually really mean to outsiders, and how true love conquers hate, and other kindergarten-level moral poeticism.” —Ben Miranda

★★★★★ “A review simply couldn’t detail how perfect and brilliant and beautiful this film was. Guillermo Del Toro has achieved something magnificent with The Shape of Water. The colours, the score, the little interactions between characters, the innocence and romance was all so vivid and wonderful. It was like a fairytale—one filled with Russians and a white American dude [redacted], sure—but it was perfect and magical in a way that only a Guillermo Del Toro film could be. Sea creature love stories for the win.” —Lexie

Old School

Recent reviews of the classics
The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation

“The most genuinely chilling film ever made, not just because of its ideas, but because of how intricately and sophisticated the film is at translating them. And then twice as chilling, because this is what establishes the primary functions of narrative cinema. A really challenging film to write about—virtually impossible to write about this cohesively within capsule format, so here are just some notes—a proper study of the film would require an entire book.” —Neil Bahadur

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow

“Something that really struck me on this rewatch was how the narrative plays with perspective and exposition-through-omission. Even though we witness the story exclusively from Tom Cruise’s vantage point. Frequent leaps in the timeline ensure we’re constantly behind the information-curve.

“The audience doesn’t learn new information when Cruise does; only he shares that knowledge with others. It is a remarkably smart, and effective storytelling technique; allowing the time-loop narrative to feel much longer and involved than it actually is.” —Jonathan Paula

The Vault

Recent Reviews of the Obscure, Weird and Little-Seen
Dementia

Dementia

“By all rights, this movie should not exist. The principal creatives of this project (the director John Parker, and the lead actress Adrienne Barret who literally dreamed the plot) were a strike of lightning, never to recur. They shouldn’t be making silent movies in 1955, they shouldn’t even be making independent films in Hollywood for that matter! A film that shares a cinematographer with Plan 9 From Outer Space should not be dripping with chiaroscuro beauty in every frame and oh-so-precise and delicate dolly tracks and compositions reminiscent of Murnau… All this, and more, in a tight 55 minutes. My review falls inadequate. Watch this movie.” —Chwoka

Private Parts

Private Parts

“A tongue-in-cheek take-off on Psycho that dwells more on voyeurism and kink than killing and gore. In fact, the murders are pretty much afterthoughts—not even the police seem to care much about them. Overall it could have been a pretty good low-budget cult film if the music wasn’t so distractingly terrible—it sounds like the producers bought a collection of generic dramatic orchestral sounds and just slapped it on wherever.

“There was one thing that I did like, though, which is that it’s a horror movie that’s not just about a female character being terrorized by men for an hour and a half. The audience suspects that Cheryl is in danger, but she’s actually not that fazed by the weirdos. If anything, she’s kinda down for it. She’s plucky like that.” —Joe Gola

That Day, on the Beach

That Day, on the Beach

“How is That Day, on the Beach Edward Yang’s feature debut?! Further evidence that he’s one of the greatest, here is the filmmaker nearly fully-formed right out of the gate. This melancholy meditation on marriage and maturation is incredibly ambitious—a mini-epic, time-shifting narrative with flashbacks within flashbacks and events framed and reframed—and tremendously successful.” —Jared Gores

This Is The End

Pretty in Pink

Greta Gerwig is only the fifth woman to be nominated for Best Director in Academy Awards history. This list draws together many of the films mentioned during the awards-season circuit as being influential in the creation of her film Lady Bird.

À nos amours

Speaking of Oscar nominations, this list is for those of you who’ve watched Call Me by Your Name so many times now that you think it’s maybe a good idea to branch out and watch something else, but you want to watch something that’s as much like Call Me by Your Name as you can possibly find.

Blade Runner 2049

And if we’re permitted one more Oscar-themed list, hands up if you’d like to see Blade Runner 2049 removed from this amazing body of work when the envelope is opened in March. Roger, your time has surely come.

Logan Lucky

Every year, without fail, Steve G can be relied upon to deliver film lists of amazing specificity. His latest masterpiece is a collection of films in which a character just really likes eating hard- or soft-boiled eggs.

Quadrophenia

Letterboxd member Monday Seagull has made a list of memorable members. It’s not exhaustive by any means, but we appreciate the humorous effort made in the notes.

Brokeback Mountain

How much would you trust Jake Gyllenhaal with your dog?