Why I Don’t Enjoy Rating Movies Anymore
Finding My Footing on Letterboxd
Gerald Broflovsky becomes a smug amateur Yelp critic in a 2015 episode of South Park titled, “You’re Not Yelping”.
This never used to be a problem for me.
In my teens and twenties I had zero filter when talking about cinema. It was a way of connecting with other people who shared my passion as well as developing my own personal tastes (I agree with Joan Didion who said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”).
It wasn’t just about finding people who loved the same movies as me. I also loved arguing about movies. The most fun was when I hated a movie and a friend loved it, or vice versa. Who among us didn’t relish when Siskel & Ebert had visceral disagreements? My podcast hosts and I made a segment for this on Reel Fanatics called “Movies on Trial.” I wanted to disagree with people – agreement was boring.
Something has happened in the past few years that has changed my feelings on some of this. I don’t know all the causes, though I think it’s a combination of things both personal and technological. Every time I give a film a star rating now, whether it’s five or zero (or 1/2 star, the lowest available option on Letterboxd), I feel uncomfortable.
What’s happening to me?
Technological Change
Maybe it’s not just me. Maybe there’s a component here that has to do with changes we’re seeing society-wide with social media.
Bo Burnham reacts to the reaction to his reaction to a song he wrote in Inside (2021).
In Bo Burnham’s superb comedy-special-meets-film Inside (2021), he recites a bit about living in a postmodern world where art is just the means to another end: your reaction to the art.
“The outside world, the non-digital world, is merely a theatrical space in which one stages and records content for the much more real, much more vital digital space,” Burnham jokes. “One should engage with the outside world as one engages with a coal mine: suit up, gather what is needed, and return to the surface.”
Movies exist in the coal mine, and we only go down there to collect the raw materials for “hot takes.” For many, the fun doesn’t start until we all get to sharing our feelings online. In the digital age, “joining in the conversation” is the reason to watch the film at all. The film is something to get past so you can get to what you really want to be doing.
I’ve even heard of some viewers watching classic films like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) on 2x speed so they can cross it off their watch list! To paraphrase comedian Bill Burr, that’s like shotgunning a world-class bottle of wine.
This wouldn’t necessarily bother me if I didn’t sense it in myself.
In the past few years, I’ve grown disturbed at how quickly my thoughts form after seeing a movie for the first time. Before I know it, I’ve compulsively posted my take on social media. It can happen faster than the time it takes for the end credits to finish their crawl. The movie itself used to linger longer in my consciousness before being processed through the opinion meat-grinder.
As I’ve watched myself develop this habit, I now actively resist even thinking a verbalized opinion after seeing a movie. I just sit in the essence of the film itself as long as I can. On a good day, I can keep this going the entire drive home from the theatre.
The Filmmakers Can See Your Rating
Added to all of this is the 21st century breakdown of the boundaries between our public and private lives.
In 2021, I’ve noticed a wider gap between my public face and my private behavior than I ever recall in the past. For instance, I will freely call Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) a piece of crap on the show, but if a stranger asked me for my opinion in person, I’d probably just say, “It wasn’t for me,” so as not to rain on their parade if they loved it.
But the podcast is more public than the private conversation! Shouldn't my behavior be reversed?
For some reason, rating a film on Letterboxd activates the “public me” while giving that same opinion on the podcast doesn’t.
In my early twenties, I had maybe sixty followers on any given social media platform. I could share my hardcore views on film and it would only be seen by my friends and family. Most of them would know how to interpret whatever intense shit I said because all of them knew me in the real world, and less than half would ever see the post anyway.
Flash forward to 2021, and no matter what person or audience you have in mind when you write something, the fact is you are speaking to everyone in the entire world.
As a result, I feel like I need to consult with my PR advisor before writing anything. It’s only rational that most people start to sound like calculating politicians.
Rating the Work of My Peers
How does this manifest on Letterboxd, the greatest app on the market for cinephiles?
Certainly, fewer relationships have been damaged on Letterboxd than on other platforms. It’s still mostly an innocent space for film fans to nerd out at this point.
But there are early indicators that Letterboxd may become like every other platform soon. Notice how it prioritizes reviews that get the most engagement, and, of course, those takes tend to be “hot.” (My most-engaged review is of 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, which I said was “in the running for the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”)
I think it’s also indicative of my point that there are hardly any well-known filmmakers using the platform in an identifiable way.
Since the earliest days of criticism, some have voiced their discomfort with taking work people have poured years of their lives into (movies, music, food, sports, etc) and summing it up into a short, good/bad review. Anything less than a Pauline Kael New Yorker essay feels inadequate when viewed from the filmmakers’ perspective. Making movies is an act of creation, while criticism can feel like an act of destruction.
Mark Harris, the author and critic behind Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood and Mike Nichols: A Life, has said that he deals with this proximity to his subjects by never writing anything in a review that he wouldn’t say directly to the filmmaker’s face. I like that principle for a critic, but unlike Mark Harris, a filmmaker on Letterboxd still has to work with these people on other movies.
As a filmmaker, the people behind the movies aren’t abstract to me. I know some of them personally.
When a filmmaker friend of mine finishes their new movie, I always watch it. And what if I don’t like the movie? Do I just refrain from logging it so I don’t hurt their feelings? I probably should make a rule to avoid logging even the positive ratings, because if I gave out five stars to their last movie, a non-rating on their new film would be a very loud statement on its own.
If more filmmakers begin identifiably using the platform, I could easily imagine the act of industry peers giving each other positive reviews on Letterboxd becoming the same professional ritual as a nice Google review or a recommendation on LinkedIn.
There’s an easy solution to this, you say. Why don’t you just refrain from rating or reviewing films made by your friends?
That assumes I already know everyone I will ever work with. What of all the films created by people I haven’t yet met? In the film business (especially the indie world), you work with different people on every project. So, if I’m worried about hurting the feelings of people I know, shouldn’t I be equally worried of hurting the feelings of those I’m soon to know?
And isn’t it just soooo Hollywood for me to play nice just so I don’t lose career opportunities? If I stand nothing to gain from you, if I’ll never meet you or work with you, shouldn’t I still be emotionally conscious about contributing public negative reviews of your work?
But Michael, you ask, how do you know these filmmakers will get hurt feelings from a rating you give their movie? How do YOU feel when you get a bad review?
That’s a fair point. Personally, I want to know I can trust my friends to give me honest feedback instead of false praise. Does it sting when they dislike my work? Sure, but I’m an adult. As New York Times critic A.O. Scott says in his new book Better Living Through Criticism, being critiqued and ranked is part of what artists sign up for.
But I’d still prefer a few paragraphs articulating why someone didn't like my movie instead of a cold, passionless Letterboxd star rating.
I guess the broader question is, what’s the point of being a filmmaker on Letterboxd at all? I’m not a professional film critic. I don’t have a public audience clamoring for my perspective. What am I doing, exactly? I’m just another asshole on the internet risking unintentionally offending people with my opinions.
Pauline Kael wrote some of the best pieces of film criticism ever for The New Yorker from 1967-1991.
The Undeniable Value of Great Film Criticism
None of this is to say I view criticism as an inherently bad thing.
On the contrary, it can be every bit as valuable as the art itself; a complement to the piece, the critic guiding you through necessary context and thoughtful tangents, never telling you what to think of the movie, but instead expanding your perspective.
I even value criticism from those who don’t “stay in their lane,” so to speak. One of the most formative paragraphs on documentary filmmaking I’ve read in my life came from a negative review of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) by Christopher Hitchens in Slate:
“I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a ‘POV’ or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your ‘narrative’ a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don’t even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them.”
Hitchens was not a film critic, but that passage has been a guiding principle for me as both a viewer and creator of documentary cinema ever since. His criticism proved even more valuable to me than the movie he was critiquing.
Maybe one day some non-critic YouTuber will curb stomp a film I made in a devastating vlog that proves formative to some other young filmmaker – how delightfully postmodern! I can only hope my career reaches such heights.
So maybe, at the end of it all, I just don’t have the temperament to do it myself. I really, really dislike hurting people’s feelings, especially by knocking creative achievements they have spent so much of their lives working on.
Sean Baker, director of The Florida Project and Tangerine, probably models the best approach for a filmmaker on Letterboxd.
A Plan for Today, Maybe Not Tomorrow
I would like to think my motives are so driven by concern for others, but maybe I’m being more careerist than that.
Maybe I strategically decide that it’s unwise to be rating the work of people who may hold the power to make (or not make) a film of mine in the near future. It’s certainly less honest and more Hollywood of me, but those are the incentives, right? Don’t hate the player, hate the game?
Even if I don’t rate things on Letterboxd, I still give my opinions on the Reel Fanatics podcast. How is that any different?
The first way it’s different is that podcasts don’t blindside people: nobody just stumbles upon a podcast opinion in the same way they stumble upon star ratings on Letterboxd. People have to choose to listen to the episode.
Second, my intuition tells me that if every opinion shared on social media were instead shared via podcast, there’s be fewer hurt feelings. There’s something uniquely harsh about black text on white screen (or white star ratings on dark blue background). It’s like an approved/denied stamp on a document, or a grade on a school paper. It’s a loud declaration.
An audio discussion is gentler, and the way somebody says something can completely change the way the statement is felt by the listener. It’s the same reason why you should always have difficult conversations face-to-face (or at least over the phone) rather than via text message. It’s more human.
But what to do about Letterboxd? I still want to be part of that community. Those are still my people, just as they were when we debated movies in cinema lobbies where no strangers we cared about could hear us, instead of online where the filmmakers themselves could suddenly look over our shoulders.
The price of entry to the cinephile community is bringing your best, honest, unique takes to the conversation. That’s the whole point of even being there in the first place. So, I will continue to do that with Letterboxd reviews, but I will refrain from giving star ratings.
And of course I will continue to share my true, unfiltered opinions on the Reel Fanatics podcast, as it is less searchable and less likely to just pop up into someone’s feed whose feelings might get hurt.
If you’re a filmmaker friend of mine and I offer some criticism of your latest movie in a Letterboxd review? I understand if you’re hurt, but I hope you’ll also take that as evidence you can trust me when I tell you that I love your next film.
That’s my current position based on today’s digital reality, at least.
But who knows how I’ll feel in the future as technology continues to alter the way we behave?
The volume of new information generated in this turbulent age has doubled every year since the year 2000. Nothing that matters in 2021 existed when I graduated high school in 2005. Twelve months from now, circumstances may force me to revisit this posture I’ve chosen.
“The future is, and must be, opaque, even to the cleverest observer” writes Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public. “The moment tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday, we are startled and confused. The compass cracks, by which we navigate existence. We are lost at sea.”
I expect we’ll all be adjusting our approach to this tradition of film criticism into the future as the categories of public and private, professional and amateur, continue to blur. I just hope to minimize the number of times I capsize along the way.
