I have so much work to do. In the spirit of procrastination here's a brief thread about why Letterboxd has become my most useful tool for learning about movies during the past couple of years.

If you haven't come across it, it's a social media film review site. You just review films there. Some people engage in long discussions under the reviews, I've never really done that.

The reason I like it is simple: you read reviews of films & if a review chimes with you, follow the reviewer. Chances are if their take on a film resonates with you, they might also know other films you don't know about, but would enjoy.

It works another way too. You discover some films that have been universally critically derided, because someone you know on Letterboxd writes a perceptive & intriguing piece & encourages you to take a look.

Even just looking at my stream, I can see people who have inquisitive & wide-ranging taste liking reviews of films I've never heard of, and it encourages me to read about those films & maybe seek them out.

Films I would never have heard of except for the site - THE PLAGUE AT THE KARATAS VILLAGE, a formally astonishing Kazakh take on Kafka; BEYOND THE DOOR III/AMOK TRAIN, stunning, balls-to-the-wall Italo-Serb horror; THE BERLIN BRIDE, utterly beguiling & mysterious surrealism.

Ten or so years ago I would have read about films like this on blogs run by people I respected, @dcairns, @Glenn__Kenny, many others who have disappeared into the atomisation of the blogosphere.
Now I find out about them from internet randos who post fascinatingly on that site.

There's so much stuff out there in 2021 & the only filter I can really find that works is something like this. It's the internet working the way it's supposed to, in my view, the way it used to.