'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[DeprongMori]

I have one friend who writes reviews that look very much the same. I have no idea why he does it or what he gets out of them, but clearly he doesn't understand the platform and is just recording stray thoughts for himself (it's a different story though, since he doesn't have followers and doesn't explore LB or anything, so not looking for external validation). There's one truly hilarious one, but I have reservations about posting it here

In a similar vein, I deliberately use Letterboxd solely for my own purposes, and use my extremely infrequent “reviews” primarily for keeping track of odd bits of information such as the URL of where I can find that video source of decent picture quality and in the proper aspect ratio that I watched (which might incidentally also be useful to others). Letterboxd really doesn’t have a free-form text repository for such personal notes any place but in “Review”. As I do not solicit or encourage LB follows (nor do I prohibit or discourage them), any complaints about my particular “mis-use” of the “Review” field would really have no standing. Not sure if this is the case as well with your friend (it sounds like it may be), but it seems odd to level a charge that “clearly he doesn't understand the platform and is just recording stray thoughts for himself”. Unless the “stray thoughts” in question are the type of things one would not knowingly make public, he may very well “clearly understand the platform” and is just using it for his own purposes.

[therewillbeblus]

Sorry for the confusing language, I'm in full agreement with what you're talking about. I didn't mean to indicate a diagnostic association between not understanding the platform and the authorization of using LB for one's own insulated value; I just know for a fact that my friend recently signed up after I prompted him to do so, and he frequently asks me how to use search features or what is public or not as he logs his stuff. If he did understand the platform better, he might make different decisions, or he might not. But that is mutually exclusive from the merits of recording one's thoughts for their own sake, which is completely understandable. I realize I connected those two oddly together and it was not my intention to insinuate a dig there, but rather to serve as another counterargument to those in this thread and elsewhere who may be making assumptions about certain reviewers as attention-seeking spammers, when they could be just doing their own thing and using the platform for reasons that the ones judging did not consider

[DeprongMori]

Thanks for the clarification.

My own LB shows 68 diary entries for January so far (88 hours). Many of them are short films, as I’ve been watching the MOC Buster Keaton set, attended a Harry Smith/Jordan Belson program, logged several supplements from the Criterion Channel and various discs, and have seen 16 features films so far this month as part of the Noir City festival. I’m retired, my social life is pretty active, I volunteer at a film archive and in other areas — such as recently running field operations and text banking for various political campaigns, I do the housekeeping at home, and I also happen to watch a lot of movies. I’ll probably hit 80 films by the end of the month (there are 10 more in Noir City, and I’ve got tickets to Joel Coen’s presentation of “A Man Escaped” at BAMPFA on Sunday, and I might catch one or two things streaming.) Most films I watch with attention, and there are many I watch just for “coverage” if they don’t grab my attention — like some of the minor John Garfield films on the Channel. I’ve been seeing a lot of assumptions and judgment in this thread about other people’s viewing habits, and it was starting to grate a bit. Again, thanks for taking the time to clarify.

[therewillbeblus]

I feel that grate, we're on the same team here

[furbicide]

I have a lot of time for Letterboxd – it certainly beats the general shitshow that is IMDb reviews, and has long been my go-to for getting a sense of which films to watch or cover – but it’s pretty annoying when you click on a film and the top reviews are glib, annoying, half-arsed one-liners from some Twitch streamer or whatever (worse when the same user posts multiple reviews of the same film!?). That’s usually my first assumption when I see something dumb getting double-digit likes: clearly this user must have amassed some kind of following in some other space and is essentially getting vote brigaded.

Perhaps this is a totally different case and it’s just a bot account being propped up by more bots. The only question is: what’s the endgame? Are they selling something in their bio, or… ?

[colinr0380]

If this is a lead-in to you trying out a video game, I'd recommend looking at Disco Elysium for you, TWBB, if your computer can run it. It's a sort of detective mystery with some fantastical and psychological elements that is as much a literary work as a game (it has no muscle memory or reflex requirements whatsoever, and it's paced well enough that I never felt the need to play it for insanely long stretches, just because so much of the "payoffs" of it were listening to its lengthy and elegant conversations and internal monologues). I figure you might like its strange attempt to adapt the IFS model of psychology into a (rather lengthy) interactive experience. Maybe look at the opening moments on YouTube?

You actually recommended this to me a while ago, and it's the closest anyone came to convincing me to bite the bullet and return to the system. It sounds right up my alley, and I've actually talked about it with clients of mine who are avid gamers and respond well to IFS work in therapy. At least one took the recommendation and found it to be a helpful tool in acclimating to the language and therapy style- so I appreciate the rec (and I'm sure he/they does as well!) Currently I'm struggling to make room for reading in my leisure time, but maybe one of these days..

If I were more tech savvy I would be advocating for streaming the game together and spending as long as we wanted or needed to discussing it. I am not sure that I will play the game again on my own for a while, not because it is bad but because I got my ending and it was so satisfying that I want to let it be rather than overwriting it with a new version, or trying to 'completionist' it and get all the achievements for going down the maximum Capaitalist, Communist or Fascist, route! (Plus I would never want to go for that achievement that makes Kim hate Harry! At least intentionally!). But now that I have finished it and know the story, as with something like Until Dawn, I am loving watching videos of people playing through the game and making different choices or encountering different aspects of the story than I did!

I agree with Never Cursed that it is basically a novel in video game form (although one which could only exist as a video game) and uses those initial well worn tropes of "I've woken up with amnesia and don't know anything about myself, or the world around me!" and "buddy cop" relationships to turn into a kaleidoscopic portrait of a society that is at once legally distinct from ours, but with enough socio-cultural similarities to draw the parallels if you wish to. Which allows for debates to flow from the player having to concretely put themselves and their stances on issues into the world in blunt side taking (which I am finding that other games trying to follow in Disco Elysium's footsteps end up doing to a certain extent, such as Pentiment which whilst great ends up applying a very modern perspective to a historical period) to actually pondering the issues under examination at a relatively safe metaphorical and conceptual distance!

The big conversation that gets brought up all the time is the one with the race supremacist guarding the gate at the docks (and you can go deep into his eugenics theory, showing that it has been thought about a lot), but perhaps even more impressive is how the game handles that moment of the truck driver at the protest happily saying "Welcome to Revachol!" to Harry and Kim, which passes right over Harry's head but incenses Kim as being a backhanded form of racism. And then playing as Harry, you as the player are made a third wheel in the brief exchange that follows and in some ways have the ability to 'shape' the outcome simply by remaining oblivious (whereupon it seems like Kim may be overreacting to a friendly greeting, and using his status as a police officer to push civilians around), or going on a whole racial equivalent of 'mansplaining' where you politely step in on Kim's behalf and gently explain to the trucker just why that comment caused unintentional offence. Or you can really get into it with the guy and sympathise with him enough to find out that the comment really does act as a veneer over deep seated views on immigrants, and then confront him on it. But to what end? How does that help, or hinder, the actual case at hand that Harry and Kim are there to solve? There is quite a lot here that is not relevant to the case at hand, but its all interesting in fleshing out the world.

That's really the power of the game: it presents you with a world without any particular seeming direction (or moral guidance, at least until very far down certain storylines, where you can eventually find the hand of the writers pushing the wayward player back onto the path again) and then leaves it up to you as the player to role play your own story within it. There are game overs, but you have to push really hard to get them. Such as how failing to shoot the body from the branch can unintentionally spin (if you let it) into letting a teenage delinquent commit suicide by cop! But, like life, there is mostly no stopping the relentless forward march of time even if terrible mistakes have been made. More usually, and probably the main theme of the entire game, is that its more about coming to terms with and living with past mistakes, compromises made, or disappointments... or lost love.

The case at the heart of the story is the structure, but it is all the digressions off of that main plot that enrich the story so much and make the world feel so vibrant, with every single discussion with each character giving them the agency to express their own unique perspectives on the world around them (if you let them and really exhaust all conversation options. Talking to Joyce on her boat dumps almost a full game's worth of lore, and raises many questions for a sequel! And then there is that encyclopedia trait in the background that can be unlocked by the player stats but once it is gives you context about everything, no matter how relevant!), how they feel about it and how that is affecting their actions in response, making it a stunning kaleidoscopic portrait of its world and its inhabitants. It is up to you and your choices about how much you wish to indulge them in conversation, or cut them short. Or even if you will be able to engage with them at all on their particular level depending on what stats have been leveled up and even at which time in the story you engage with them. And eventually its about issues of identity and about the player having made 'their' version of Harry DuBois through their various decisions, so that when it narrows back down again to just him and Kim, its very powerful. A masterful intermingling of the interior and exterior worlds, showing how mental states influence real world actions. I suppose that everything in the end is a dice roll!

[hearthesilence]

Saw this in an Amazon review for a Reba McEntire compilation, and it's like something a Jan Hooks character would say in an SNL sketch:

"Would give it a 5 [out of 5 stars], but never do as that is perfect and I only believe in one perfect being."

[MichaelB]

At the other end of that particular scale, here's a one-star Amazon review of David Attenborough's 'The Life of Mammals'.

Great series but full of evolutionist propaganda, Sir Sir David Frederick Attenborough has spewed a lot of injures towards nature and its perfect design and complexity. I would like to debate with Sir David Frederick Attenborough about his unfounded claims. But it is great work in term of shots and researches.

[Lemmy Caution]

Perfect Design?
Tell that to my allergies and overreactive immune system.
The human nasal drainage system is a mess really.

Also, a perfect design would include a 3rd set of teeth popping in around 50-60.
Less baldness. No arthritic joints.
And that's not even getting to cancer and various diseases and parasites.

Nature is pretty amazing but hardly flawless. Especially if your worldview is that it is all for the benefit of humankind. It's hard to believe all this life came about due to a few chance chemical reactions followed by random variations. But a creator god is a simplistic and childish answer, imo. And not the optimal lens for reviewing a film.

[tenia]

Regarding human evolution, we're full of half-done never-finished jobs. It's actually better, I'd guess, to believe it has evolutionist causes that to believe it's by design !

[Mr Sausage]

After hearing so much evolutionist talk of the so-called perfect eye, I was amused when I discovered the human eye actually was upside down and had a literal blind spot.

[furbicide]

Saw this in an Amazon review for a Reba McEntire compilation, and it's like something a Jan Hooks character would say in an SNL sketch:

"Would give it a 5 [out of 5 stars], but never do as that is perfect and I only believe in one perfect being."

Have they never heard of rounding up?! 4.75 out of 5 is still pretty damn good, if still short of divine (or Divine, for that matter).

[Lemmy Caution]

Perhaps the most obvious imperfection is the need for animal brains to shut down consciousness for roughly 1/3 of every day. Pretty inconvenient in a world with predators. And just weirdly inefficient all around.

[domino harvey]

Big brain time from the comments of our favorite website

"Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a pioneering fusion of film noir and psychological horror."

It’s neither of those.

Spoiler: It is

[Mr Sausage]

Big brain time from the comments of our favorite website

"Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a pioneering fusion of film noir and psychological horror."

It’s neither of those.

Spoiler: It is

Worth seeing?

[domino harvey]

Absolutely! A few of our thoughts are here

[Son of Elizondo]

The king of autobiographical digressions with quite the humble brag:

The world of belly dancing is typically associated with Middle Eastern countries and cultures and therefore might not seem to be something endemic to Chicago, let alone the rural highways of the American southwest. But truth be told, it's an art with a rather unexpected reach, even to the decidedly un-Middle Eastern climes of the Pacific Northwest, as I myself can attest. When I was in my mid-twenties, I fairly amazingly managed to land an incredibly exotic girlfriend. This woman, who was several years my senior, was a native of French Morocco, and made her living as a professional belly dancer (and she made a very good living, I might add). During this time period, my eldest sister got her Masters Degree here in Portland and my entire family, including my parents, came up to celebrate. During the family get together, my then girlfriend, in her flowing robes and bikini top (which of course only revealed her amazing curves and well toned midriff), gave a performance. As I've joked for years since, I had never seen such a combination of shock and pride in my father's eyes. Just Like a Woman is built around this unusual world of belly dancing...

[furbicide]

"managed to land"; "incredibly exotic"; "joked for years since" – god, this paragraph (and the fact that it has been shoehorned into this review at all, no doubt much as the "joke" has been shoehorned into conversations over the years) is a veritable case study in male insecurity, and in the objectification of a former partner in service of validation (not least, dad's).

On the plus side, "and she made a very good living, I might add" is pure Donald Trump.

[MichaelB]

I have an ex who was (and, I believe, still is) into belly dancing, but I've inexplicably never felt the urge to shoehorn this into a notionally professional review.

If I was reviewing something on the subject, I might give her a sneak preview so she could correct my embarrassing factual/technical slip-ups, but that would be that.

[tenia]

On the plus side, "and she made a very good living, I might add" is pure Donald Trump.

I've heard it was the greatest living, absolute greatest, saw the figures, best figures ever.
(I also felt it was a weird precision, especially written like this)

[furbicide]

I have an ex who was (and, I believe, still is) into belly dancing, but I've inexplicably never felt the urge to shoehorn this into a notionally professional review.

If I was reviewing something on the subject, I might give her a sneak preview so she could correct my embarrassing factual/technical slip-ups, but that would be that.

Yeah, but you’re treating her as an actual human being, and not some kind of exotic trophy you won one time…

[furbicide]

Most people haven’t even had the chance to see Barbie yet, but this fairly representative Letterboxd "review"* from today suggests weapons are already being stockpiled in preparation:

petition to keep the insufferable film bros away from this movie please no i do not care that your favourite movie is a black and white foreign film from fifty years ago!

The thing is, they’re probably not wrong that so-called "film bros" can be insufferable, and that some will likely be exercising performative snobbery over this film specifically (although, anecdotally, most film people I know are planning to see Barbie and seem to be looking forward to it). But there are two kinds of anti-"film bros": those who love film but dislike certain tendencies of that community; and those (i.e. belligerent normies, for lack of a better term) who dismiss any non-mainstream/old/foreign-language film as pretentious and the people who like them as snobs. What the latter group don’t seem to get, though, is that their own snobbery is every bit as insufferable. And they’re the ones with the weight of mainstream culture and commercial power on their side.

*the fact that this person almost certainly hasn’t seen Barbie yet probably says a lot about 21st century media consumption culture. What if they are disappointed by the film themselves when they see it? What if it’s something different from what they’re expecting? Or is being a fan of the film something they’re already so committed to that that’s not possible?

[MichaelB]

I'm going to see Barbie with the same people I saw (and loved) Bridesmaids with - my wife and her best friend - and we have reasonably high hopes for it.

For work-related rather than polemical reasons, it will be sandwiched between two Ingmar Bergman films, both in black and white and foreign, although I suspect they won't be joining me. (They're more than welcome to, of course.)

[yoloswegmaster]

I guess the term has changed/expanded its definition recently since "film bro" was a term that was used exclusively for people who worshipped directors like Nolan, Fincher, Kubrick, etc, but refused to watch films that was older than them.

I'm going to see Barbie with the same people I saw (and loved) Bridesmaids with - my wife and her best friend - and we have reasonably high hopes for it.

But are you watching it before or after Oppenheimer?

[brundlefly]

Most people haven’t even had the chance to see Barbie yet, but this fairly representative Letterboxd "review"* from today suggests weapons are already being stockpiled in preparation:

petition to keep the insufferable film bros away from this movie please no i do not care that your favourite movie is a black and white foreign film from fifty years ago!

The thing is, they’re probably not wrong that so-called "film bros" can be insufferable, and that some will likely be exercising performative snobbery over this film specifically (although, anecdotally, most film people I know are planning to see Barbie and seem to be looking forward to it). But there are two kinds of anti-"film bros": those who love film but dislike certain tendencies of that community; and those (i.e. belligerent normies, for lack of a better term) who dismiss any non-mainstream/old/foreign-language film as pretentious and the people who like them as snobs. What the latter group don’t seem to get, though, is that their own snobbery is every bit as insufferable. And they’re the ones with the weight of mainstream culture and commercial power on their side.

*the fact that this person almost certainly hasn’t seen Barbie yet probably says a lot about 21st century media consumption culture. What if they are disappointed by the film themselves when they see it? What if it’s something different from what they’re expecting? Or is being a fan of the film something they’re already so committed to that that’s not possible?

Willing to assume that insufferability and wolf-pack attitude are the key objections here. After all, Gerwig gave Letterboxd a big ol' list of films (including ones black and white and foreign and more than 50 years old) she considered influences on her Barbie. And spoke about them in a very quick-hit film-enthusiast manner.