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A Life in Film – my Letterboxd stats

I was recently inspired by the stats visualizations on Letterboxd.com, a movie review website. The stats page is available for Pro subscribers only, but I’ve enjoyed Letterboxd as a free subscriber since 2013. Now that I’ve paid for a year of Pro, I can actually look at stats for each of the years that I’ve used the service.

This overview of Letterboxd stats will serve as my 2019 in review, but I’ll also point out some of the “all-time” stats features.

Let me start with some disclaimers: I am not getting paid to write this review. I have not created many lists in Letterboxd, so my stats pages aren’t as lush as they could be. I also don’t log every single movie I see, and my diary entries may not reflect the day, or even year, that I actually watched a film – instead, I’ll come across a film browsing through the site and add it then and there. Letterboxd is a playground for me. On the other hand, I refer to IMDb and my own movies spreadsheet as raw databases.

So here we go, the movies I logged in 2019. I’m taking screenshots while logged in, so I’ll point out the tools that Letterboxd provides so you can customize how your lists appear on the stats pages.

The stats page shows categories with corresponding numbers, and then my top-rated films (they use a 5-star system). Like my all-time screenshot, I can put a custom “top2019” list here. Since I didn’t do that, Letterboxd automatically placed the movies there for me. The “OLDER” option shows top-rated films that I logged in 2019, but had an earlier release date. This Changes Everything and Be Natural were two from 2018 that I really enjoyed. Thanks to the Unspooled podcast, I watched Midnight Cowboy and Chaplin’s The Great Dictator for the first time last year, and loved both.

The 2019 page shows FILMS BY WEEK and MILESTONES. You can hover over the weeks and days of the week to see detailed numbers.

The all-time stats shows FILMS or RATINGS by RELEASE YEAR, and then my HIGHEST RATED DECADES.

Next is the FEATURED LISTS, which neatly displays up to 10 of your lists tagged with “yir2019.” The all-time stats does the same, but tagged “allstats.”

Next is GENRES, COUNTRIES, & LANGUAGES followed by a BREAKDOWN of other stats.

Instead of a BREAKDOWN like the yearly pages, the all-time stats page shows LIST PROGRESS, COMPLETED COLLECTIONS, and MOST WATCHED films. The PROGRESS and COLLECTIONS sections are automatically curated. Lists can be interesting to go through, but they’re usually too Hollywood-centric. It’s hard to find lists of films made by a more diverse cast and crew.

Next are the STARS and DIRECTORS sections, which you can view by MOST WATCHED or HIGHEST RATED. It’s nice to get a yearbook-style view of what you’ve been watching. Since I watch a variety of films, this section is more interesting on the all-time stats page. Lupita Nyong’o and Alec Guiness are two of my HIGHEST RATED all-time stars; and directors DuVernay, Jodorowsky, and Kubrick .

Next, if you really want to get an idea of the people involved in the films that you watch, the CREW & STUDIOS section is handy. Editors, cinematographers, production designers, etc., are often underrated in terms of their influence on the final product.

Unique to the yearly-stats are YOUR MOST LIKED REVIEW, YOUR MOST LIKED LIST, HIGHS AND LOWS, and a complete poster gallery of FILMS WATCHED IN 2019.

At the bottom of the stats pages is a world map. Since I completely neglected South American and African films last year, I’ve taken a screenshot of my all-time map. I feel like Letterboxd should have a few more shades of green. The USA is the only country that I have logged more than 200 movies. You can see that I’ve got 161 in the UK, but it’s the same color as all the other countries.

Herein lies my overview of Letterboxd stats! I imagine it gives their database a workout, so it makes sense that it’s just a Pro feature. In addition to some smaller benefits, Pro removes ads and lets you customize which services show from JustWatch (a really handy movie lookup site which shows you if a movie is on Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc.). Check out their Patron level for even more features. Or just open a free account and play around with it!


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