The Letterboxd Top 4: Decide or Die
Why it's impossible for me to choose my four favorite films
For some reason, it is torture for me to decide on my Letterboxd Top 4. Which is incredible, namely for the fact that one’s top four favorite films listed on their Letterboxd profile is something that absolutely no one cares about – unless maybe you’re Charli xcx or Ayo Edebiri and people actually pay attention to your profile.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Letterboxd is what I like to call “Goodreads for movies.” And if you don’t know what Goodreads is, then congratulations – you do not have the gene that makes you obsessively track, log and set goals for every single one of your hobbies.1
Letterboxd is a magical place – one of the few left on the internet, in fact. You log onto the stark black website to rate/review/log films you’ve watched, mark your extra-liked ones with a lil’ orange heart, and like and comment on other people’s reviews.
There’s a beautiful balance on Letterboxd in the reviews. Sometimes, the lengthy, Ebert-esque essay is required. Other times, simply a one-line bit will do. You never know if you’re going to feel compelled to go “punchline” or “full college thesis” until about two-thirds of the way into the film you’re watching.
As for the Top 4, these are the movies that sit at the very top of your profile page. They display your tastes, your favorite directors, your favorite actors, your favorite genres, your hopes, your dreams, your deepest regrets. Within these four tiny poster icons lies the road map to your soul.
Or at least, that’s how I see it. Because movies are fucked for me forever.
In one of my first film classes in college, the teacher said in his preamble about the course, “This class will ruin movies for you forever. You will never be able to watch a movie the same way again.”
He was right.
In the years that followed, we analyzed story structure, screenplay format, genres, directing, editing and cinematography to death. By the end of my film studies, all those years of passively watching movies and having simpler thoughts, like “I enjoyed that one” or “I didn’t enjoy that one” were long gone. Or maybe I never actually had simpler thoughts about movies because I’ve always held them in such high regard... I don’t know anymore. I honestly can’t remember.
The point is: my love of and taste in movies now feels like a sacred part of me. I can – and will – passionately defend any movie I love, no matter if it’s critically acclaimed, cheesy and flawed or a fairly bad romcom. One of my favorite things about movies actually is when it is flawed or cheesy or kinda bad or too long and drags in parts but somehow it still just… works.
There’s a formula to picking the Top 4, depending on your approach to it. A lot of people (I assume) are able to ask themselves, “What movies do I probably watch the most?” And then four films easily come to mind, and they select those ones for their profile.
Others, like me, might ask themselves, “What movies do I probably watch the most?”
Then from there: “Of those movies, which ones each show a range in genre, director, and release year?” (Because for some reason, I would rather die than someone stumble upon my Letterboxd profile and think, “Huh. Her 4 favorite films are all from the 2000s? Pathetic.”)
And then from there: “What movies of my favorites, now narrowed down to 10-20, show my personality the most?”
And it doesn’t stop there…
“And show everyone what movies have inspired my tastes, personality from the years of newborn to adult, and overall life trajectory in the most profound of ways?”
This self-inflicted Medieval torture exercise is time-consuming when it hits, which is – frankly – too often. It’s that same joke about how our caveman ancestors used to have this same rush of anxiety to signal that they should run away from a woolly mammoth or something, but now I use it as a made-up life-or-death scenario about what my four favorite films are.
The simple explanation for this is that it’s too hard to pick just four movies because I love so many! Sure, I already know which movies I have probably rewatched the most in my life:
A League of Their Own (Doesn’t define my tastes anymore because I think of it as a “childhood movie.”)
Sleepless in Seattle (Never fits with the rest of the four because of the lack of poster choices – another made-up non-dilemma I simply cannot get into right now – and it feels “out of place” alongside all my other depressing alien/dystopian movies.)
While You Were Sleeping (Sure, Sandra Bullock is GREAT as the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl but is the movie consequential enough to list in a Top 4 of ALL time?!)
Speed (Sure, Sandra Bullock is GREAT as the original Furiosa – do not fact check me on this – but do I really need to list it in The Four just because I thought her pairing of flower mini sundress, grey tank, frilly socks and booties was the most fashion-forward outfit a woman could ever wear when I was a child?!)
Gladiator (Though I still love it and watched it a disturbing number of times as a preteen, I don’t think it reflects what I normally gravitate towards… Plus I am pretty sure I only watched it so many times because I was going through a Russell Crowe crush phase.)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (A classic and honestly perfect film, but it feels wrong to have a Christmas movie taking up a full space in the Top 4 of All Time.)
Some other movies I know I’ve watched way more than others have made it into the Top 4 (for now): La Jetée (still counts even though it’s a short!), Children of Men and Dune: Part One. For the fourth spot, I did finally settle on (for now) Paris, Texas – an old standby that revolutionized what I crave in movies and screenplays from the moment I watched it. It also makes me cry every single time, even if it is a bit too long.
And that’s another criterion that counts for something: volume of tears shed.
But what about the others that don’t fit?
Like Marie Antoinette, the movie that made me care about aesthetics and pastel color palettes for the rest of eternity?
Or Mermaids, which I only really got into in my thirties but feels like a movie I wish I had been obsessed with as a child?
Or both of the Little Womens (90s and 2000s/Greta versions) because I relate to them deeply and love that they serve as sort of bookends to my life so far: the past and the present versions of the characters and of myself… But ultimately, I can’t pick just one and I also can’t have half the slots occupied by the same title.
Or The Celebration, a 90s Dogme 95 Danish film that blew my fucking mind the first time I watched it, even though I can hardly bring myself to rewatch it because it’s just not that kind of movie.
To be clear, I am not seriously asking for a remedy to my made-up non-problem. I am not the President and CEO of The Criterion Collection or a voting member of The Academy. And no one, unfortunately and much to my dismay, is asking me on a red carpet to list my Letterboxd Top 4. I am just a person who loves and obsesses over movies because they were ruined for me forever in college.
I am also, I think, wading through an eerily unnatural ocean of tag-me-in-thats, follow-me-backs, and link-in-bios. In a world that increasingly asks us to define our whole beings in just a few characters, a few emojis, a few movies, I am decreasingly willing to oblige. Almost as if to say: You can’t pin me down. I am more complicated than you could ever imagine.
But I guess for now, four painstakingly chosen movies will have to do.
Ok stop bragging…