I've long considered keeping a formal web log of my opinions on movies I've seen, mainly for my own reference - I can give a considered, detailed opinion/rant immediately after watching any given film, but I often find that after a week or so all I can remember is whether I thought it was good or bad. I never got round to it, though, thanks to a combination of laziness and the fact that I was often posting these thoughts on forums anyway, which served much the same purpose. Then forums started to die in favour of chatroom communities like Discord and Slack, and suddenly my online review archive didn't seem so permanent. At the same time, though, Letterboxd had gained popularity, so I forced myself into the habit of using that site to review every movie I watched immediately afterwards.
A few factors have finally pushed me to move my reviews over to this blog.
Firstly, Letterboxd doesn't allow for reviewing games or television series, and I especially want somewhere to post my opinions on the former where they won't be piped into an algorithm that directly affects the success of the game and the careers of the developers. (Sites like Metacritic have their scores used by stores and companies to determine how heavily a game is promoted or whether developers get bonuses, for example, but a rant about that shitty practice is a blog post of its own.)
Secondly, Letterboxd just in the last week decided to push its paid no-adverts version by covering the free version with intrusive ads, to the point where it's now actively unpleasant to use.
Thirdly, the social media aspects of the site have driven it towards being a popularity contest, a race to the most snarky least helpful review possible. The community aspect does not provide me with any benefit over posting in silence on here: when I post my review of Citizen Kane, I don't need to see someone else say "fuck media magnates im here for the snowball fights tho" and hundreds of people showing approval of that review.
So yeah, basically it's because I'm old enough that I can't remember my own opinions and I can't stand young people. I do not have any pretensions to being a professional film critic here, and I don't feel obliged to give considered, fair or supported reports (though hopefully that will often be the case). These 'reviews' are the equivalent of me relaying my thoughts on a film to a mate in the pub the next day.
I'll be copying my old reviews from Letterboxd and various forums over onto here, so the writing style may not be too consistent at first. Also, I'll be imprecisely converting my Letterboxd star ratings to words - 'Awful' (0-1 stars), 'Bad'(1.5-2), 'Fine' (2.5), 'Good' (3-3.5), 'Very Good' (4) or 'Great' (4.5-5) - as these match more closely the framing I would use in that hypothetical pub.
