But Edebiri is by no means Letterboxd’s only celebrity fan: There’s a whole Reddit thread devoted to tracking celebrities who track movies on the app, from Oscar-winning Anora director Sean Baker (he sees…everything!), to pop star Charli XCX (her Nosferatu review is poetry), and…British MP Jeremy Corbyn? (I’m particularly obsessed with his entry about the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby: “Shows the barrenness of greed and wealth.” Well, yes!)
At a time when King Charles III is insisting that he listens to Beyoncé, seeing what a famous person is watching and responding to, almost in real time, whether for fun or research, is just cool. Take Rachel Sennott on Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid: “Omg I think of myself as an anxious person but this movie made me feel French.” Funny! Or Hari Nef on White Chicks: “last night, i wept so violently that i vomited; my boyfriend held my hair back. then he was like, ‘should we watch white chicks?’ we did, and it made me feel better.” Sweet! (Though he’s not on Letterboxd—publicly, anyway—Steven Soderbergh’s riveting and chaotic “Seen; Read” lists scratch the same itch. Isn’t it nice to know how much he likes Hacks? And that he got really into Jaws lore last year?)
Even if you’re too cynical to take advice from celebrities on what jeans to buy or what high-protein diet to follow, it’s nice to be able to let the stars guide you through the always-expanding constellation of Hollywood blockbusters and indie sleeper hits out there. Just make sure to move fast, because at this rate, Letterboxd is bound to become as cheugy as, well, the word “cheugy” before too long.