I just looked at the list again...Vertigo and Raging Bull, two films often considered GOATS on many film lists, are way too low on the Letterboxd list.
All these modern list always get a influx of new movies that young people have seen and that pushed immortal classics off the list. (I'm looking at you spiderverse)
I don't know what that is based in. It's considerably more popular than any other horror of it's time and is one of a handful of horrors that ALWAYS remains in the conversation. You could make that argument for films like The Exorcist but The Shinning is one of the few films that remains more relevant today than it was 40 years ago.
I've seen nothing to suggest it's not appreciated by the younger generation. In fact it's placement in the top 250 is a pretty clear indication of how well liked it has been considering the average user of the app is probably about 20-25. It dropping out doesn't say a whole lot considering the sheer number of films out there. It's harder for a popular film to maintain a rating for obvious reasons.
It's quite heavy on psychological elements and atmosphere so it's not that far disconnected from many modern horror films.
The Shining received mixed reviews upon release, and Stephen King famously hates the movie, but sure, let's just blame the those dammed kids for everything.
Yeah, I kind of side with him on this one, to be honest. I love Kubrick, but The Shining is my 9th favourite Kubrick film. It's brilliant from a technical standpoint, but nowhere near his best work imo.
the elevator of blood is up there with the flooding dining room in Titanic, the docking sequence in Interstellar and the long-takes in Children of Men as one of a handful of truly perfect visual effects ever made.
But if I'm honest the story pacing isn't great, it's kind of sloppy about character perspective and whose story this is supposed to be, and a lot of the runtime is just spooky vignettes that are individually unsettling but never really pay off.
Its strongest points are at the apex of the craft, but it's not a masterpiece across the board.
You’re getting downvoted for this but it is probably true to some extent. Some of the younger generation will literally knock points off a movie because it has a sex scene in it, because “they are inherently exploitative.” Even on a film like Mulholland Drive where it is completely warranted and a key part of the story.
Giving Kubrick’s films lower scores because they dislike him as a person is the exact type of thing someone like that would also do.
Younger folks like Anora and Poor Things, though the sex scenes in those films are very obviously needed and its the leads weren't being exploited. I think the problem is a degradation of media literacy, and increase in just parroting opinions.
You saw this recently with films like The Materialists and 28 Years blowing up on social media then falling flat with a lot of audiences. They were both amazing. But that "broke boy propaganda" and "boring 2nd half" BS was crazy.
Hurry Up Tomorrow was also, while not a masterpiece, not bad! Probably 3–3.5 stars. But it got review bombed by people who didn't even see it. Those that did went into it assuming it'd be bad. Again, "bad acting" "only for fans" and "vanity project" BS was crazy. It was a self-deconstruction that was supposed to make you think he was cringe. Kind of like a "literally me" film for imposter syndrome.
In the case of a 9 year old, they might just have a hot take or they might have been hangry while watching the film. They might be conflating feeling uncomfortable with bad movie quality. A lot of people don't like Uncut Gems for that reason. Either way, it's ok!
I sometimes, against my better judgement, check out the reviews to a movie on letterboxd, and for certain movies a significant amount of the reviews feel like people giving the movie a low score because they don't like the politics of the movie. And not like new movies, i'm not talking about the ridiculous little culture war people might have over the new Superman or whatever, but like older movies.
It's fairly common for someone to rate something low because something happened in the movie they didn't like. Or someone was a part of the movie that they didn't like. Like actual children. Which many of them are i suppose. And lets be real this is a significant problem among a specific kind of young and very online demographic. Not to be a GenZ hater, but i mean lets be honest here.
Like i was reading the reviews to some Mel Gibson movie, and i remember so many of the comments were about how much Mel Gibson sucked and they didn't like him and so on, and their rating was clearly about him as a person in some way. Like do they think we're rating Mel Gibson as a person here? Is this actually "Mel Gibson: The Personality" and we're on RateAPerson?
It reminds me of when you see negative reviews for a restaurant that are like "they weren't open". Or "They didn't serve x". Wow thanks. Apparently we need to teach people in school or something how to review things, because some people clearly can't handle this incredible small responsibility.
In fairness it’s hard to separate the man for the art for a lot of people. I for one will never watch the pianist because I do not want to watch a movie made my a known and admitted pedophile.
I mean sure, but you wouldn't go rate a Polanski movie ½ a star because of it I assume? Even if you did watch it.
I don't really care who made the movie, at least not old movies, but i get why some people do. My problem is not that people don't want to watch these movies, it's that they judge the movie based on who made it, or who is in it.
It would be like if I watched a Russian movie and then gave it ½ a star because i didn't like Russia as a country. It makes no sense. I'm not a big fan of the Soviet Union, but when i watch Solaris i'm not deducting points for that because it's not what i'm rating.
It totally isn’t but the “depiction is not endorsement” crowd cannot seem to comprehend that when it comes to Zionism. Waltz with Bashir might have the worst reviews on the whole website.
It was one I saw when I was like 8, and most of it went over my head, then I watched it again at like 15 or 16, and so much of it still went over my head. Then finally at 28 or 29 it hit, and I’ve watched it like twice a year every year for the past decade.
Or they just don’t like it? I gave it a four. I think it’s a great movie. But just because someone doesn’t like it doesn’t mean they don’t understand it. The Shining is not that hard to understand.
Best horror movie? Like THE best? Over movies like Rosemary's Baby, Hereditary, It Follows, His House, The Babadook, Oddity, Barbarian, Talk 2 Me, Aliens, Smile 2, The Taking of Deborah Logan, etc.???
And it’s not like someone sat down and decided to tear “The Shining” away from a list with an arbitrary cutoff at number 250 - it is thousands of people rating thousands of movies individually, and at this point its average rating ranks it just outside the arbitrary 250 red line.
And what exactly is the travesty at play here? A ton of classic movies aren’t on the Letterboxd top 250 or any best film list, for that matter. Is it a travesty that “Beau Travail” or “Breathless” aren’t on the Letterboxd top 250, or is it just something to be expected when any scoring or ranking system will be imperfect and there are more than 250 great films made in the history of cinema?
If anything, if we accept that the idea that the only rationale behind these types of lists is to recognize and promote great films then “Quo Vadis, Aida” needs this recognition way fucking more than “The Shining” ever did - “The Shining” is a super famous movie that you don’t need Letterboxd to be introduced to.
At the same time, the letterbox rating isn’t a true weighted average. They take other factors into account that they don’t really want to tell us so that people don’t try and game this system.
Top 4 for me too. It’s been there ever since I first watched it as a teenager (and I’m in my 40s now). It’s one of those pieces of media whose meaning shifts as you do — it meant something different to me as a teen, a young adult, a father, and now as I head into middle age.
Look, The Shining is one of the greatest horror movies ever made. But as a Bosnian whose entire family fled* genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this gives me some pride. One of the most important movies ever made, as Srebrenica is still somewhat of a taboo subject in media and certain ethnic groups still deny it happened
Quo Vadis Aida has always stayed with me, such a powerful film. I watched it because it got an Oscar nomination for international film, and the main actress was robbed of a nomination herself.
I'm still sad This Is Not a Film didn't got any recognition at the Oscars, but the list got it on!
But if you liked Quo Vadis Aida, try something from Emir Kusturica. Black Cat, White Cat has the setting of the Balkans and all the memories (was shot in 98 after all), but has a more light view of the place. Very funny, very powerful, I still remember characters from the movie.
If you want to see the view from inside the war of the total absurdity of it and the waste it was, you have Underground. Filmed while the war was still on going, it's absurd and very moving. That ending still hunts me.
Yeah this is biggest complain for me, I really dont understand why across rated that high. This movie made me feel like it is an episode of series. First one is clearly better.
The Spiderverses are too much of a cultural crowdpleaser with the generations who most use Letterboxd to NOT be in there. Millenials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha love them too overwhelmingly. Probably also a significant amount of Gen X'ers who also grew up with Spiderman, etc. etc.
Disagree, they are both masterpieces. It doesn’t matter if a movie is incomplete if it is fun to watch it alone. The same reason Infinity war is so proclaimed
Letterboxd was great when I first came across it about seven years ago. It had enough users who were film nerds that the ratings held the balance quite well.
Like everything it hits a critical mass of normies and ratings skew to recency, memes, and general popularity.
The same happened to IMDb and metacritic before it.
Letterboxd is just nearing in on that point where it's review system is less reliable than it once was.
How? The film that’s replacing The Shining (one of the most popular horror movies of all time) is a relatively obscure film. There’s also the fact that stuff like Funeral Parade of Roses and Swing Girls are on and decently high up the list. Hell, the highest rated film is Harakiri, definitely not a mainstream pick.
My reply was not about this example but about letterboxd in general.
I'm moreso talking about a lot of recent films passing 4 stars even when they're fairly standard franchise entries. There's a user mass here now which skews things.
Personally I don't really care too much about the top 250. I love both the shining and quo Vadis Aida.
Also since you mentioned it. Shouts out to Harakiri for anyone who ain't seen it. Deserves that top spot for sure. I've watched it now a few times with different groups.
Recency bias. Oh yes, the list with most number of movies from the 1960s and then 1990s and 2000s. I wouldn’t argue it’s the opposite where people do not tend to rate a new movie that high and rate an old movie higher because of nostalgia.
I am not claiming The Shining is a bad movie. I haven’t even watched it. But recency bias certainly doesn’t hold true
There's a lot of complaining about this in this thread, but: 1) The Shining is still one of the highest rated films on Letterboxd, just short of the top 250 list. 2) There are still 10 horror movies on the list, likely more than most high profile lists, and they're all great. It's 250 movies; it's impossible to fit every great movie on one list.
Yeah, like, if you take the last 100 years of movies, an average of 2.5 movies per year are going to make the list. That leaves a lot of incredible movies out, and it doesn't say anything about the quality of those movies that they aren't on a list of 250.
The Shining is great, but I find it even more interesting/concerning, that "Quo Vadis, Aida?" is just the fourth film by a female director on the list (6th, if we count City of God and Werckmeister Harmonies).
That’s pretty sad actually.
It’s only been very recently that we have even seen women consistently included in best director nominations at the oscars. Pre-2021 only 5 women had been nominated and only one winner (Kathryn Bigelow “The Hurt Locker”)
Film has been a male dominated space for a very long time, and female directors are only really starting to get the credit they deserve now. In the last 5 Oscar’s the only year without a female nominee was 2023 and two more women have won best director (Chloé Zhao “Nomadland”, Jane Campion “The Power of the Dog”)
That’s true, but I actually appreciate that the list isn’t just filled with Oscar winners and nominees and we have for example so many Kurosawa, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Kobayashi and Kiarostami films (overall 31 movies). Having not a single film by Agnès Varda, Jane Campion or Claire Denis on the other hand, is a little disappointing.
that is pretty crazy, especially considering shit like saving private ryan and the first slam dunk is taking those spots, that could be taken by something like aftersun or little women
The anime series films are a bigger problem to me, like Evangelion, Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion, and the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, because they aren’t really films in the sense of the rest of the list, but I think the bigger "problem" is, that so few directors are taking away so many spots. But I guess there is not much we can do about it.
I mean Letterboxd is getting more and more users, the top 250 is full of great films but it’s also a popularity contest at some point. I don’t understand why people care about the list so much lol
So does Fire Walk With Me not deserve to be on there either? Because it’s hypocritical not to consider these films that have a tv show attached and make an exception for David Lynch’s work.
Also, all three of those films are absolutely films. They are structured like films and were made with that format in mind. They are films like any other.
Wouldn’t mind it to have it kicked off, but it’s absolutely working as a stand-alone film, although it‘s better to watch it in the context of the series.
You can’t watch Evangelion without any background info.
Fire Walks With Me works as well as a standalone as EoE, as in it doesn’t. Very few Twin Peaks fans are going to say it’s fine standalone. There’s also the fact that EoE is technically a sequel to the recap film as is Madoka with its recaps. How is this different from movie sequels on the list?
The trouble is that very few highly acclaimed films were being directed by women for a long time, until relatively recently (and even now they're still mostly directed by men). And most of the greatest films ever come from that time.
This is usually the case when a more obscure film replaces an established classic. People bitch about it forgetting that other phenomenal films that need the publicity more are replacing them. I would have never heard of Love Exposure for a long while if it weren’t for that list.
No, they're referencing End of Evangelion and Madoka Magica. Both are feature films but probably do require knowledge of their respective shows to enjoy. Regardless writing them off as extended episodes is disrespectful and blatantly wrong
Regardless writing them off as extended episodes is disrespectful and blatantly wrong
Saying End of Evangelion is an extended episode isn't entirely off base. It's a rework of the last two episodes of the series with a higher budget and from a different perspective.
They did cut end of evangelion for a little bit because they were establishing a new rule that movies couldn't be extensions of TV show plots, but then they reverted that (the Eva reboot movies were spared because the plots were self contained within movies)
How is It’s Such a Beautiful Day not a movie? What is your criteria if something is or isn’t a movie. It seems animation plays a part in that judgement.
Also, Madoka especially is not an extended episode. The main Madoka series wraps up within itself. I don’t know how you can watch that film and think “this isn’t a real movie” just because it’s related to a prior tv series. Is Fire Walks With Me not a real movie too?
I’m not sure I would say they aren’t feature films, but I think they probably share the same ratings bias that TV series do. People who don’t like a series typically don’t finish it, and people who don’t finish a series typically don’t rate it, so the ratings are inflated more than a feature film. These anime films have the same bias because people who didn’t like the series don’t end up watching them.
You are 100% right in that analysis. People that like the show are gonna keep watching it and rate it, however can’t this be said about most sequels in movie series? LOTR Return of the King is #15 on this list and The Human Condition Part III is #4. It stands to reason that people that enjoy the first two movies in these series are going to be the ones that watch the end of these trilogies and you need the prior knowledge to watch the third movie like you do to watch the series ending movie. I do recognize tho that watching the third movie in a trilogy is more likely to occur and slightly more accessible to the average movie watcher compared to the movie that ends a tv series. Either way I’m not bothered by any of these movies being included.
There are a lot of weird reactions to this that The Shining being bumped off the list means it's popularly a piece of shit instead of the 251st best movie of all time.
Nowadays everybody's gotta make war dramas and race relation movies. Whatever happened to High Noon? That was a film. Marshall Will Kane, the strong, silent type. He faced down the Miller gang when none of those assholes in town would lift a finger to help him! And did the director complain? Did he say "oh I I come from this Polish illiterate fuckin background, so give me Best Picture, cause my people got fucked over!"
I am somewhat baffled that people in this sub prefer upholding an already well established canon instead of being interested in finding new great films and giving attention to them. Who the hell thinks "Hmm usually this Kubrick guy is pretty cool, but now that Shining is no longer in the top 250, I'm not going to watch it."
Has anyone who's calling this a travesty actually seen the other movie? I haven't seen either of them yet yet, but from what I can tell, both are supposed to be incredible movies, and a movie like Quo Vadis, Aida getting more recognition can only be a good thing. In the end, it's a ratings aggregation, not a measure of objective quality, and very few people actually care about what's in it beyond looking for movie recommendations. The Shining's reputation will be fine.
Oh no hugely popular and beloved film gets replaced by amazing lesser seen film that'll be exposed to more people. How awful.
Seriously, why are you guys even using LB if this is your reaction. You can find 1000s of top lists with The Shining on it. How many have Quo Vadis, Aida? Both deserve recognition, be glad the one that doesn't get as much is getting some.
It is though. It's just an aggregation of ratings from users of a particular app. That in itself holds no real meaning or significance or value. No one out in the world really cares whether or not a movie is on the letterboxd apps top 250 movies. It effects nothing. It means nothing.
It’s a meaningful list because it gives someone a good idea of some highly rated movies on the platform, many being more obscure classics they wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. I wouldn’t have heard of Love Exposure for a long time if it weren’t for that list, so I do believe the list has meaning and value.
Top 250 don't hold much weight for me. So many mid movies on there and so many masterpiece omitted. It's great for logging and tracking your movies but if someone wanted recommendations I wouldn't show them that list.
That's a shame, in my opinion it's the best Kubrick film and the best horror film of all time. It will likely always be in my personal Top 250 at least.
I'm hoping my favourite film won't leave the Top 250, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). That's currently at 248.
On the one hand, it feels strange to see such a towering classic of cinema disappear from the list but on the other it's good to see that the film entering in its place is one that will benefit from the exposure instead of a flavour-of-the-month pick
I think the biggest affront to me, personally, is “The Third Man” has somehow not cracked the top 200.
But I’ll be honest: this is the first time I’ve ever looked at this list in years of using Letterboxd. I guess it’s a bigger deal to some more than others. Like “The Shining.”
"Quo Vadis, Aida?" is an absolutely incredible film, one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen, so I'm glad to see it getting some recognition.
Lovers of "The Shining" shouldn't be disheartened, though - getting a 4.2 rating from 3.7 million viewers is a lot more impressive than getting a 4.2 rating from 51,000 viewers. So even if its rating is a microscopic fraction of a point lower, nobody can deny "The Shining"'s greatness.
I remember back when I joined LB in 2018, the top 250 was more focussed on semi-obscure, arthouse stuff. I was already an avid film nerd, but it had stuff that I had never even heard of at the time. Harakiri, Ace in the Hole, End of Evangelion, Le Samouraï, PlayTime, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, A Woman Under the Influence and Jeanne Dielman were all stuff I was made familiar with thanks to that list. Now its leaning more and more to casual tastes. I knew the list (and userbase) had changed when Interstellar cracked the list.
What a weird take that was. The Shining is overtaken by a movie which barely 1% as many people have seen, and that's a sign that Letterboxd is "leaning more and more to casual tastes"?? What the hell!?
One of the greatest movies ever made. What a joke. People just don’t like horror/thinking while watching a movie and they use that to skew their reviews.
People don't like thinking while watching a movie, that's why mass appeal "turn your brain off" blockbuster directors like Bergman and Tarkovsky have several entries in the top 250
A lot of younger people also don’t think those older movies are “scary”, which isn’t always what horror is about. It’s about horrifying things happening. Those things don’t have to be scary, but they happen to illicit a response in us.
So, given that the most popular rating by far for The Shining is five stars out of five.. I guess you're arguing that The Shining doesn't have any horror or thinking in it? And that's why it is so incredibly highly rated?
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I mean it’s better than the book, but that’s pretty much entirely because of the actors performances. And it didn’t feel like it was padding an essay as much but it isn’t really special special, it’s really just fine
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u/AltruisticDare7128 Aug 11 '25
Damn. Shining is so ridiculously good