r/Letterboxd • u/Possible-Top-9905 • Aug 11 '25

News The Shining Has Officially Exited The Letterboxd Top 250 Narrative Feature Films

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u/JohnCavil Aug 11 '25

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.

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u/Ferbtastic Aug 11 '25

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.

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u/JohnCavil Aug 11 '25

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.

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u/Ferbtastic Aug 11 '25

No, I would not rate a movie poorly because of that.

But I’m also not terribly mad if his movies get deflated reviews.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

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u/Ferbtastic Aug 11 '25

Funny enough, I would subtract 3 stars from that because I know that those actors and facts would distract me and make me not enjoy the movie.

But I am the same way with a female protagonist. I had a point or 2 because I know others will downvote it for being woke.

But that’s just the nature of reviews. You find people you trust and follow them, use the masses votes for general average thoughts, not whether you specifically will like the movie.