The Letterboxd ‘Video Retailer’ Will Open on Wednesday and Seems Superior

The Letterboxd “Video Retailer” will open on Wednesday, December 10. Let’s fucking go. 

As my Gizmodo colleague, Lucas Ropek, wrote last month when this characteristic was introduced:

It’s actually a nice flip of occasions for the favored movie website—and maybe not what most customers had been anticipating after its acquisition by Tiny, a big Canadian holding firm, which purchased the site for $50 million in 2023. Often, when an enormous firm buys a scrappy little website, unhealthy issues occur. Nevertheless, since Tiny took over at Letterboxd, the positioning has solely continued to thrive and alter in largely optimistic methods. A brand new rental integration looks like simply the ticket to maintain customers coming again for extra.

And Lucas was, and stays, appropriate. Individuals say we’re too destructive at Gizmodo, however as extra particulars have emerged about what Letterboxd is making an attempt to do right here, that is simply sounding cooler and cooler, to the purpose the place there may be merely nothing to be snarky about—besides possibly a few of the increased charges concerned, however we’ll see if even that seems to be value it.

According to Variety, Video Retailer titles will price between $3.99 and $19.99(!) to hire within the U.S., with the identical 48-hour viewing window as different paid streaming-on-demand providers that allow viewers “hire” content material. Pricing will range based mostly on territory—with some supposed to be Letterboxd exclusives for a given nation.

Which brings us to why this seems to be so good: the curation. 

At launch there shall be solely 9 motion pictures to select from—excellent for an intense marathon weekend of movie-mainlining. 4 of them are beforehand unreleased titles, and judging from the most recent Letterboxd blog post about Video Store, they (principally) look extraordinarily promising.

The “Retailer” shall be divided into two “cabinets.” One referred to as “Unreleased Gems,” and one referred to as “Misplaced & Discovered.” Right here is the “Unreleased Gems” shelf:  

• It Ends. A Gen-Z horror-comedy about an infinite freeway.
• Sore: A Spouse from the Future. An Indonesian sci-fi-romance/time loop film set in Croatia.
• Kennedy. A Hindi-language crime film. Letterboxd reviewers are usually not so form to this specific one, however oh nicely. One optimistic evaluate calls it a “gritty nihilistic neo-noir,” so I’ll give it the good thing about the doubt anyway.
• The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo. A Chilean AIDS allegory a couple of illness that spreads when somebody carrying it seems to be at you. It received the Un Sure Regard prize at Cannes earlier this 12 months.

Selection says the “Misplaced & Discovered” shelf will embody the next: Tiger on the Beat, a 1988 Chow Yun-Fats film directed by Lau Kar-Leung; Kisapmata from 1981, typically referred to as the best Filipino movie of all time; It Should Be Heaven, a 2019 absurdist comedy/drama a couple of Palestinian man touring overseas; Poison, Todd Haynes’ infamous 1991 provocation and the movie that made his profession; and Earlier than We Vanish, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2017 Invasion of the Physique Snatchers riff.

Should you’re an elite Letterboxd person, you need to have logged or watchlisted all of those already or else what are you even doing? 

When it comes to the way to stream, the FAQ offered by Letterboxd provides you a limited list of options: An Apple TV app, or beam the film of your option to your TV from a browser through Apple AirPlay or Chromecast. A really noticeable omission from that listing is Roku.

At any price, should you use Letterboxd, put together to see these motion pictures organically present up in your pals’ person exercise, sparking your curiosity and FOMO.