You did it, film fans! You convinced Martin Scorsese to take on the life of self-imposed homework that is operating an account on social media site Letterboxd. Never again will Martin Scorsese be able to sit there and just experience a movie, he must now always be thinking “is this three stars or three and a half stars, and should I write down my actual thoughts or come up with some joke?” while at the theater.
Scorsese dropped this thrilling news on Instagram, not long after announcing that he’s scared of emails, along with a lovely photo of himself sitting in a chair and holding up his iPad—as if to say “look, I’m on the computer!” to his many fans. But what about Scorsese’s Letterboxd? Has he gone through and given star ratings to every movie he’s ever seen? Has he ranked the Studio Ghibli canon like the rest of us? Does he do real reviews or joke reviews???
Unfortunately, Scorsese hasn’t actually reviewed anything. He has, as of this writing, logged 69 films (hee hee hoo hoo ha ha), but those are part of a list he has put together highlighting classic films that he sees as good companion pieces to some of his movies (a use of Letterboxd that is, arguably, more interesting that seeing him log a two-star review of Five Nights At Freddy’s that just says “not as scary as the games” or whatever people want from him).
That list is probably worth perusing for movie buffs looking for some kind of insight into the Scorsese canon from the man himself, and he offers compelling teases about what connects these movies to his own work, Some of them share “inspiration,” he says, others have similar characters or “spirit,” and some are “far more mysterious than that.” He even has a little blurb about most of the movies, and it’s so fascinating that it almost makes us regret our dumb jokes about this! Once again, Scorsese has taken something that you think you can predict, or that you think you’ve seen before, and he made it into something a lot more thoughtful than it seemed. It’s almost like he’s very smart and knows a lot about stuff!
That being said, get some reviews in there, Marty! Let us have our fun!