The Letterboxd ‘Video Retailer’ Will Open on Wednesday and Seems to be 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 pleasing flip of occasions for the favored movie web site—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 web site, dangerous 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 unfavorable 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’s merely nothing to be snarky about—besides perhaps a few of the larger charges concerned, however we’ll see if even that seems to be value it.

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

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

At launch there might 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 (largely) look extraordinarily promising.

The “Retailer” might 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 limitless 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 aren’t so sort to this specific one, however oh nicely. One optimistic evaluation calls it a “gritty nihilistic neo-noir,” so I’ll give it the advantage of the doubt anyway.
• The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo. A Chilean AIDS allegory a couple of illness that spreads when somebody carrying it seems at you. It gained the Un Sure Regard prize at Cannes earlier this yr.

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, usually 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.

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

By way of tips on how to stream, the FAQ offered by Letterboxd offers you a limited list of options: An Apple TV app, or beam the film of your option to your TV from a browser by way of Apple AirPlay or Chromecast. A really noticeable omission from that record is Roku.

At any price, if you happen to use Letterboxd, put together to see these motion pictures organically present up in your mates’ consumer exercise, sparking your curiosity and FOMO.