Social Networking Sites for Movie Fans

Over the past few years, I’ve tried out a few different movie-centered social networking sites and for the most part, haven’t had much luck finding something I could stick with for long.  However, there are two that I’m quite fond of.

First there’s iCheckMovies.  If you’re into movie lists and try to see every Best Picture nominee or every movie on the AFI’s lists, iCheckMovies is sure to be one of your favorite websites.  iCheckMovies has compiled over 100 popular movie lists and all you have to do is go through and check off every movie you’ve seen on those lists.  They’ve got all the obvious lists like every AFI list, IMDB Top 250, and all the Best Picture nominees and winners, but dedicated cinephiles will be happy to see lists like Criterion Collection titles, silentera.com’s Top 100 Silent Era Films, and several lists devoted to foreign films.  This site makes it so easy to track your progress on all these lists and it gives awards based on the percentage of movies you’ve seen on any given list (bronze for 50%, silver for 75%, etc.)

You can also make your own lists, which is perfect if you’re trying to see every movie by a certain actor/actress or director.  However, there’s a little bit of good news/bad news about this feature.  The bad news is that if you’re a free user, you can only make one personal list.  However, you are able to see lists other people create.  For example, let’s say you’re a free user who is trying to see all of Bette Davis’ movies.  If another user has already created a list of every Bette Davis movie, you can just follow that and keep track of your progress that way.  You have to have a paid premium account to make more than one list, but the good news is their premium memberships run only  1 to 3 Euros (about $1.32-$3.97) per month.

Then there’s my current favorite, Letterboxd.  Letterboxd currently in beta mode, so you either have to request an invite on the site or get one from someone who already is a member.  Letterboxd lets you log each movie you watch and you can record which date you watched it on, write reviews, make lists, and see what your friends are watching.  Unlike iCheckMovies, Letterboxd lets you log movies that you’ve seen before.  I love being able to keep track of re-watched movies because then I see exactly how often I’m re-watching movies instead of watching new things, so it helps keep me focused on my never-ending “To Watch” list.

Unlike iCheckMovies, Letterboxd is more about the social aspect.  You can add friends on iCheckMovies and you can see which movies they’re checking, but you don’t get to see their thoughts on what they watch, and that’s what I like most about Letterboxd.  My only complaint about Letterboxd is that since it doesn’t get its information from IMDB, there have been times when I’ve gone to log a movie only to find it’s not in their database.  iCheckMovies, on the other hand, does get their database information from IMDB, so you can check pretty much anything you can think of on there.

I should also point out that since Letterboxd is still in beta mode, it is a work in progress and plenty of things will be added in the future.  I took a look through the feedback section of their site and it seems some excellent ideas are either already in the works or are being taken into consideration.  Being able to suggest movies to friends is something I’d love to see added in the future.  All in all, it’s a site that’s off to a very good start and has a lot of potential.