The Letterboxd ‘Video Retailer’ Will Open on Wednesday and Appears to be like 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 definitely 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, dangerous issues occur. Nevertheless, since Tiny took over at Letterboxd, the location has solely continued to thrive and alter in largely constructive methods. A brand new rental integration looks like simply the ticket to maintain customers coming again for extra.

And Lucas was, and stays, right. Folks 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 number of the greater 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 lease within the U.S., with the identical 48-hour viewing window as different paid streaming-on-demand providers that allow viewers “lease” content material. Pricing will differ primarily based on territory—with some supposed to be Letterboxd exclusives for a given nation.

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

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

The “Retailer” will probably be divided into two “cabinets.” One known as “Unreleased Gems,” and one known 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 will not be so form to this explicit one, however oh nicely. One constructive assessment 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 few illness that spreads when somebody carrying it appears at you. It gained 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, usually known as the best Filipino movie of all time; It Should Be Heaven, a 2019 absurdist comedy/drama a few 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.

In case you’re an elite Letterboxd person, it is best to have logged or watchlisted all of those already or else what are you even doing? 

When it comes to how you can stream, the FAQ supplied 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 fee, in the event you use Letterboxd, put together to see these motion pictures organically present up in your pals’ person exercise, sparking your curiosity and FOMO.