One of the neat aspects of a Letterboxd membership, often mentioned in my writing about the platform, is the stats page. It’s broken out into sections, breaking down watch history and habits into beautiful graphics and aggregate scores. It’s worth the price of subscription and generally very inspiring. It think my approach to movie-watching has changed a lot as a direct result of it. The stats show I’m becoming more “well-rounded,” but I have a lot of room to grow.
One stats section in particular, labeled “List Progress,” features a number of loops that illustrate the percentage of films watched within a number of influential lists. While my percentages in some general-consumer categories are very high (Top 250 Most Fans, Box Office Mojo 100, etc.), my critic lists ratios are generally low.[1]
In an effort to close some of these loops, I’ve compiled all of the unseen films that appear on at least two of the following lists (completion rate as of the date of posting).
- The Letterboxd Top 250 (70/250)
- IMDb Top 250 (126/250)
- Criterion Collection (63/1545)
I’m calling this list “Closing The Loops” and plan to draw from it for various challenges in 2024 like my Film Draft or the 2024 Criterion Challenge. I've included in the notes which lists each film appears on. I'll start on this list in 2024 and I’ve recorded my current progress below so I'll have something to reflect on at the end of the year. There's a lot of overlap between this list and others featured on stat pages, so the intention is to make progress on all of the featured loops by knocking off the low-hanging fruit first.
Watching so many “classic” flicks this year, many of them published by Janus or Criterion, played a big part in this idea. I’ve subscribed to the Criterion Channel and started building a little Blu-ray collection of my own.[2] Just my favorites.
Is three major challenges in a calendar year too many? I don’t think so. As I hinted in the wrap-up post for this year’s Halloween marathon, I’ll be dropping the minimum for that particular challenge back down to 31. Picking from the “Loop” list for all three, I expect to get through a small majority of the 142 films on this list within the year.
