How to Start a Movie Journal (and Actually Keep It)
A movie journal fails when you try to write reviews. Write three lines instead: the title and date, one image or moment you want to keep, and one honest sentence about what it did to you. That is the whole method and it takes ninety seconds. Do it the same night, before you have read anyone else's opinion, because tomorrow you will only remember the consensus. After a year you will have something no streaming history can give you, which is a record of what you actually thought at the time.
Three lines, ninety seconds
Title and date watched. One moment you want to keep. One honest sentence about the effect it had.
That is it. The instant a journal becomes a writing project it becomes a chore, and a chore gets abandoned in February. Ninety seconds survives.
Write it the same night
The gap between the credits and the next morning is where your own opinion lives. By tomorrow you will have absorbed a review, a friend's take or a general sense of the film's reputation, and you will write that instead without noticing.
The whole value of the journal is having your first reaction on the record, including the ones you later disagree with.
Record the moment, not the plot
You can look up the plot forever. What you cannot recover is the specific thing that hit you, the cut, the face, the line, the silence that went on slightly too long.
Years later the moments are the only part still worth reading.
Allow yourself to be unimpressed
A journal full of praise is a journal you are performing. Write down that you were bored, that you did not follow it, that you fell asleep at the ninety minute mark.
Those entries are the useful ones, because they show you what your taste is actually made of rather than what you would like it to be.
Paper or app, it barely matters
A notebook, a plain text file, the notes app, Letterboxd. The only real requirement is that it takes under two minutes to open.
One advantage of paper is that nothing else on the page is trying to get your attention. One advantage of Letterboxd is that other people are there. Pick the friction you prefer.
Read it back every few months
Every quarter, read the last twenty entries. You will see patterns you had no idea about, a director you keep returning to, a kind of ending you always resist, a month where you watched nothing good.
That review is where a journal turns from a record into taste.
- Three lines per film: title and date, one moment, one honest sentence. Ninety seconds.
- Write it the same night, before anyone else's opinion reaches you.
- Record moments rather than plot, and write down the films that bored you.
- Read the last twenty entries every few months. That is where the patterns appear.
The whole idea
Watch one movie this week. Talk about it Friday.
We pick one film. You watch it alone, on your own time. Friday at 7:30pm PT you get ten minutes on Zoom with one other person who watched it too. No club, no homework, no small talk.
See this week's pick $5Common questions
- What should I write in a movie journal?
- Title and date, one moment you want to keep, and one honest sentence about the effect it had on you. Avoid plot summary, which you can always look up later.
- Is Letterboxd better than a notebook?
- Neither is better. Letterboxd gives you other people and statistics, a notebook gives you a page with nothing else competing for attention. Choose based on which one you will actually open.
- How do I keep a film diary going?
- Keep the entry short enough that skipping it would take about as long as doing it, and write it the same night. Length is what kills film diaries, not discipline.