Like a horror movie that finally-I don’t know. Yeah, it’s such a bizarre one to give five stars but I think it was like the first really like, horrible movie I watched that I felt like so much effect from. It’s like a revenge movie but some depravity involved, but this one makes the list, five stars. I have seen reviews of this movie people just being totally horrified about it. SLIM There’s one that jumps out at me, real quick, Martyrs, 2008. The five stars is just like an extra bit, you know? so like, realistically, those are the five stars. Although, if you look at my four-stars, all of those are movies I can’t really find like a fault with.

It’s gotta mean a lot to me and I’ve got to have so much like stories behind that for it to be like the absolute perfect movie. JAY I don’t know, I have such like a thing about like, if I keep coming back to it, over and over again. JAY Paddington 2 is four and a half, I think. SLIM I’ll tell you what, I’m looking at it right now, I don’t see RoboCop in Jay’s five-star ratings. GEMMA RoboCop, how many stars? Five stars, surely. That’s why I don’t give a lot of films five stars initially. It’s got to be like the best film in the world. I’ve always just had this thing that five stars is like, the epitome of perfection. What does the film have to do to get a five-star from you? steady, steady, beautiful, beautifully designed staircase up to a horrifically terrifying cliff. GEMMA Like, to describe it to the listener, it’s like a really pretty staircase. You guys are the first people to bring it up verbally, in such a public platform as well. Because I have like keeping this up and people have like mentioned it every now and again of like, why I hang back on five stars. JAY Yeah, I’m glad someone’s like finally noticed it. do you see this, Jay? Is this a bit? It’s like the most perfect histogram I’ve ever seen, there’s like no five stars. So the chart on everyone’s like Letterboxd profile, when you look to see someone’s rating spread, you know, through up to five stars. So yeah, I really appreciate you guys inviting me on here. So please welcome, to quote from his profile, the silliest little guy on Letterboxd-Jay, hello and welcome to The Letterboxd Show.

Jay is also a Letterboxd member with more than 30,000 followers, 85 very specific lists and a ratings histogram that holds right back on those five stars. GEMMA Jay Bennett is a poster designer with the creative agency Intermission Film who do amazing work in the cinema space, creating posters and trailers and other things to get us to go… to… the… movies… at… the… cinema. I’m Slim, Gemma is also with us in studio, and this week we travel across an ocean to England to meet a guest whose day job is very much of interest to the Letterboxd crew right now, as we’re making the final tweaks to a new poster feature that will allow Patron members to select the poster when you look at your favorite film’s Letterboxd page. SLIM Hello and welcome back to The Letterboxd Show, our podcast about the movies people love watching from Letterboxd: the social network for people who love watching movies. Well, was the stick successfully removed from your ass? Sir, did you just have a surgical procedure? You can get that when they're 140 minutes or 190 minutes: its like an ordeal in some ways, and often the effect that the extended runtime has on the audience is conducive to the kind of tone that movies that are that long are striving for: brevity is for comedies.I want to thank you for enduring all these years that I was an insufferable bore. I like the idea of movies being an undertaking, and you don't get that when they're 90-120 minutes. Hell, there was a long tradition of intermedes in plays, intermezzi in baroque operas and then double-bills in both opera and film, the whole purpose of which was precisely to fill-up more of the patrons' evening then just a meagre two hours. Operas were like that, too: a decent Gotterdamerung is about 4.5 hours. Stageplays were often much longer than that: an unabridged Hamlet is around four hours. Why? Who decided this is somekind of magic number? Many a silent film extended well beyond that, from Cabiria and Intolerance to Abel Gance's Napoleon. 2 hours is the sweet spot for me, even better if a movie can wrap things up well in 90-100 minutes.

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