Letterboxd is known for its quippy film reviews, and the platform’s newest member fits right in: Philomena Cunk.
For the uninitiated, Cunk is a world-renowned journalist, acclaimed for her work on the documentaries Cunk on Britain, Cunk on Earth, and Cunk on Life. Cunk may not know much about the subjects she covers, and she may put her interview subjects in uncomfortable positions—but on the bright side, she also isn’t real.
Cunk is a character portrayed by English comedian Diane Morgan. For her next mockumentary series, Morgan as Cunk is tackling the history of filmmaking in Cunk on Cinema.
How better to let her fellow cinephiles know about the new series, than to meet them where they’re at? Hence her new Letterboxd account, @cunkoncinema, with which Cunk joins the 30 million movie lovers already on the app.
“Done a show about cinema so the producers made me set this up for PR reasons,” reads the account’s bio. “They’re literally watching me type this now.”
So far, Cunk has left 18 reviews in her signature deadpan, which translates even over text. Her first review was for E.T.: “Basically a kid finds a little old man hiding from the police in his shed. The old man gets the kid drunk and says nobody must know about their friendship. A lot of fingering. In the end, the old man gets locked and is taken away in a prison ship. I cried.” Cunk gave the film five stars.
Other five-star entries on Cunk’s Letterboxd include The Wizard of Oz, which she called a “garish film about colours for drag queens and under fives,” and Die Hard, which she said is “not just Christmassy, which makes you think.”
Meanwhile, she’s panned movies including Rain Man and The Wicker Man, both dubbed “disappointing superhero films,” and Thor: The Dark World. “Dark. Couldn’t see anything,” Cunk wrote.
Cunk is leaving more reviews every day, presumably leading up to the series’ release. On November 10, she continued her streak of movies with “Seven” in their titles: Following Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Seven Samurai, she watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which she assumed was a “spin off from Seven, with Brad Pitt and also spin off from the Bride of Frankenstein, not with Brad Pitt.”
Giving the internet a taste of Cunk’s movie taste might be the perfect primer for Cunk on Cinema, which will feature out-there interviews with Hollywood icons like composer Daniel Pemberton, director Michael Bay, and actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Cunk on Cinema comes to Netflix on November 15.
