How Can I Sort Through So Many Movies?

December 27, 2009 7:52 AM

Movies, movies everywhere, don't know what to think - There are so many ways to get virtually any movie in the world. But the problem is, how do I know WHICH movies I want to see? I really don't want to waste (too much) time and money downloading or renting movies I turn out not to like.

I have come to rely on Rotten Tomatoes to guide me, but do I plug in the names of every movie listed to see if I want to see it or not?

Basically, here is my question: how do I find lists of really good movies? I mostly like "indie" movies although that description has become semi-ridiculous.

Is there any search engine or anything, that's maybe analogous to Pandora, for movies? e.g. If I love PULP FICTION and NORTH BY NORTHWEST and adored BLOW-UP but thought BLOWOUT was eh, and was ecstatic about VOLVER but not so much his sillier, earlier movies, and loved A SERIOUS MAN more than a lot of people did, yet couldn't get through BURN AFTER READING, and whereas MONTY PYTHON leaves me cold I adored KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, and _2001_ rocked my world but almost any other science fiction movie doesn't, how can I find out what else to try out of the thousands of titles there are out there??

(other than individually searching every title on Rotten Tomatoes?)

thanks

posted by DMelanogaster to Media & Arts (24 answers total)

Netflix has a cool feature where you rate the movies you've seen and based on that, it makes recommendations of similar movies that you'd like. It's a pretty easy system and although it takes a while to rate what you've seen, I've found some good recommendations. Of course you have to subscribe to their service to use it, but it's pretty cheap for what you get and they deliver pretty quickly. Also there are a lot to watch instantly online.

They also have lists of their Top 100, Critics Picks, Award Winners and tons of user generated lists.
posted by NoraCharles at 8:05 AM on December 27, 2009 [3 favorites]

Subscribe to Netflix and start rating the movies you've liked.

When I googled for "Pandora for movies" I found jinni.com, but I haven't used it.

Or ask Metafilter a specific question, like: recommend a movie for a feller who liked A Serious Man but hated Burn After Reading. (Though this won't help you on a larger scale, I'd be interested in reading the thoughts regarding this particular query!)
posted by thejoshu at 8:07 AM on December 27, 2009

With Live Plasma, you enter the name of a movie you like and it gives you a number of movies that are similar.
posted by rancidchickn at 8:11 AM on December 27, 2009

Look at the yearly lists of best reviewed movies on Metacritic. Their tastes run very indie and almost all of the best reviewed films on there are worth owning. From there, explore the other works of the directors who made them.
posted by fire&wings at 8:23 AM on December 27, 2009

nthing Netflix. Netflix has spent a lot of resources to identify what an individual might like based on their previous ratings. This works particularly well for people who love certain movies in certain genres, but dislike others that are generally well liked.

how do I find lists of really good movies?

This obviously is very subjective. I too enjoyed Volver but I also liked many of Almodóvar's older movies (which I would not characterize as 'silly'). This is why something like Netflix's individual recommendations might come in handy for you.

There are also many lists of movies, like the Criterion Collection.

Rotten tomatoes does nothing more than average reviews across the board. So the ratings, in many ways reflect, how well the movie with do with the masses.

I have come to rely on Rotten Tomatoes to guide me.
other than individually searching every title on Rotten Tomatoes?


Burn After Reading scored a 77% but you couldn't get through it. How does plugging in every title into RT help you, anyway?


I mostly like "indie" movies although that description has become semi-ridiculous.

Netflix has a fairly large collection of Indie movies but GreenCine carries a wider range of indie/foreign movies if you are really serious about it.
posted by special-k at 8:35 AM on December 27, 2009

Thirding the netflix recommendation filter - it's constantly being upgraded and it can give you some pretty interesting results.

I usually find a lot of my movies through phases of directors - if I like one director's movie, then I'll watch a few of their others.

Also, read a lot of contemporary movie critics - they'll often reference older movies in their current reviews, and it's a good way to get caught up on what the experts consider are the essentials.
posted by Think_Long at 8:36 AM on December 27, 2009

Best answer: AllMovie has a similar films section for any given movie and connects movies by genre. While I don't have much direct experience with it, I have use it's sister site Allmusic which has similar features and has done well in recommending new music.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 8:54 AM on December 27, 2009

The Netflix recommendation engine has been very accurate for me. Give it a shot!
posted by roomwithaview at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2009

Metacritic is great for this. You can look at currently playing movies to see what's getting good reviews - but personally I like browsing the Film awards and top 10s by year. You can scan to see which movies were "the best" from each given year, and you can see at a glance which movies were nominated for the big awards. Usually when I do this I'll look for movies that seemed to be critically acclaimed, that I haven't seen, and that match the mood I'm in. I'm usually able to find something pretty easily.
posted by PercussivePaul at 8:59 AM on December 27, 2009

Best answer: If you like the occasional scathing reviews (some movies deserve it), check out Pajiba, one of my favorite indie movie/tv/book/music review blogs. It started out reviewing just movies but has branched out.

They have all their end of year/decade Top lists right now if you look through the first few pages of posts.
posted by ijoyner at 9:00 AM on December 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

This might be an obvious suggestion, but think about what people did in a pre-Internet, pre-VCR era--they read critics, including back-catalog stuff, and year-end lists, and reviews of movies they might never get a chance to see. They read trade publications and fan magazines and labor-of-love zines. Might have even written a few reviews themselves, maybe for an alternative weekly or another niche-interest title. They flipped through reference books and made personal lists. They talked to their friends and families about movies. They went to second-run theaters and art-house theaters and rep theaters and drive-ins and regular theaters, and then just watched the most appealing-sounding thing that was playing. They joined local film societies, went to film festivals and just basically spent a lot of time thinking about movies.

And yeah, if you do all this stuff, you'll see some bad movies. But that would happen anyway.

Variations of this same basic question come up about music, books and plenty of other things, and I think the basic best answer is usually pretty much the same--immerse yourself in the thing. Like so many other things in this world, you mostly get out of it what you put into it.
posted by box at 9:04 AM on December 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I can see how it would be pretty daunting with unlimited choices. Being forced to have a limited selection at a video store ("hey that has a cool cover, let's get it"), or what's playing at the theater was "easier" but also leads to you watching a lot of really bad stuff.

I'd say start with IMDB's Top 250 list (it also breaks it down by decade or genre, here is Independent); then when you come across a movie you really like, look it up (on IMDB or Wikipedia) and check out other movies by the same director (or sometimes producer, cinematographer, whatever).
posted by starman at 9:18 AM on December 27, 2009

Here's another idea. Perhaps a little old-fashioned. Do you have a good video store nearby? You can ask the clerks who work there. They have built-in recommendation engines. Just tell them what you like and what you're in the mood for. Also these places will probably have a staff recommendation shelf, and maybe a list on the wall.

("A good video store" is probably not Blockbuster; you want the sort of place where film geeks work and where the movies are sorted by director, not by title.)
posted by PercussivePaul at 9:19 AM on December 27, 2009

Best answer: Movielens is a recommendation engine that I use--you rate movies and it gives titles based on other users who have given similar ratings to he same movies. I don't know how many ratings you need to add for the results to start being meaningful, but I find rating the movies to be somewhat addictive.
posted by camcgee at 9:46 AM on December 27, 2009

Best answer: Yeah, after rating about 250 movies, I've found that Netflix does an extremely good job of predicting what movies I'll enjoy. You could sign up for the cheapest subscription ($10, maybe?) and go on a frenzy of movie-rating. Then copy-paste the list of hundreds of recommendations and enjoy that for a while, and cancel your subscription. Netflix has spent time and money on their recommendations engine that no other website has.

For movies this decade, check out the list of best-of lists indexed over at kottke.

Metacritic is also a nice alternative to Rotten Tomatoes (more focused on top critics).
posted by acidic at 9:57 AM on December 27, 2009

Response by poster: thank you, everyone. I'm highlighting the websites that are promising. I don't really want to pay to join Netflix right now. But will consider for the future. As far as rottentomatoes.com, I use it as a place to point me to a bunch of reviews, and therefore to give me a decent idea of how the reviewers I tend to trust felt about a film.
posted by DMelanogaster at 10:21 AM on December 27, 2009

Also, check out the comments to this FPP.
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:21 AM on December 27, 2009

There's an interesting website which seems to be similar to Netflix, but free: Criticker. Just check out their site, rate 10 movies on a scale of 0 - 100 and based on that everytime you visit the page they'll give you reccomendations from various genres. Of course the more you rate the more accurate your suggestions become.

I think it works by comparing your ratings with those of reviewers, and the general public, and tried to make generalizations based on that.

As someone who gets all his movies from the Internet, this is a great screener. Definitely worth checking out and signing up.
posted by mateuslee at 10:25 AM on December 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

Netflix spends good money improving their algorithms, but have you considered asking your friends? The problems with the algorithmic methods are populating the models and outliers due to everyone's preference being just a bit different.

I find the best way to find new movies (and music) is to ask my friends.
posted by squorch at 10:46 AM on December 27, 2009

You can search Roger Ebert's reviews based on several criteria, one of which is his star rating.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:38 PM on December 27, 2009

Analogous to Pandora would be Jinni - watch what you wish for..dunno much if indies are there or not..
posted by iNfo.Pump at 5:21 PM on December 27, 2009

If you want to try the netflix trick, see if anyone you know uses it and see if they will either a)get you set up with a free 6 month trial or b) set you up a profile on their account.
posted by Night_owl at 5:41 PM on December 27, 2009

Netflix has a fairly large collection of Indie movies but GreenCine carries a wider range of indie/foreign movies if you are really serious about it.

Is this still true in 2009? When I left GreenCine a few years ago the only places they were still ahead were genres like Turkish rip-offs of popular American movies, and porn. They were never better for foreign in my experience, and were worse for some cultures. They used to be way behind Netflix when it came to Bollywood movies, for instance.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:05 PM on December 27, 2009

Lots of good suggestions here, but I wanted to say something about "do I plug in the names of every movie listed to see if I want to see it or not?"

I understand wanting to know others opinions about a particular movie and getting suggestions for more, but no formula or meta-criticism website will ever be able to predict your feelings about every movie accurately. Try to be okay with seeing a bad (or just not good) movie occasionally, and don't think you have to sit through the whole thing because you paid for it. Just like books, if you are a third of the way in and don't like it, give up. It may seem horrible at first, but it can be very freeing.

This is why Netflix is a good model, you pay one price no matter how many movies you rent. If you have three at a time and don't like the one you are watching, just put in the next one or start streaming.
posted by soelo at 7:56 AM on December 28, 2009