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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

I always hear people say this about the Netflix catalog, but I never understand what metric or criteria people are using. I find there is a ton of great content on Netflix, and I have way more things I want to watch on there than time to watch it.

I always wonder if people who say this either have very particular interests, or are trying to find specific tv shows/movies and not finding them on Netflix. If you are not set on a particular thing, it seems to me that there is a ton of great content.

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Different strokes for different folks.

I don't stream a lot. Every few months I'll just want to zonk out for a while though. The past few times I've wanted to watch "nothing in particular" it's gone something like:

1. Sit down, open Netflix.

2. Scroll through all the categories and suggestions on the home screen, finding nothing interesting.

3. Search for a few things I thought of while scrolling. Search returns things I can watch instead since what I searched for isn't on Netflix.

3. Open Prime Video, see something I'm interested in suggested pretty quickly, pay $ to rent or buy.

I second this. I also experience this with Youtube. If Youtube monetized the part where you're scrolling looking for a video they would 10x their ad revenue.

That used to my experience many years ago before I started using the "not interested" button aggressively. Now every video on my YouTube front page is 10/10

I have really broad interests in film—it blows my mind when people complain that not enough good or original films come out in a given year, I can't even make it through half the probably-good ones each year, I don't know what they're looking at or what their tastes must be like to come to that conclusion—but definitely find Netflix's catalog to be notably weak compared to Hulu or (HBO)Max, and it's been that way for years. I'd class it with second-tier services like Paramount, but from what I've seen on there lately, even that may be better.

It's got Apple TV beat, I guess, but I wouldn't call that a major streaming service.

[EDIT] Oh and I'd say it's overall worse than D+, for that matter, even though that's basically an umbrella for a few niche services. Like if I could only have one of those two, I'd take D+. And D+ kinda sucks.

The way Max is going, it's going to make Netflix look like the Criterion Collection in a few years.

Oh, I know. Matter of time before I drop that one. They've inexplicably decided to destroy their own streaming service, on purpose.

That's especially true since I've noticed stuff max yanked has popped up on netflix.

If netflix wants to lean in even further, they should pick up rights to produce additional seasons of most of the stuff Warner Brothers Discovery cancelled last year (they're the parent company of HBO and have subpar management, even by Hollywood exec standards).

> it blows my mind when people complain that not enough good or original films come out in a given year

I have a weird take on this.

Before I started working on my startup, I had a lot of time to watch and even make movies. I typically would watch about ~50-100 films a year. When I was younger, it was even more. I was voracious.

I tend to like indie and art house films, but I'll also enjoy popular fare. I'm not a snob. As long as the choices of the writers, directors, actors, and editors make sense, I'm typically able to assign a rating and slot the film into some kind of tier list.

But I'm always left unsated by the decision envelope.

The film will make its choices, but I always find myself wanting to go in other directions. Sometimes wildly different ones. I feel more like an active participant, critic, or perhaps even script doctor or producer.

When the story beats of a film change, my imagination keeps predicting outcomes along various trajectories. Sometimes I'm a perfect predictor. In these instances, films tend to be full of lazy tropes and are completely unsatisfying. Other times, my predictor is way off. If the dissonance is huge, sometimes I'm also left upset by the departure from expectations. It depends on whether the rest of the work makes sense as a whole.

I can't turn this off. It's always running.

I only see a handful of films a decade that will sit with me for days or weeks. The themes rhyme and have an ethereal logic that transcends me. These are the films that play my predictor like an instrument. Their choices are better than mine. Surprisingly and delightfully so. They reach my soul and change who I am as a person. These are films that I wouldn't change in the slightest. That I wish I could forget and watch again, and again, and again with fresh eyes.

I enjoy film, but I can't stop my overactive analysis. As I've gotten older, this attitude has only deepened. It makes it hard to call watching film entirely passive or enjoyable.

I enjoy the activity, but not always the film. The feelings are fleeting, and I'm left wanting for more.

Except occasionally. And I cherish those.

You've thought about this a lot, and I understand it's a deeply personal thing, but I'll ask:

What are a handful of recent films that were noteworthy by your criteria?

And a handful of all-time noteworthies?

Watching time-filler crowd-pleaser nothing-to-say movies that seem to be made simply because the world is full of non-discriminating consumers and someone needs to take their money ... leaves me feeling pretty bored.

There's a time and a place for it all, I guess. But life (free time) is too short (scarce) to waste.

(Not the poster you’re asking)

What sort of thing are you into? What are some movies you really like? Would help to tune any suggestions.

[edit] Meanwhile, some shots in the dark:

- The Green Knight — Based on the story by the Pearl Poet and expanded and adapted with a combo of other Arthurian tales and the filmmakers’ own twists. Basically, a lonely, somewhat psychedelic (but not in a bright-kaleidoscope-colors sort of way…) dark fantasy journey with tasteful hints of dozens of influences adorning it. A great Winter watch, too. Benefits from the best screen and system you can get in front of.

- You Won’t Be Alone — Broadly horror-themed but not in a Hollywood monster movie or Halloween popcorn muncher sort of way. It’s not really aiming for scares, exactly. Comically similar themes and message to a major widely-lauded off-kilter film from the same year (2022) but approached from a very different angle. Macedonian language. You may worry in the first twenty minutes that you’ve stumbled into the Easter European Indie Movie Doldrums of Mediocrity, but persevere, it starts to come together and develop purpose before long. Hard recommend for fans of The Witch who liked the “historically accurate” grossness & mythology of that film, but it’s not as firmly in the horror genre as that was.

On the lighter (and not quite as good, good) side:

- The Kid Detective — Semi-comedy. Imagine the stereotypical middle-aged guy who’s never topped their time as a high school quarterback. Now imagine if instead of playing football, they were a kid detective (you know, Nancy Drew sorts of stuff) and that is the thing they peaked at in high school. That’s our protagonist. Film sags at times but the premise is so fun and relatively-well-used that it’s still a good time, if that blurb above piqued your interest at all. Certainly a sort of noir, with all that entails, so if Your Hero getting his ass kicked more than doing the ass kicking bothers you, avoid (as with lots of noirs)

- Spontaneous — Dark high school romance-comedy. Also, people, all over the place, have started occasionally suddenly exploding for no evident reason. That’s the movie’s deal. It took me embarrassingly long to realize what it was really about (or, at least a major one of the things it’s about) and it punched me in the damn gut when I did. Oof.

I'm open to genre. Mostly I'd like to spend a couple hours watching something that is either an impressive work of some kind (but not one that requires a film degree to appreciate), or has something mutilayered and interesting to say about people or the world. The latter seemed to be where GP was going, and I was curious to learn what films meet that criteria for them.

I reliably enjoy films from Miranda July and Greta Gerwig. I think I'd enjoy Wes Anderson more if he was a bit less campy (but I get it, that's a big part of the point, so I guess I appreciate the other things he's good at).

Thank you for the suggestions -- I have never heard of any of them. They are far afield from my known preferences, but sound like the better versions of the options that Netflix wants me to watch, which is great! I will check them out.

With those preferences stated (I almost listed Lady Bird!) I'd toss on:

- Nomadland — Lonely older woman clinging to the bottom rung of the economic ladder is pushed into van-living and finds community. Basically positive-but-bittersweet vibes by the end, and with a similar strong reliance on setting and mood to something like a Wes Anderson work (though without the precise placement of every single element in frame), but definitely not "cute" like his are, and not about comfortable rich people. Includes many real people living in vans, blurring the lines between fiction and reality (and deftly almost-entirely avoiding the usual problems that come with including non-actors in a film). Lots of great outdoor shooting and lighting work.

- Red Rocket — Struggling, middle-aged male porn star moves back to his small, blue-collar hometown in Texas. We learn about his still-evolving relationships with the people he left behind when he moved away to LA, and see him make some... choices. Probably the most into archetype and symbolism of anything I've listed except maybe The Green Knight. By the end, is very much about its protagonist as a kind of daemon, if you will, of a part of the American experience and spirit (and also a representation of one or more sorts of real person with whom one may be familiar from one's own experience). Great attention to detail for a certain kind of ordinary setting, in the way that Anderson or maybe Miyazaki pay attention to that kind of everyday detail, but employed to obtain perfectly-trashy environs that aren't at all pretty but are also entirely true-to-life, not caricature. If you've spent time in such places, the clutter, the way trash has accumulated, the way in which the miniblinds are broken just so, and the way the people exist in that space, will feel very familiar.

- Eighth Grade — Bo Burnham's only film (I think?). Akin to something like Gerwig's Lady Bird, I'd say, but less heightened and more "real".

This is great -- all of these suggestions are new to me.

With more time to dredge my memory, I also remember really enjoying Amelie and a most (not all) of Hal Hartley's movies.

So I guess that boils down to "independent movies with interesting characters and/or dialogue"?

Thank you again!

Hey, maybe you should consider writing fanfiction to satiate these urges and analyses. Not joking. I don't write fanfiction, but I read it, and whenever I read the author stating their motivation for writing, it's something like this, just for the story of some particular series, books, or game, rather than it being noted as a trend.

depends on which country you live in, and what you've already watched so far.

I'm not one of the people complaining, but I've definitely seen my self scrolling a lot with Netflix recommending I re-watch a lot of the stuff I liked before only to end up giving up and switching to something else.

I think many people want to watch what their friends are watching (so they can talk about it at work/school tomorrow).

That means if their friends are watching stuff on Amazon Prime, then netflix can never meet their needs.

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