Ask HN: Movies...friends or reviews?
Say on Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV, how do you select what to watch next? I ignore reviews altogether, and I don't trust friends' opinions for the most part. The barrier to entry is low on unlimited subscription services that I find myself just starting movies and seeing if they're interesting enough to finish. This happens a few times per week. Compare that to the number of times I physically removed a VHS or DVD after renting it and drove back to the store to return it (a handful of times in 20 years). Even rarer is walking out of a movie theater, which I've only done because of mechanical problems. I'm in the same boat as byoung2 but would go further to say it applies to everything I watch, including movies in the theater. I have found that more than half the time, I strongly disagree with friends on whether a movie was good or not or how good it was to begin with. Alternatively, reviews don't really do much for me. Instead I watch trailers or get a basic understanding of what the movie is about and decide whether or not it looks interesting. Descriptions. Sometimes a friend's recommendation will cause me to look up a movie, but I virtually always decide based on what I can gather about the movie itself, including any descriptions, actors, directors, sometimes a trailer. Like byoung, I will ruthlessly abandon a Netflix movie, sometimes in the first minute after the titles.