An alternative to IMDB scores, whats a better way to pick movies?

The best indicator is a recommendation from someone whose opinion on movies is largely aligned with yours. I suppose you need a platform where the user is profiled and matched against reviewers/raters/critics with similar tastes. Has anyone done this?

When it comes to picking things you are spending your free time on, movies, dining out, video games, books, etc. you are more likely to immediately not even consider stuff you strongly dislike. Its really frustrating to see things in lists you wouldn't even consider. You lose any hope in that system being able to help you find something to escape reality for a while.

What is needed is a movie pick service and that starts with asking what genres you hate. Then get into specific movies you hate to further refine the list of things I don't want to see but at the same time clarifying questions to narrow down the like/dislikes because there are movies that combine elements from different genres. For example, The Joker could be considered in the #superhero, #sad, #mind-fuck categories and if you like #superhero movies but strongly dislike #sad and #mind-fuck then those should be weighted higher and the system shouldn't show The Joker on any personal lists.

The service should have an unfiltered search so people can just find stuff too.

It's impossible to press a complex object into singular value. Everyone has different key aspects and you can't see from a single value which key aspects are strong and which are weak.

Read some reviews and critics to get a hint on the vibes and content of a movie and whether it matches your personal taste. IMDB has them both.

Metacritic consistently come out on top when compared to IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. This article is a good dive into the pros and cons:

https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2018/02/04/imdb-rotten-to...

Only you can know what you like.

The more movies you watch, the better your intuiton for predicting if you'll like the movie by watching the trailer will get.

I found imdb scores are good to have a general idea. Eg I probably won't like a movie with a 5.9 score, even if the trailer seemed good. Or I'll give a movie with a >8 score a chance if the trailer is okay, but sometimes I know a movie is not for me by the trailer, no matter how high the score is.

For everything in between I decide mostly by the trailer and the past movies of the director.

I like a few actors, directors, screenwriters. I watch what they did, and watch movies when one of them makes one. I can't watch anything else. It limits the movies I can watch to one or two per couple of years, but it's okay.

I used to be a voracious movie consumer when I was younger, but it's due to the fact there was a backlog. Now there is none.

I've had some good recommendations from https://movielens.org/

Also, if you like a particular movie/genre then it's best to google for similar ones. People tend to recommend 'if you like X then you should also check out Y'. I've found this to be a decent indicator.

In the past I used to use Criticker (https://www.criticker.com/) and found that once I'd rated some movies the recommendations were very good.

But like others have said the easiest way is to find a friend/critic who has similar taste to you and just see what they recommend.

I am really looking for an answer to this. I promise to incorporate the best answer arriving out of our discussion in my site flixcatalog.com. I don't think the existing filter on imdb scores makes sense.

You could, instead of looking at the score only, also use the tags on imdb to at least guide you to films of interest to you.

letterboxd.com - The score is a good reference, but you will also find really good lists from users with the same taste as yours.