If you are cool like me, you have probably cancelled all mega-corp owned streaming services. While it is really nice managing my own media library like an adult instead of letting corpos decide arbitrarily what I can watch on a given day, that does mean I no longer have their input on new content. So I can obviously pick up on what shows and movies are hugely popular, but that’s a very small fraction of what gets released and simply non-representative of what is out there waiting.
Since most search engines are rendered useless by AI spam and SEO chasers, you can’t exactly just google “best goofball comedies” or you’ll just end up with the same 10-15 lousy suggestions on repeat.
Where do you go to discover shows and movies?
The “new uploads” section of several torrent sites.
- Wikipedia: go to Wiki pages for shows and movies that you do like and go down a rabbit hole. You can branch out quickly by finding links to other work from the same studio, same actors, same director, same writer… There are also sometimes related works linked, or links to works that inspired the movie, and pages on general movements/scenes (ex: french new wave, Dogme 95)
- Metacritic: Good for checking in on new releases, skews towards major releases (has plenty of “indie” coverage, still big budget but stuff that isn’t coming to every theater).
- Letterboxd: Follow filmmakers or critics that you like, or just browse the lists they have on there.
- Film Festival Programs: Check out what was accepted at Sundance, Toronto FF, Berlin FF, True/False FF, any other FF you may like. Usually a couple years after festival premier until there is distribution, so you should check older schedules from at least 2 years prior.
I keep loosely-categorized lists of movies and shows to watch. Whenever someone I know, or someone on a Lemmy thread, mentions a show or movie they like, I look it up. If it looks cool, I add it to the list.
Granted I’m not a huge TV or movie person, but for me this list grows faster than I can watch it.
There’s a few movie collectors I follow on youtube and I consider their recommendations and reviews of bluray discs. I’ve also picked up at least one movie from someone talking about it during one of those wired ‘tech’ support videos. Following a hashtag like cinemastodon or something can also get you some organic recommendations.
Care to link the tubes?
https://www.youtube.com/@ElliotCoen for reviews of discs and boutique media, sometimes I want to watch stuff I see Corridor Crew talk about, or cinemastix. Edit: I’m very interested if anyone knows of any women out there doing film reviews or discussions. It’s mostly dudes out there.
At this point:
- Red Letter Media / Half in the Bag (especially catch-ups)
- TorrentFreak weekly roundups (those get auto-added but not monitored to my Radarr via Trakt list and I review them periodically, especially once internet scores settle)
- Recommendations on Lemmy (specific communities like bmoviebonanza)