Special to the Herald
Netflix and I are locked in psychological warfare.
A few weeks ago, I had knee surgery. I’m fine, but I needed something to do with all my shiny new spare time. So I figured that having movies delivered to my door for a set amount of money each month would be a nice way to spend my days without having to get off the couch. But I didn’t count on Netflix being quite so annoying.
See, they can’t just leave you alone over at Netflix. They’re constantly bothering you to rate the movies you return or add extra discs per month to your program. But even more obnoxiously, Netflix cannot stop itself from forcing movie recommendations on its customers.
Every time you click on a movie you want, an obnoxious little window chirps up to announce a half-dozen movies you’ll absolutely LOVE.
They seem to just do everything with a ridiculously simple “actor/genre” formula. If you choose a movie, Netflix will recommend the same actor in the same genre, or as close as possible. If you decide to rent “The Departed,” it suggests “Gangs of New York.” Just watched “Marie Antoinette”? How about “The Virgin Suicides”?
But my movie choices are, by nature, hugely eclectic. I’ll watch just about anything done well, from horror to buddy comedies to courtroom dramas or indie flicks. With the general exception of prison movies and war movies, there isn’t really a single genre I don’t occasionally dabble in.
That’s how the war started: I identified my own eclectic taste as the Achilles’ tendon of Netflix. If your tastes go outside their painfully simple actor/genre formula, they just don’t know what to do.
When I chose “Easy Rider,” they confidently suggested “Five Easy Pieces.” But then I added “Shogun Assassin,” followed by “Amadeus” and “Double Indemnity,” and Netflix started to get really nervous.
And when I put a bunch of British TV shows on my queue, I think I heard something in the computer snap.
And that’s when I crossed the line to adding movies I have no intention of actually watching, just to mess with them.
Your move, Netflix!
In all seriousness, though, I think movie recommendations are far too complicated to follow a simple two-step formula. A few days ago, a new friend asked for a list of my top 10 movie recommendations, and it got me away from my war with Netflix long enough to really think about how I would do it.
I recommend movies all the time, and take recommendations in return, but the idea of being limited to 10 is really fascinating — now there’s discipline.
How exactly do you pick movies that a large number of people will like? And with over a hundred years’ worth of American movies available, plus foreign films, how do you pick just 10?
I’ve mentioned in this column that there’s a difference between movies I like and movies I think are good. But movies that I’d recommend to anyone are a separate animal entirely. I know that a recommendation can’t be anything too polarizing, too obvious (I’m not recommending “Jurassic Park” to anybody: if you’re over 20 and you still haven’t seen it, I can’t help you), or too weird.
It shouldn’t be too depressing — no “Schindler’s List” on my Movie List, sorry, Spielberg — or too forgettable. Most importantly, though, you have to make a serious effort to think of them as not movies YOU enjoy, but movies others will enjoy.
When I dug too deep into the concept, though, I started confusing myself. Should I stick to a particular genre, or try to spread my choices out among all genres? Should I only pick modern films, or open it up to classics? How much value should be placed on education — am I going for movies that teach something, like “Traffic” or “Supersize Me,” or staying away from any “message” movies? Should I focus on movies that have meant something special to me, at a certain time in my life?
After a while of this, I had to go sit down from all the thinking (And watch some of my Netflix — those British people are hilarious). It’s true — recommending good movies to people shouldn’t come from a painfully easy computer formula, because humans are smarter and more complicated than that.
But I can’t spend the rest of my life tailoring picks for other people, either. It makes me tired. So, because I love a challenge (and because I’m still bored), next week I’m going to try writing about my top 10 movie recommendations of all time for anyone.
It’s going to take me at least that long to narrow it down.
Stay tuned — if I can pull this off, I think it’s going to prove once and for all who’s smarter.
Take that, Netflix!
Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film and television, and works for a television production company in Madison. E-mail comments and questions to Melissa at mfo.usc@gmail.com.
