The lack of good movies to queue up in Netflix is f-ing depressing me.

Okay, so I do have 499 movies in my queue currently (the limit is 500), but still.  Once upon a time there was no end to the number of good movies I wanted to watch.  I mean, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have so many in my queue.

But I was just browsing the "popular new releases" section of Netflix and came across this page where there were exactly two movies that were rated above 3 stars, one of which I'd already seen (Slumdog Millionaire...and that wasn't even as good as City of God).  Maybe because I used to dream about making 4- and 5-star movies...but this is really f-ing depressing, man.

At least I can somewhat get my fix through TV on DVD--there are so many amazing shows from the last few years.  And I just bought both seasons of Carnivale on Amazon for like $40, a steal!
11 responses
I was thinking the same thing over the weekend while I was surfing my Netflix queue.
This had me worried 3 months ago so I suspended my account with them and have been using the money to actually buy food...and other stuff that's good for me...dang
It’s probably because of my age (52), but one of the reason I and my family decided to cancel our Netflix subscription was simply because we were not using it that much. It’s just like cable television where you have a 100+ channels but most occasions there’s nothing worth watching.

If you’re an avid movie watcher, Netflix selections can get pretty old, pretty fast. It was nice to be able to stream older movies from Netflix, but I honestly had to spend a lot of time finding something I either had never seen or was worth my time watching.

Thanks for the comments, everyone! Clearly I'm not alone in my worry/frustration. To note, I don't think this issue reflects poorly on Netflix, which I have loved and faithfully subscribed to for the last six years. It's more a criticism of where commercial (and even indie) Hollywood is headed in terms of quality.
I've been watching a lot of foreign films in the meantime...borrowing from friends and such. I guess Hollywood and even the indies, as you suggest, just aren't producing quality films anymore...are the filmmakers getting younger and younger without much to say? What is the trend? There has to be more to this...
Hi, I am (very) new on Posterous and came across Stephanie's post... tend to agree with the issue of "quality" in mainstream film. While I appreciate the effort involved in all film genres - really, how many times can we see a car get blown up or a human get slaughtered - ie: "choreographed adrenaline rush"... I don't object to it, but there definitely appears to be more of the predictable in modern film styles than anything else. And there's SO many more interesting things going on in and around the world - that could be portrayed so beautifully. Once I asked someone involved with film production why so little variety, the response I got was "it's all the numbers" - and that "producers in general are always concerned with appealing to what they refer to as "the lowest common mass" denominator (end quote).

Nice to meet you Stephanie!

Is it the lack of good movies or just how long we've been watching movies from Netflix -- having been on Netflix for more than 10 years and having gone through classics, Hong Kong Action, New Wave, horror, westerns, Bollywood, Noir, it's just getting harder to find good movies that I haven't seen.
I almost seem to spend as much time trying to find movies I want to watch as I do watching the movies I find! I've burned through BBC, documentaries, Indies, classic horror, and I've even Netflix'd movies I already have on VHS to watch again in DVD quality. Stephanie has 499 in her queue? I have a tenth of that number (and shrinking).
I use Netflix and I also get frustrated with the lack of good movies :S
And it is worse when you want to see the "Watch Instant", Hulu is better! :)
I've had the same frustrations with Netflix instant. So I started a list with all the best movies I find on there. I try to keep it fairly updated, feel free to check it out. :) and please add your own!

http://blog.thoughtbrain.com/2009/12/01/the-netflix-instant-list/

It is weird. The movies I really want to watch are not found on NetFlix.
They do have a lot of second rate movies but most of them are no big deal.
I wish they would update them more often. Sometimes you will get one out of twenty new ones worth watching but not very often.