I’m always on the lookout for excellent new movies to include in my movie marathons, so I was delighted to learn that movie recommendation engines are a thing. Not only are they a thing, there are a bunch of them out there. Some are built into video-on-demand services, like Netflix. Some exist as stand-alone services, like Jinni.
The current consensus is that Jinni is the best movie recommendation engine out there. Jinni gets up to speed on your taste preferences quickly by importing movie ratings from other social media and video-on-demand accounts. I liked this feature since I’ve already rated plenty of movies on Netflix and Facebook. I don’t want rate them all over again.
Once Jinni knew what I liked, it produced an “Entertainment Personality” for me. I am bemused by the visualization of this entertainment personality:
Should I be worried that “Cynical Couple Relationships” is way up there on my interest list? I can click to find out! It turns out Clerks, Office Space, and Desperate Housewives are representative samples of this category. Damn. You got me there Jinni. I like all of those!
You can enter in free-form search text to find movies that match your mood. I found it far more effective, and fun, to use their database of common tags to search for interesting movies. Take a look at these intentionally goofy searches I created (taken straight from their provided search tags) and the result:
- Sexy, Critically Acclaimed, 18th Century => Dangerous Liasons
- Suspenseful, Feminism, Sci-Fi => The Stepford Wives
- Future, Australia, Fantasy, Stylized => Tank Girl
- Clever, Date Night, Cult, Obsession => Groundhog Day
- Talky, Girls’ Night, Touching, Documentary => Seeking Happily Ever After
Combining unlikely strings of adjectives is good for a laugh, but has Jinni given me some useful recommendations? Unfortunately, not yet. My personalized recommendations so far are all things I have already watched (example: Lord of the Rings) or are on my to-watch list (example: Pan’s Labyrinth). Jinni gets kudos for correctly guessing what I would like. But I haven’t found something surprising in the results yet.
For now, I think I’ll continue using friends, family, and critics lists to find movie marathon candidates.
