Picking something to watch

You sit down for a movie and spend half an hour scrolling through streaming menus. Top lists keep naming the same famous titles, and choosing between hundreds of thumbnails gets tiring. Sometimes it's easier to let someone else pick a few titles for you, as long as they fit what you're in the mood for. This tool does that.

Tool description

Choose a Type (Movie or series, Movie or TV series), a Genre, an Era from Before 1960 to the 2020s and a Mood such as Feel-good, Tense or Mind-bending, or leave any of them on Any. If you have something more specific in mind, describe it in Vibe, for example "cozy rainy evening, slow and atmospheric". Then click Pick movies.

Random picks shows up to 3 real titles, each on its own card. A card gives the original title (and the English title if it's different), the release year, country and director (the creator, for a series), followed by a sentence or two on what it's about, without spoilers. When the AI is sure which Wikipedia article is about a title, its card also gets the poster from that article, which you can click to see larger, and buttons for the title's pages on IMDb, Wikipedia, TMDB, Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes. The buttons are looked up on Wikidata, so a card shows only the sites Wikidata knows, and Wikipedia opens in your language when it has the article.

Without a vibe, each pick gets a random release year within the era, so the titles spread across it instead of being the same few classics every time. The AI is also asked to vary the countries and mix well-known titles with lesser-known ones. Click Pick movies again for new titles: the titles picked so far are sent along, so the AI suggests others. When only a few titles fit your options you get fewer cards, and when none does, a message asks you to change some of them.

Example

With Comedy as the genre, the 1990s as the era and Feel-good as the mood, you get light comedies from different years of the decade, possibly from different countries. Add "road trip" as the vibe and the picks turn to comedies about a journey.

Features

  • Random movie and TV series picks to watch
  • Optional type, genre, era, mood and a vibe in your own words to steer the picks
  • Up to 3 titles per click, each with year, country, director and a spoiler-free summary
  • New titles on every click, skipping the ones already picked
  • Links to each title's pages on IMDb, Wikipedia, TMDB, Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes, looked up on Wikidata
  • The poster from the title's Wikipedia article

Limitations

AI can mix up titles or details, especially for obscure films, so look a title up before you go hunting for it. The picks come from what the AI knows rather than from a film database, so they aren't drawn evenly from every film ever made, and well-known titles still come up more often, especially with a vibe, since the release years are then left to the AI. Earlier picks are forgotten when you reload the page, so they can come up again. The links and posters come from Wikidata and Wikipedia, not from the AI's memory. A card gets neither when the AI doesn't know the title's Wikipedia article or the article is about a work from another year, which happens more often with lesser-known titles. Some articles, often about series, have no poster.