The tried-and-true method is to get recommendations from people you trust. Or even algorithms you trust.

“The 100 best movies” will be mostly generic with a small amount of rage-bait. If that’s boring to you, then find some less generic resources. https://www.allmovie.com/advanced-search can be useful for films. You can throw some pretty weird search criteria at it and find more off-the-wall stuff.

Starting from something you know you like and looking at the “other people liked…” section is never going to be 100% reliable but better than nothing.

Worse than anything is scrolling through Netflix. They purposefully make their descriptions beyond garbage-tier. Presumably they think that means people will just pick whatever slop is put in front of them and then… turn it off again? I dunno, maybe they want to be able to aggressively cut that new show after two seasons without biasing people’s expectations with a useful description. This is now just a rant about how useless Netflix is.

A top 100 movies list is likely aimed at film buffs but if you aren’t into those same things, the movies aren’t gonna do anything for you.

There’s nothing wrong with being a casual fan, though. People get very hung up on sticking to “the best” but it’s just entertainment. Watch what you like

Pretty picky. I watch less shows and movies because there’s a content desert when you’re picky. Not a problem for me because video games has the extreme opposite problem. Especially when I’m also into emulation, hacks, translations, reverse engineered servers, whatever. Everything to do with games. Wish lists exceed lifespan.

Books are different because I have Aphantasia. Any author who likes writing long inner monologues and detailed environment descriptions is what I’ll look for, with fiction anyway.

Music I rarely look at reviews. My biggest influencer is CKUA, a local donor supported radio station. Also I just scroll sites like Bandcamp for a couple hours now and then until I stumble into somethings I like and bookmark them. If I keep listening to an album or whatever and still like it after a couple days, then I’ll buy. I’m pretty disconnected this regard I guess.

Social influences too of course, self explanatory.

Yeah i have very specific interests,

Grounded acifi mostly.

The expanse top tier could done without the portal etc

Firefly

Killjoys

Then old westerns

Some modern westerns

And that’s about it.

I’ll dabble in other genres but normally only if someone else says it’s worth it

Rotten 🍅 top ten list, anything that looks good I write down. Life too busy for me to finish my “watch later” list so I guess it’s working.

I watch things as background noise as I game, so not very picky. Kind of hate watched Halo recently.

Find more cool underground stuff instead of pop slop (i just made that up and I like that term now)

If something interests me I add it to the list. Not overly concerned with critical opinion if its negative.

Sometimes I will seek other things based on enjoying something. So an actor or director’s other works for example.

Talking to people and finding out what they enjoy and then evaluating whether or not it is interesting to you is a good way to isolate something. For example KPop Demon Hunters looked like slop to me (and I enjoy some Korean media), but someone at work started talking about it and that got me just interested enough to take a look into it and them watch and subsequently enjoy it.

‘Boring’ is a lazy assessment that says nothing. Dig deeper. Why do you think a given thing would be boring? What about it specifically do you think you won’t enjoy?

Once you learn to start asking yourself those types of questions, you can start looking for things that actually interest you, rather than dismissing everything out of hand.

Its usually that you’ve experienced the gold standard of something before and now you can’t achieve it again, so everything in comparison looks boring.

Not to be confused with nostalgia, but movies for example had a peak period of production and entertainment value that is long gone. Modern hollywood almost looks like slop compared to even decent film hits 30+ years ago, but anyone who hasn’t experienced that era wouldn’t know. You just never know when you’re in a golden era until its over because it’s all relative to your perspective. And it’s always possible another golden era appears, its just very unlikely.

Aside from that, I heavily critique everything because I used to be a big fiction reader and now I can’t help but notice every plot hole, character development flaw, trope, and archetype in literally any media.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but its gotten to the point where I can reasonably deduce most of the story of a movie from its quick description, which is not a good thing.

Example mega spoiler for Fantastic 4:

I have a hard time watching new movies and shows. I guess I usually look for a show to unwind with, and nostalgia is a pretty strong factor there.

If I’m watching a new show with somebody because they want to see it, I’ll generally enjoy myself. But lately I find that I’m pretty quick to reject anything made after 2020 or so

Another way I look at it is that there’s an awful lot of crap competing for my attention, and with the rise of gen-AI, writing for streaming, and other icky things, a lot of it really is crap. I’d rather watch the crap I already know I like

Very picky. I don’t have time for duds.

I take other people’s recommendations. From people I know share my tastes.

I’m extremely picky, but considering I spend most of my free time in MMOs, I cant really pretend to be some sort of game sommelier.

That depends entirely on what each person finds entertaining, and even then I bet there’s a bunch of people that would argue that some of those top 100 movies aren’t entertainment but culture.
Nothing wrong with not liking a movie or show even before watching it but I would recommend to give them a chance from time to time just in case, you never know. This is something I miss from old linear TV, to have stuff already on that you started watching out of boredom because there wasn’t anything good on and then realising that it was more interesting than expected.

To find those movies or shows boring it’s not being picky. For me picky would be for example to only watch movies if certain people are in it.