It seems like an annoying modern problem that has developed now that we have many streaming services that have hundreds of movies and tv shows. Most of them will be bad.

But it isn’t like there’s one metric that can accurately filter all the bad movies out. Every high budget movie isn’t good, and although most low budget movies are bad, there’s always that gem in the pile of trash.

And ratings are absolutely useless. A highly rated movie might still be trash. A low rated movie may be a cult classic, and the best movie you’ve ever seen.

And there’s no telling if a newer movie would be better than an older movie. Usually, it’s the opposite or maybe that’s just survivorship bias.

Actors and actresses often times is a good indicator but even that isn’t bullet proof. Case in point, Bryan Cranston in Your Honor. Absolute trash, but one of the best actors of a generation.

So if you can’t use budget, ratings, movie release date or the actors/actresses in the movie, how do you predict if a movie or tv show will be good without wasting hundreds of hours watching bad movies and tv shows?