I admittedly haven’t tried this one (I guess I will), but this was also the promise of Goodreads, and Netflix since the DVD era, and it just never seems to work for me.

I have admittedly discovered a handful of great authors via Goodreads recommendations, but they’re big names I think I would have eventually found anyway (e.g. Brandon Sanderson), and I spent a lot of time adding books I’d read and carefully considering how to rate each one.

I’m actually broadly curious why these systems aren’t more effective. It seems like such a perfect system on paper.

One reason is that Netflix killed theirs after paying a prize of $1M for a 10% improvement to their already good Cinematch recommender. See: https://www.netflixprize.com/

Good way to enhance your bubble. I like to be thought provoked at times.

Yes, that's what the site is supposed to do. It is entertainment, not facts, and so I want to be entirely in the bubble of "Hot Fuzz" fans or "Dead Snow" fans and very much without intersection with any superhero stuff.

Entertainment and thought provoking are not mutually exclusive.

I've just imported 300+ ratings from IMDb into Criticker, and the recommendations it gave me seemed so far off that I didn't even feel like giving any of the movies a chance. Maybe I'm not watching enough classics, but it feels like the site hasn't really gotten to the long tail of movies.

In comparison, when I go rate movies on IDMb I'm rarely more than one star away from the average rating, so IMDb serves my needs quite well, anyway.

https://www.last.fm has a similar engine for music

This is awesome will check out later. Is this site good for smaller/older/more obscure recommendations?

It seems to be? I get a lot of recommendations I’ve never seen before. I think if you rate a lot of non mainstream stuff it’ll pair you with people who do the same and voila - new non mainstream stuff!