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Weekly Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV and films
- seanalltogether 5y agoConsidering how big of a deal it was to get Seinfeld onto the platform, it's interesting to see it hasn't broken the top 10 lists on any week. Maybe long tail viewing habits tell a different story.
- 63 5y agoThis is tangential, but I tried watching it with a girlfriend relatively recently and found that I couldn't comfortably watch it with her. The first episode alone has all these not-so-subtle sexist jokes. I used to watch it a lot when I was younger, but I guess I just didn't notice back then. Certainly there are parts of the show that are endearing, but I just wasn't comfortable watching it casually with company and decided to change the show.
- ipaddr 5y agoGood comedy was always uncomfortable. Saying something everyone was thinking but may be taboo. Comedy shines a light on a dark truth. Being uncomfortable isn't acceptable in 2021.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoGood comedy has to be funny— that’s all good comedy has to do. It’s not that deep. If it makes you uncomfortable that’s a side thing, but first and foremost good comedy is funny. I read the post as saying that the jokes weren’t funny anymore in the context of why in-jokes with my pals aren’t funny to a total stranger.
- moate 5y agoThis is something I think a lot of people fail to understand about comedy: As long as it's funny, it's good. That's it. Doesn't matter how offensive, dirty, clean, esoteric, or even "obvious" the joke is. As long as it's funny, it's a good joke. I think a lot of big name comics think they're "owed" the laughs, and some people think that their personal taste is the only comedy. It's all subjective, but if you get the laugh, that's the only thing that matters in comedy.
- owlninja 5y agoI enjoy watching Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" to really understand what makes a comic, and you pretty much described what they all say. They just are trying to get a laugh 24x7. They all have different styles but the goal is the same. It really made me appreciate different types of comedians and that most of the successful ones really have a love for their craft.
- gfdsagwgrg 5y ago> you pretty much described what they all say Not true. Ricky Gervais makes the case that making animal jokes (e.g. where you tell a funny story, but the characters are animals having people-like problems) is too easy and so doesn't count as much. (Actually, I'm not sure he said this on Comedians in Cars, or in a different show) Maybe comedians are people too and have varied points of view on comedy gasp
- follower 5y agoSpeaking of comedy: the only people to whom being uncomfortable isn't acceptable in 2021 is...cis het white men. There's a difference between feeling uncomfortable because someone is being misogynistic & feeling uncomfortable because of the realisation that--regardless of specifics of personal situation--anyone in that demographic benefits from systems of oppression. You're reading this in part because not everyone in your life told you that you should seek an interest outside of technology & entrepreneurship to which you would be "better suited". Disclaimer: Have stood on a stage with a microphone and made a paying audience laugh.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI'm trying to understand what all this means or what we can do with it. Are you saying that nobody who is not a straight, not trans, white, male considers being uncomfortable to be unacceptable? What data are you using to support this claim?
- ketzo 5y agoI'm sorry to sound antagonistic, but that is a deeply lazy take. It is so incredibly disrespectful of your fellow human to assume that "uncomfortable = illegitimate" by default, which is absolutely what your comment does. Seinfeld absolutely has a lot of pretty blatantly sexist humor that would, sure, not be acceptable on TV today, but was also shitty, then. We just didn't do a particularly job of caring about it. > Being uncomfortable isn't acceptable in 2021. Says who? Watch Squid Game. Watch Parasite. Watch... I dunno, Big Mouth. These are just random things that come to mind, but they're huge, mainstream pieces of media that are actively challenging to watch and use that uncomfortable feeling to an end, without punching down.
- ipaddr 5y agoAt what point did you feel uncomfortable during squid game or parasite? His relative was selfish and some mild gore. Has a thriller / horror pace. But I never felt uncomfortable or questioned my humanity or my choices. If those are the examples you have to offer you make my point stronger. Where is the 2021 crying game? Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones made people uncomfortable in 2021. Have you seen it, most popular comedy standup special on netflix? Do you consider it as shitty of Seinfeld?
- willcipriano 5y agoThis is interesting to me as Jerry Seinfeld's entire thing is that he is a clean comedian.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoThat’s not his entire thing.
- js2 5y agoDolores?
- gfdsagwgrg 5y agoMulva?
- shrikant 5y agoSure, "clean" as in doesn't do toilet/gross-out/sex humour, but a lot of his observational bits are "have you ever noticed how women are different from men in this way?"-type comparisons. I can see how someone might find that kind of material sexist, especially if they've only encountered a few episodes where it seems like he's basically saying women are worse than men. Personally, I don't have a problem with it because over lots and lots of episodes, whether he's punching down at men or women balances out. I'm not sure if the writers made a conscious choice to make it that way after maybe some initial criticism as I never followed the show when it was on air originally.
- jackemcpherson 5y agoUsed to watch re-runs of it all the time but I tried re-watching it on Netflix and found it really sticks out how almost every major character on the show is white, and any time a non-white character appears they really ramp up their ethnic characteristics to an uncomfortable degree. Particularly an episode where Jerry inadvertently makes several racist remarks in front of a Native American character while the laugh track is going nuts just left me speechless. You have to measure it with the standards of that time, but this kind of obliviousness to any kind of ethnic character is just off-putting now.
- poszlem 5y agoI don't know, maybe it's an American thing, but to a person from Europe this reads like an attempt at parody. I cannot believe one can watch Seinfeld (likely one of the most benign tv shows there are) and somehow find it problematic. I think we really reached a point when a big part of American culture (especially the constant racialization of everything) is not understandable to an average person from another country.
- jackemcpherson 5y agoFirst off, I'm not an American. To your point about the show, watch the clip yourself [0] and see how you feel. To me, this plays in pretty bad taste. I understand that this episode was made 28 years ago and was probably fairly on par with attitudes at the time, but just like our attitudes to race have changed so has my attitude to comedy. Watching this today I react with cringe rather than laughing anywhere near as hard as the laugh track seems to imply I should be. I'm also not singling out one particular episode, there are other examples of this. Another episode featuring a Pakistani-American character called "Babhu" also plays poorly to me today [1]. If you can watch these clips and think they're still benign then that's ok, we'll just have to agree to disagree, but I don't think you can watch them and still find it incomprehensible why someone might have an issue with them. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGwaupBdiSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGwaupBdiSU [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPH5OhXC1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPH5OhXC1A
- poszlem 5y agoJust to confirm I read it right. You found that you couldn't comfortably watch Seinfeld with your girlfriend? Was that because she was uncomfortable watching it which made you uncomfortable too or you assumed that she would be offended and that's why it was uncomfortable to you?
- 63 5y agoShe was ostensibly fine with it, but it made me feel weird. It felt like I was endorsing the kinds of thought patterns represented. I knew she wouldn't be offended per se, but I didn't want her to get the wrong impression of me, and I also don't want to be a person who acts like that's normal for my own sake. There are 100% appropriate contexts to watch that and know that it's antiquated and that nobody present is endorsing it, but I had put it on intentionally because I wanted something light, and at that point it started getting too stressful.
- knownjorbist 5y agoPart of the issue might be starting with the first episode. All the great 90s TV shows generally 'gelled' as a show in their late 1st/2nd seasons.
- sofixa 5y agoI had a similar feeling when we recently started watching The Office (US version) with my girlfriend. Lots of cringy sexist jokes in the beginning. I know they're made by the "bad" guys, and are a sign of their "badness", not something celebrated, but it's still pretty cringy. We're still binging it though, it wasn't a deal breaker.
- handmodel 5y agoI'm only speculating but almost surely it doesnt need to crack top 10 to be a success. On regular TV Seinfeld reruns have been money makers for years though on any given week they of course have paltry ratings compared to new stuff.
- gentleman11 5y agoEveryone I know hated army of the dead. My wife and I shut it off halfway through. It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. How is it so popular?
- loktarogar 5y agoMost people don't look at reviews before watching something, especially on netflix, and the movie seems to tick a lot of boxes for a lot of people. Then they watch it. I wanted to like it, but it was just so unlikeable. Half of that for me was Zach Snyder's cinematography (which he did himself).
- vga805 5y agoI watched the prequel first, Army of Thieves, which was actually pretty good. I watched Army of Dead for just the one lock picking character, hoping he had a bigger role, and was sorely disappointed that I wasted as much time as I did. I was on shrooms for the first movie, that might have biased my reception of it, but it was at least better than the second.
- davidivadavid 5y agoI thought Army of Thieves removed what I enjoy about heist movies (clever puzzle solving, regardless of how unrealistic it can get) and instead replaced it with random acts of CGI-generated safe mechanics animation. Was well made but ultimately unsatisfying.
- nomdep 5y agoI also hated Army of the Dead, but I liked Army of Thieves (the post-released prequel)
- teej 5y agoBecause it was fine. Decent popcorn flick. It has a 75% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so either most folks liked it or the people who wouldn’t like it opted out of watching it.
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- kiryin 5y agoA good refresher as to why a netflix subscription isn't worth my time or money. Gonna add these to my seedbox for that sweet sweet ratio though.
- Aissen 5y agoThe big news here is not only the publicly available top 10, (only available while logged-in before, and re-shared by scrapers). It's also the worldwide weekly viewing hours, a metric tailored for Netflix investors (an equivalent to the social networks' "engagement"). And the fact that you can download all the data directly on the website in Excel or TSV format without any scraping or Netflix account.
- jedberg 5y agoI wonder how much this changes when normalized by hours. What I mean is that it's ranked by hours viewed, but some movies are a lot longer than others for example.
- bentcorner 5y agoTV too - I've been watching Arcane and it's amazing, but so far there's only 6 episodes which is shorter than most TV seasons.
- minimaxir 5y agoArcane is an odd case as it’s released in batches of 3 episodes instead of being full-dropped as most other Netflix originals.
- darkwizard42 5y agoI think for a well-made show, batch/traditional weekly release works very well since it builds up hype and keeps people invested. For a bad show where you want to get who you can to just binge through, the Netflix method of dumping all content and making it available works better for keeping you interested. Arcane seems to go in the middle and each episode ends pretty well, but also the first two sets of 3 episodes do feel like mini-movies to me. Each ends at a particularly compelling point and keeps you looking ahead. I hope Studio Fortiche and Riot Games keep it up in future stories because I have really enjoyed Arcane so far!!
- tomnipotent 5y agoI've been really impressed with Arcane. Despite the silly Imagine Dragons cameo just prior, the fight scene between Vi and Sevika in episode 5 was incredible. I had to watch it again because the movements and punches looked motion captured and very well choreographed.
- nolok 5y agoTo be fair for Netflix that's not important. What's important is that a 3h movie kept you in front of them for 3h. That's why they measure success in viewing hours instead of viewing count.
- tiffanyh 5y agoWhy is this based on “hours viewed”. That seems to penalize tv shows and shorts. Unless this is meant for Wallstreet to convey hours eyeballs are spent on Netflix.
- pcmaffey 5y agoYeah, percentage completed (hrs watched/total hrs) seems a much better indicator of a show’s quality.
- the-pigeon 5y agoI think you hit the nail on the head. This seems to be aimed at investors more than anyone else.
- subsubzero 5y agoIt seems like hours watched for a subscription service seems useless, there are no ads to catch eyeballs why care how many hours watched if the person is still paying for it? It seems like the perfect netflix user would use the service infrequently but still pay for it.
- propogandist 5y agoseems like a peek into a potential strategy to introduce advertising. Rather than price increases playing ads between streams or "paused" states may be the next monetization play
- nawgz 5y agoTV shows surely have far more content-hours than a movie?
- minimaxir 5y agoNetflix elaborates on this in their blog post: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix > Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric. Traditional measures like box office or share of audience (which was designed to help advertisers understand success on linear TV) aren’t relevant to most streamers, including Netflix. Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement as measured by hours viewed is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services. In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch (a strong sign of member joy) and can be consistently measured across different companies. Years ago, Netflix got a lot of flak for using "users who saw atleast 5 minutes of a series" as an indication people watched it. Quantifying video performance based on watch time has become more industry standard (especially on social media which loves autoplaying videos) as it accounts for retention.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoThis is a good example of the principle that popularity is not necessarily an accurate indicator for quality. Many of these films are low quality. They will not be winning any awards. Now consider that the "tech" industry is, with few exceptions, 100%-focused on popularity as a measure of relevance. If something is not popular it is not going to attract interest from advertisers or investors and thus, to the "tech" company intermediary website/app, it is of little utility.
- aero-glide2 5y agoAwards awarded by.. other people. Just watch what you like
- minimaxir 5y agoIt's fun to look at the numbers for Squid Game (under TV/Non-English) over time. The first week on September 13 was better than most English TV shows...and then the next few weeks nearly 10xed that first week performance. Even now, two months later, it beats most of the Top English TV shows.
- jedberg 5y agoI just started watching it yesterday. At this point I feel like I can't participate in American cultural society anymore without watching it. :)
- kenjackson 5y agoThere are short summaries on YouTube you can watch. I watched one and it seemed quite good. It was about 15 minutes and now I can at least understand references to it.
- jedberg 5y agoIf it's a good show I don't mind watching the whole thing. So far it's been slow going but I assume it picks up.
- Gigachad 5y agoIt’s starts out pretty brutal with mass death scenes but then about half way it pivots to being more emotionally disturbing with a focus on what the background story is and who is behind it.
- jffry 5y agoThe second episode is a little bit slow, a breather to show you more about their lives without a bunch of cheesy flashbacks, but yes it does pick up again after that.
- moate 5y agoUnpopular Take: It doesn't.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 5y agoSo is Netflix and others finally mainstreaming international content better than ever before?
- vmception 5y agokind of? they are syndicating new international content that wouldn't have been syndicated at all, and they are doing a pretty decent job of getting some cult classics out to a broader audience, for example I've seen many Cowboy Bebop stickers and shirts on in the last few months, and their new live action hasn't come out yet (or just did), but they had the anime for a while. I would not say they are covering niches very well, which I'm fine with. Not in an elitist sense, but in a "most of it is trash and Netflix's recommendation engine is nightmarish" sense. So I wouldn't want to accidentally click on something and mess up my whole recommendations for one-country's bottom barrel media.
- JCharante 5y agoWell half of my netflix suggestions in the US for the past 2 years have been 50% subtitled korean or chinese dramas. I haven't watched any kdramas but they always get promoted to me under the weekly top 10 section.
- EMM_386 5y agoInteresting to see the numbers. For example, Red Notice is #1 with 149 million hours viewed, and when you look at the Wikipedia entry for that film, it says: > Due to the film's $200 million production budget and Netflix's global film chief Scott Stuber saying that the company's "big-budget tentpole films [need] to draw an audience of more than 70 million viewers within the first 28 days of availability," The New York Observer estimated Red Notice would need to total around 200 million hours (about 83 million household viewers) to be deemed a success I guess by this definition, it can be deemed a success.
- mhh__ 5y ago> $200 million production I'm aware that the accounting methods presumably aren't completely comparable but considering Dune apparently cost about $165 mil to make I am perpetually amazed how expensive some films have ended up being.
- Someone1234 5y agoKeep in mind that nearly half of that went to the three main cast members alone ($50M + $20M + $20M respectively)[0]. The Rock got more because he is both a star and producer of the movie. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2021/10/21/red-notice-is-netflixs-biggest-ever-investment-in-a-film-heres-how-its-other-blockbusters-stack-up/?sh=5b5cc2e5c427 https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2021/10/21/red-n...
- mhh__ 5y agoThe cast of Dune probably wasn't exactly cheap (Chalamet alone must command a big fee these days now that he has the chops and the bona fides now), but yep.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoTom Cruise numbers for the Rock, good God.
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- dxbydt 5y agoobvious next step is to make the list clickable so you can click on it & start watching the show (if you are logged in) btw, are all shows watchable in all countries or is there country-specific licenses ?
- woobar 5y agoCarousel on top of the list has "Watch now" link for each entry.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoThere's country specific license. Netflix is a frequently advertised feature of many mainstream VPN's, people will tunnel into a server in a certain country to access geo-locked content. But to my knowledge this may not always work anymore, Netflix is supposedly cracking down on it.
- kshacker 5y agoThey need fixed position left/right arrows so that we can keep focus on the content rather than moving the cursor to point it right. As of now based on the size of date field, the arrows shift.
- newman314 5y agoSo I find it quite fascinating that 211 (a 2018 Nic Cage film) is at #6. I do not understand why this is so popular. Any thoughts?
- cheschire 5y agoHere's an article about it from 8 days ago so apparently it's not exactly a blip. https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/one-of-nicolas-cages-worst-movies-is-inexplicably-popular-on-netflix/ https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/one-of-nicolas-cages-wor...
- londons_explore 5y agoI wonder if perhaps Netflix's data isn't quite as clean as they hope? A bot clicking play a million times I'd imagine could easily bring stuff to the top of these charts if the data collection and aggregation wasn't built with that in mind.
- not2b 5y agoThey aren't counting clicks, they are counting hours watched, and a subscriber only gets so many simultaneous views. The bot would have to hold the data connection open for a million hours. Now, I don't know the details of how long the viewer has to watch a show before it counts as a view. But people stopping early is treated as a downvote, if I understand correctly.
- mhh__ 5y agoThere is a lot of awful (subjective, but you know what I'm getting at) stuff which can seem inexplicably popular because the kind of people who watch it don't write home and tell anyone.
- selcuka 5y agoSometimes you accidentally watch such movies. I watched a Bruce Willis movie on Netflix a few weeks ago without checking IMDB first thinking that it could be semi-decent because the cast was ok. It turned out to be a disaster and I later found out that the IMDB score was something like 2/10.
- rememberlenny 5y agoFun fact: this was made with Tailwind.
- mkoryak 5y agoI am very proud of myself - I have never heard of any of these shows.
- amichal 5y agoI have heard of some of these but watched none of them. I do watch a lot of media (hours per day if you believe my devices’ records) but it’s all documentaries, public television and various “maker” YouTube videos. I tried recently to watch a few favorite TV shows from a few years ago and they didn’t hold my attention at all. I’m in my mid 40s. Is this an age thing or a nerd thing?
- peruvian 5y agoIt's a you thing. Plenty of tech nerds watch Netflix shows, we're not a separate species. I'm 27 and don't care to watch new TV shows, whether it's prestige or Netflix thing-of-the-month shows. I prefer films and reading. I don't feel proud for not watching them though. It's just media consumption at the end of the day.
- andrei_says_ 5y agoMost tv is not that great. I’ve seen only a few things in the last few years that go beyond just using tricks to hook you. Newsroom on HBO is an example of writing with a bit of substance.
- aigo 5y agoI'm the same, except the YouTube. I just love information, so I watch a lot of documentaries. Outside of the top shelf of TV (Sopranos, Wire, Succession) it's all incredibly formulaic and boring.
- lelanthran 5y ago> I am very proud of myself - I have never heard of any of these shows. That's an odd thing to be proud of :-/
- ragazzina 5y ago
- irrational 5y agoWait, there is another Jumanji and Transformer movie?
- follower 5y agoYou mean "Jumanjers"?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bobbyi 5y agoHow are the names of the movies in the table not links that take me to the movie so I can watch it?
- Bud 5y agoWould be nice if the link title were accurate. It should read: Weekly Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV and films ON NETFLIX.
- lurtbancaster 5y agoIt really should. I think the closest that comes to actually knowing what's probably being watched across all media in aggregate, would be TorrentFreak's Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week list[1]. But even that is really not completely accurate because not everybody that pirates necessarily consume what they pirate. Some just hoard for hoarding's sake. Honestly I'd rather have the inverse - Top 10 least watched TV and films. I don't want to see what everybody else has already seen. I want to find the less watched rare stuff, quicker. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-torrented-pirated-movies/ https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-torrented-pirated-movie...
- finolex1 5y agohttps://flixpatrol.com/ https://flixpatrol.com/ has this information for all major streaming platforms.
- dghughes 5y agoI'm about to cancel my Netflix (Canada) I find myself going to it scrolling around and leaving finding nothing interesting. On top of that like most streaming services shows I like take nearly 2 years for the next episode to be made. And it's only eight shows for a "season". By that time I've lost interest in any of the shows. I have been watching more Amazon Prime lately. It seems to have older shows that I find more interesting plus some new ones I like too, but the same thing of 18 to 24 months for season 2 of eight shows. But this paying to rent inside a streaming service you are already paying for is incredibly stupid. Disney+ was so easy, I accidentally signed up it! For one month at $1.99 then jumps to $11.99. Worth it I watched Free Guy which Amazon wanted $25 to rent while paying for Amazon Prime already. now I'm going through all the Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows. I tried to sign up for Apple TV holy what a mess. I have an Apple ID, I had a Mac but it died. Try to sign into my AppleID and my password is rejected. Try to recover my password "check your Mac" no, it died. Use your new Apple device, nope. Use someone's iPhone, no again. Make a new apple ID, nope my gmail is already in use. Recover? Text is sent (Samsung phone) but the recovery page kicked me off when I read the text. Finally got it to work and was told 7 days to recover. Got an email and was told 14 it's days to recover my AppleID password. So Nov 27 I may make some progress.
- jurassic 5y agoI’m a nightmare customer for streaming services. I rotate my subscriptions to watch just what I want, then churn. I’m a Netflix customer for max 2-3 months each year to catch up on the latest installments of my favorite shows.
- dragonshed 5y agoI do exactly this - I budget for 2 simultaneous streaming subs and then just cancel one and resub another when I get bored or want to watch something on a diff service. Tangentially, I still prefer Netflix solely based on viewing experience for web and mobile. The other services all have super awkward tradeoffs or issues.
- dghughes 5y agoI wish there was a way to have access to all streaming services but only pay a micro-transaction for the shows you want to watch. An a-la-carte video streaming service.
- freewilly1040 5y agoThe big questions I have are: why were they so secretive about this before, and why are they opening up now? Perhaps for the latter, they reason that the leaks kept the employee protest in the news more than it would have otherwise, and by proactively sharing some basic metrics there is less ammunition for leakers.
- sdave 5y agowhy is this on HN? !! > like where people waste their time the most >/?
- yosito 5y agoWhy does Netflix publish lists like these, but make it so hard to find objective ratings of their content? All I can see in their interface is lists of "recommended" and "trending" content, and a percentage rating of how similar things are to content I've already watched. I'm tired of having to watch a half hour of everything only to find out that it's a B-movie.
- pizza234 5y agoNetflix's model is shoving content down the user's throat, not providing them good content¹. And they're madly successful at that: most the movies on their top list are arguably garbage, but they're up there because they're the most pushed to the users. I'm always on the border to close my Netflix account precisely because of that - a side effect of the Netflix interface is that it makes it hard to manage content; I'm staying just because I need to learn a new language. ¹=I don't imply that there is no good content at all.
- yosito 5y agoAny recommendations for services that provide good content? In Hungary, we have a few which function more like libraries. You can find virtually any Hungarian film and watch it easily. But they're mostly limited to Hungarian content.
- pizza234 5y agoIn the past, where I had no language requirement, I used to download movies illegally, then purchasing the ones I liked/wanted to support. I can't obviously suggest this officially :)
- dazc 5y agoI think you've just answered your own question, the objective ratings would be generally poor. I say this accepting that some Netflix content is really good and, overall, the cost per month is reasonable value - especially considering I sometimes pay more for one single series via Prime.
- chupchap 5y agoAh this is a great way to find non-English content by checking what's topping the list in non-English speaking countries.
- ezconnect 5y agoI cannot click the title of the movie on the list to get more info about it.
- lynndotpy 5y agoIt is legitimately surprising to me that, of the top 10 most watched, I have not heard of any of these. What is Red Notice? They made another Jumanji? They're still making Transformers?