At Home with Tech

In our house, streaming a movie on a Friday night isn’t just fun, it’s become something of a family tradition. Each week for more than a decade, I’ve curated a list of films for my wife and son to stream with me. (We usually choose one after I play all the trailers.)

As you can imagine, the movie choices were more limited when our son was younger. (Don’t ask how many times we watched, “The LEGO Movie.”) Now that our boy is in high school, he’s ready for a wider range of options. 

But that still doesn’t make our movie selection process easy. We’re three people with three different tastes in movies. I can often predict what our son will like, but not always. 

“John Carter?”

I’ve got a running joke going with him regarding Disney’s “John Carter.” That flick’s been on my list since our son was in elementary school. Even though it was an absolute box office bomb, I thought this silly adventure on Mars was fun. Plus, its parallel Civil War era dark vibe provided an interesting stylistic twist. 

I’ve always felt it was the perfect Friday night choice. But he’s probably turned it down at least 100 times. (I think I might want to take it off the list.) 

I Always Need More Choices

The truth is Barrett’s movie list doesn’t always contain a collective choice to watch each week.

So, I’m always looking for new options to offer up. And it feels crazy to say that with eight streaming platforms to choose from, it’s been challenging to find enough fresh releases. (This has become increasingly difficult since the pandemic and the overall decrease of movies being made today.)

Hurry!

Every Friday evening before dinner, I find myself quickly scouring through all my streaming apps in search of any new releases to add to my list.

And let me tell you, this process always feels like it takes forever as I hunt around! 

Wouldn’t it better if I could put a little AI-oomph into this process to speed up my search?

And that’s exactly what I just did.

Set up a Claude Project

So, I went to my Claude AI assistant and asked it for help on how I should set up this movie search to repeat regularly. It suggested I create a Claude Project.

You can do that by navigating to the left sidebar and clicking on “Projects.” 

• Click on “New Project”
• Add in the “Description”
• Then add in the “Instructions”

The “Instructions” field is for your prompt, which provides the directions for Claude to follow.

Here’s the prompt that Claude created for me to use:

• When I ask for new streaming movie releases, search each service individually with separate web searches — one each for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, Peacock, and Paramount+. Cross-reference with Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch. Do NOT use a single combined search. Group results by service and include: title, date added, genre, and Rotten Tomatoes score where available. Only include movies, not TV shows or specials. Include results for the most recent seven days. (I added in that last sentence.)

You, of course, can use this prompt as well. Just modify it with your particular list of streaming services.

Creating My Movie List in Seconds

So, I quickly set up this Claude Project and then ran it. It instantly got to work searching a variety of websites that track new streaming movie releases for the platforms I listed.

And then about ten seconds later, Claude provided me a report with all the new movies I should consider, sorted by streaming service and complete with brief descriptions.

It was perfect.

(You don’t need to set up a Claude Project for this. You can just run the prompt as part of a regular chat question. But the project makes it ready to go for the next time.)

A Huge Time Saver

Wow. Why didn’t I think I this sooner?

Claude isn’t the only AI assistant out there that can do this trick. (It just happened to be the one I used for this exercise.)

Now, I can accomplish this movie search in seconds. That’s quite the time saver.

Barrett’s Movie List

I must admit that presenting my movie list has become a bit of an eye-rolling moment for my family after all these years. But they still let me do it.

And you might be asking… where are their lists? Exactly.

Somehow, I’ve fashioned myself as the all-knowing movie critic in our family. (In my defense, I have been writing movie reviews as a hobby since I was in college.)

But that doesn’t really make me an authority any more than you.

Thank You, Claude

At best, my movie list is a quaint family tradition. We’ll leave it at that.

And by the way, our son is growing up. Did I mention he’s in high school already?

So, Friday movie night doesn’t happen regularly anymore. And when we do sit down together after dinner, it’s often to watch the next episode from a series we’re watching. (We’re currently enjoying “Dark Matter” on Apple TV.)

But I will always have a few movies to suggest whenever the moment calls for it.

And now, Claude gets to do all the research work for me.