Searching for a particular actor is too complicated.

The search features are wonderful, if a little difficult to get to. Comments below mentioned filtering by language - I've never come across this, and would like to use this feature. My work-around is to find a movie in the preferred language and click on the link under language. An easier way to filter for language would be great.

Negitive parameters are important. I.e. "sci-fi, BUT NOT animation".

I could not find a language filter on the new site version. :-(

No, the "advanced" search is crucial.

Please do not assume that users wish to have options and advanced features removed. This form of "dumbing down" is not at all helpful.

Today we released version 4.0.4 which improved search with autocomplete, more intuitive search results, a whole bunch of new clickable fields (e.g., actors), and several new "search tools".

I'm leaving this thread open since there are still a bunch of requests that we haven't gotten to, and some interesting ideas that we shouldn't lose. Search will continue to become more powerful as we move forward!

Just want to agree with this topic. I really like searching by genre and year, mostly out of curiosity but sometimes due to a certain mood I am in. By the way, the is by far my favorite movie rating website and I am so glad I stumbled across it years ago! Beta version looks great!

Like others, my advanced search use is mostly for non-English directors, actors with a few English thrown in.

The "not this genre" filter was extremely useful. For example, I almost always filter out war, children, and documentary. Those genres litter the top of my recommendations list. Even though I have rated a few classics of those genres highly, I'm never in the mood for them. Not having the "not" option means I have to search the recommendations one genre at-a-time.

"I've rated/haven't rated" is next most useful. Sometimes I want to watch a familiar beloved movie. Sometimes I want something new.

As someone already mentioned, language filter is also key. Even though I love many non-English films, I'm often not in the mood for subtitles.

Lastly, it would be nice to have any advanced search options available from the homepage.

I've found " date of rating" very useful. I use it as a film diary. It helps me to check out the films I've rated last week or year or so. It also keeps me on track how many films I watch per year. Plus, I've used it to check out which films I have watched with my partner or to check out from her ratings witch films I've forgot to rate. Keeps me up to date.

I love the advanced search option. I'm always using it to trim down the list of films I'm interested in watching that day. I use all the combinations of options (removing documentaries usually, keeping it in English, keeping it withing the past 3 years 2011-2014, choosing a genre depending on my mood) as these are the types of movies I watch the most. I also use it for the reverse effect (looking for Foreign films, documentaries or older films I might like to watch) while trimming out all the filler

"New Search" does not compute reasonable answers. At least when you have foreign language film. It does not understand different words and normal search functions " " + -

Thanks for the additional information! We do plan to support searching by directors and actors, as well as better title searching.

When I used advance search it would mostly be for director or actor. If it were possible you could just have the general search shoulder some of work of an "advanced search" where you could search for movies, actors, or directors.

In addition to what Gary said (i find language useful as a search filter when looking for a particular combination of genres, think about french noirs or hong kong action movies), I often use director and actor based search too. I think that the advanced search as is today, even if not completely user friendly, it's too powerful an instrument to give up and a database as big as yours would be incomplete without a tool to navigate it thoroughly.

Gary: thanks for the feedback. We plan to put MPAA and language filtering in the search tools. We already support filtering by genre and year.

I also like advanced search. Most often I use it to trim out genres and languages I'm not interested in, and I sometimes put in a date range (e.g., to look at just this year's movies). I would especially like to be able to select MPAA Rating in the search.