The technical implementation really doesn't need to be this complex. Also, the interface itself has gotten worse and worse too. As a customer, just offering HTML links, a search box and then using HTML5 to stream the video would be great.
Their "custom tailored" selection screen gives the impression that they have 300 films available at most.
It's like going to a movie store and only browsing one section. Over and over.
You can download the IMDb rating database, although I think it has a very restrictive licence. Alternatively there is this: http://www.omdbapi.com/ - but I wouldn't count on it being around forever. It seems like they would be on shaky legal grounds (but at least it would be them getting sued rather than you).
That website is how I discovered netflix has thousands of movies in the first place.
I suspect this is the reason they obscure the full contents of their library. They only want to show customers things that they think the customer will like, because that set is dwarfed by the set of junk.
I would vastly prefer a simple paginated grid of videos with a "click to show info in a little overlay box", and then a close link to simply dismiss the overlay and go back to the grid.
Their star system isn't always perfect, but it was great to be able to sort by what they thought I would like most and scan through the list for something good. Worked nearly perfectly, and I found a lot of great material that way. Then they removed the option to use the rating system they spent so much time and money they spent developing in favor of a visual carousel. It is a lot more visually appealing and a lot less efficient.