Earlier quoted context omitted.
So many apps seem to lack the basic: Filter by x and Sort by x for all of the obvious criteria. What bastardized yearning for simplicity has led to removing such a simple clear piece of functionality? It's familiar, doesn't add excessive clutter and scales well between power-users and lesser mortals. Why is it increasingly rare?
Only guess I have for Netflix specifically is the fact that they have built clients for every device under the sun. This was and still is part of their M.O. It is just time consuming and difficult to write a heavier feature set in to all of your clients when theyre on every smart tv ever, Xbox, probably toasters, God knows what else
Content filters are ridiculously easy to implement though. As long as you already have the browsing view, all you need to add is a picker that changes whatever DB query you are using to select the data.
Like in SQL all you would need to do is change this:
SELECT * FROM movies
SELECT * FROM movies ORDER BY rating ASC