I like science fiction, speculative fiction, that explores how technology affects our lives, and is internally consistent. Some recent favorites of mine are the movies "Moon" and "Limitless". Both portray rich worlds and they explore how a new technology will affect our lives. In the case of Moon it shows off a surprise use of cloning technology and in Limitless it is a pill that enhances thinking. "Prometheus", on the other hand, I found silly. The effects and characterizations were wonderful, but the story was channeling Ed Wood. The people in that story did not use their tools well.
"Lord of the Rings" is on my favorite list because Tolkien built such depth into that series. I loved it, read it many times, and spent as much time on the Appendixes in the last book as on the rest of it. Lord of the Rings demonstrates the value of a solid back story -- all the characters were doing what they did for good reason and I as a reader could sense that.
Early Heinlein works fired me. "Starship Troopers" was what started me on the road to avid science fiction reading. And it continues to be personally interesting because every time I read it I come away with a different impression. When I read it as a teenager the military adventure aspects of it were exciting. I couldn't wait to be personally "on the bounce" in my own set of power armor! I read it again when the movie version came out and I wasn't so impressed, it now read like Sands of Iwo Jima in Space, and I'd read a lot of similar stuff through the years.
The movie, by the way, missed the point of the book entirely. They took out the power armor! The soldiers were something out of World War One! But there was a silver lining. The movie mishandling of power armor inspired me to write my own version of how it should be handled. See "The Ticket Out" in Tips for Tailoring Spacetime Fabric Vol. 1.
I read it again a couple years ago, and I liked it better again. I liked his philosophy that demonstrating responsibility to the community should be a criterion for citizenship. However, on this last reading I also noticed a whole bunch of internal inconsistencies -- my Technofiction viewpoint was now strong.
Those are a few of my likes and dislikes. You can read more about what I like and don't, and why, in my Technofiction Reviews in Tales of Technofiction on White World.