what does being a cinephile actually mean?

you hear about these people all the time but i literally have never met someone like this in real life so i figured some of you naturally have to exist here and i have some questions if you’d be so kind to take the time.

obviously with the odyssey there is a gateway right now into discovering new movies to watch and stuff but what i really don’t understand is like how do you actually tap in to the canon of cinema? like i watched a couple criterion videos and it seems like a lot of it are really deep cuts that like your grandma puts you onto.

what if your family and friends are normal and just treat it as entertainment? i’m not trying to be pejorative but most people don’t even have A-list. is it exclusively people that are interested in working in the business? is it just buying stuff?

how do you make this a tangible and intellectually rewarding part of your life without watching random things blindly? do you pick one genre and branch from there? i’m a big music fan but i really don’t understand how to get past a “casualness” towards cinema