Movies – Reviews

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By: Jeffrey Grossman

Version #: 3.5

Date Released: 2008-08-25

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Price: 0.00

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Save for my good friend Holden Caulfield, I can’t think of any person that I know, real or fictional, who doesn’t like watching movies. Movies are a constant source of entertainment for most of us, so universal are their appeal that we want to share how we feel about them almost immediately after walking out of a theater. We talk about movies on the phone, in the office, and on various social networking sites.

We’ve been living in an age when simply telling your friends over coffee to see or avoid a certain movie you recently caught is just not enough; it’s imperative, it seems, that we let them know via the Internet. But while one might instantly think of Facebook when it comes to sharing thoughts on a variety of topics, a more appropriate choice for sharing movie-related stuff online would be Flixster.

Flixster, which probably took its name by combining ‘flick’ and the now ailing ‘Friendster,’ is a Web site dedicated to letting user rate films and connect with other users with similar taste in movies. I’m not fond of using the Web site itself, what with its congested pages, but I find its iPhone version, officially called Movies, to be particularly good as iPhone adaptations of popular Web sites go.

Except for its slightly bright blue color scheme, the Movies app sports a "native" look, with an interface set against a white background and buttons similar to those used in Apple’s stock apps. Indeed, this design makes for readable pages and familiar navigation controls.

The bottom toolbar is composed of five tabs, namely, Box Office, Theaters, Upcoming, DVD, and My Movies. Box Office displays a list of current top-grossing movies, which you can sort by popularity, title or rating based in critics’ reviews aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes (which Flixster recently acquired). Theaters guides you on what’s showing in your neighborhood. Upcoming shows a list of future films that already have confirmed release dates. DVD lets you in on new and upcoming DVD releases, as well as let you browse Flixster’s DVD collection by genre. Finally, My Movies serves as your member dashboard, where you can manage your movie ratings, answer movie quizzes, and configure your app settings.

Tapping on an entry on a list of films will call up a page containing the details of the selected movie. On that page are the film’s synopsis, cast and crew details, photos, iTunes purchase link, ratings by Flixster members, and critics’ reviews, which you can read on the app’s built-in browser. You can also view the ratings of your Facebook friends but only if you enable Facebook integration.

The app’s interconnectivity with Facebook is one of its most important feature as the official Flixster Facebook application is the top movie application on the said platform. When enabled, it lets you rate movies on Flixster and automatically updates your Facebook status with your rating. Aside from Facebook, the app also supports integration of your Netflix account.

Searching Flixster’s database is done by tapping on the magnifying glass icon at the top-right corner and entering the title of a movie or the name of an actor or director in the search field that appears. It’s a very nifty and necessary features, but unlike on the Rotten Tomatoes app and even on the Amazon Mobile app, Flixster’s search function apparently has no auto-complete or real-time search suggestion support, which is something I always appreciate in a search-intensive app such as this.