MooVee for iPhone aims to help you manage your growing movie watchlist ~ Apple Juice

Thursday, 28 May 2015

MooVee for iPhone aims to help you manage your growing movie watchlist

Following up on the success of the series tracking app TeeVee, developer CrazyApps has released a new piece of software aimed at moviegoers. The app, appropriately titled MooVee, allows you to keep track of movies you’ve seen and what you want to see.

The app’s UI is similar in some aspects to TeeVee, but most of it has been designed from scratch to better accommodate the ways movies and TV differ. For example, in the image above you can see the watchlist view, which resembles the main list view in TeeVee. However, other features are unique to MooVee.

On the watchlist view, you can tap a movie to see more information about it, but you can also swipe it to bring up a bunch of other useful controls, such as the option to mark it as watched or add it to your favorites. A shuffle button at the top of the screen picks a random movie from the list for those times when you’re just not sure what to watch.

There are several ways to add movies to your watchlist. A “browse” view accessible from the “hamburger menu” presents you with a list of movies that are currently playing, coming soon, and popular among viewers. You can also explore a collection of individual genres to find something you might enjoy.

This view and several others are powered by the third-party community-managed database TMDB, and unfortunately it seems to be returning some bizarre results. A “browse” section supposedly dedicated to TV movies listed only blockbusters, while the comedy section inexplicably included documentaries on Kurt Cobain and Edward Snowden at the top of the list. Hopefully the database providing this information will receive some corrections.

Comical genre misfires aside, the rest of the data provided is actually pretty complete. Cast listings are accurate (although they sometimes include multiple entries for the same person if they filled multiple roles, such as actor and producer), and release dates are all correct. Each movie’s page contains a description; a trailer; budget and revenue figures; writer and director credits; viewer ratings and the option to rate it yourself; and even a link to buy the movie, related books, or soundtrack on iTunes.

A gallery provides some stills and marketing images for each film, and a “related” tab gives you some solid recommendations for similar titles. Viewers interested in Jurassic World will be presented other Dinosaur flicks, John Wick fans will be suggested The Equalizer, and so on.

A “discover” section similar to the “browse” view suggests even more movies you might be interested in. These selections appear to be based not on any specific movie, but on your entire watchlist.

From the discover page you can also access the “surprise” feature. Tapping the gift icon in the corner of the screen will present you with a single out-of-context quote from a movie the app thinks you’ll like. If you’re interested in the quote, you can tap a button at the bottom of the screen to be taken to the associated movie for more information and to add it to your watchlist.

Like TeeVee, MooVee can notify you when movies on your watchlist are about to open. You can pick a time early in the day to get your reminder so that you’ve got time to plan and buy your tickets. Future updates will also add a Today view widget for Notification Center and support for Trakt syncing.

MooVee takes everything that works so well in TeeVee, applies it to a new type of media, and then goes the extra mile in making sure that you have all the information you need to find movies that you’ll enjoy. It’s a great piece of software overall, though it does suffer from some wonky database results.

I’d recommend giving it a try if you’re looking for something to keep track of a growing list of movies you haven’t had a chance to see yet. You can get it on the App Store today for $1.99.