Movie Brain Review: The Portable Movie Database

If you’re an avid movie enthusiast and an iPod Touch owner there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve found yourself lost in a video store, desperately wishing you could get online to check out IMDB.    And while it’s not quite IMDB in your pocket, Probably Incorporated’s Movie Brain attempts to take the movie database experience offline and give you access to a full list of movies wherever you go.  But can a $3 app really offer a database complete enough to satisfy even the most astute of moviegoer?

Sadly, the short answer to this is no.  While Movie Brain claims to offer an index of more than 800,000 movies, it only seems to index theatrically released feature films (and now according to a recent update, straight-to-DVD content).  As a result it offers a fairly comprehensive list for those not looking to delve too far into a certain actor or director’s work, but not comprehensive enough to ever provide true satisfaction to a cinephile.  Who could ever truly call a list of Pacino films complete without including The Local Stigmatic?  Or a Danny Boyle list without including Vaccuuming Completely Nude in Paradise?  Sure they’re obscure, but when shopping around for a reliable movie database, these are the sort of films you want to make sure are in there.  After all, how can you discover new movies if the obscure isn’t well represented?  Other notable films not listed include Powers Boothe’s career-making performance in Guyana, and the third installment in the Infernal Affairs trilogy.

Despite the noticeable weakness in the database, Movie Brain offers a number of features that any film fan on the go can appreciate.  Once you’ve located a specific film, actor or director whose body of work you’d like to check out, you can bookmark the selection and save it amongst other bookmarks you’ve made to return to later.  Many of the entries also feature a write-up of the individual or film, as well as a poster (if the selection is a movie).  If you’re looking for more details, you can even visit IMDB entries at the click of a button.  Some listings even offer Rotten Tomatoes links as well.  Version 1.0 offered NYTimes reviews, which appear to have been replaced by RT in  this version.  It’s a shame they couldn’t have kept both as it would have offered even more range in further reading material.

Movie Brain also offers a great feature for Netflix users.  You can visit the Netflix page for any movie with a simple click from the “More Info” button and add the film to your queue right from your iPod.  A really nice touch about the Netflix, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes features is that it doesn’t move you over to the browser to check these pages out.  Most apps will simply hotswap you over to Apple’s own Safari browser when linking elsewhere on the net, but MovieBrain never forces you to leave the program.  A simple click of the “Done” button takes you right back to the page in the index you used as a jumping off point.

With the exception of bookmarking, none of the above features is available in the offline mode which for many users will be the main draw of Movie Brain.  It’s understandable that web-based links elsewhere aren’t useable, but even basic features like movie posters and write-ups cease to exist in the offline mode.  Once offline, you’ll be stuck with nothing more than access to Movie Brain’s somewhat limited database which, if you’re looking to discover new things, will be a somewhat moot tool.  Other features that one might want to see in an online movie database app — “related films,” “you might also like…” or community-based features — are completely non-existent.

With every cloud though, there’s a silver lining.  Having originally released only a month ago, the developers have already released an update that took a number of complaints to heart.  Version 1.0 lacked a director search option and suffered from a bug that caused some scroll attempts to turn into clicks.  Both were rectified in 1.1.  Had they not been this review would have been angling much closer to handing out an “F” due to it’s broken nature.  Their handling of those situations, as well as adding in direct-to-DVD films, shows that Movie Brain is an application with room to grow and a team that’s willing to nurture that growth.  Until that growth happens though, Movie Brain doesn’t offer much more than a somewhat incomplete index of films that can be browsed online or off.

Movie Brain is available in the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

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