IGN Entertainment has sold its movie-review aggregator Web site Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster, and with the sale goes Rotten Tomatoes’ recent iPhone app (free).
I love Rotten Tomatoes’ interface, which utilizes the iPhone’s swiping feature. Rotten Tomatoes’ raison d’etre, the T-Meter rating, is easy to see for every film. The iPhone app’s movies section is divided into “Top Box Office,” “In Theaters,” “Upcoming,” and “Certified Fresh.” Under DVDs, you can view “Top Rentals,” “New on DVD,” “Upcoming.” and “Certified Fresh.”
To add a film to your favorites list, accessible via the swipe-able menu bar at the bottom, you double-tap a movie’s poster. Movies times are strangely displayed in military time, but I had no problems getting local theaters to appear using the iPhone’s GPS function. Trailers are also easy viewable. The search function works flawlessly and, when available, films can be bought or rented directly from iTunes right from the iPhone app.
As far as negatives, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t offer news, unlike the Web site, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that feature is added later. I’d expect that with the quality of this launch that developers will also be rolling out support for online accounts so that your favorite films can be synced.
The iPhone app also doesn’t have all the available reviews on the Web site. It only shows about 15 and the selection seems to be random between regular T-Meter critics and Top Critics.
But, even with Rotten Tomatoes’ shortcomings, the iPhone app’s developers have put out an extremely worthy free download. With a few updates, RT should get a 100 percent rating, but until then I can still safely say that it’s certified fresh.
