I’m a sucker for movie review sites, particularly the ones that let me find new movies to watch. I use IMDB, Jinni, Clerkdogs, Nanocrowd and the recently reviewed HelloMovies every once in a while to search movies. Today I tried a new site called FilmGator.
The purpose of FilmGator has the site’s FAQ explains “is to provide movie ratings and reviews fast and to let users keep track of their own movie top list and movie watching history. On FilmGator anyone can write reviews and rate movies, not just movie critics.”
FilmGator mainly serves two purposes - 1) keep track of movies you watched by timeline and 2) find new movies to watch either by searching or by getting recommendation based on your ratings. FilmGator also includes a few socializing features like the ability to share your favorite movies list on Facebook and Bebo. Like any social networking site, all registered users has a profile where you can find out what movies the user has watched, rated or reviewed. Users can also follow each other and subscribe to individual feeds.
To find movies FilmGator offers a browser where users can skim through lists of movies categorized into different genres and arranged according to rating. Like HelloMovies, FilmGator lets you browse movies released during a particular period of time with finer control on start and end year of the period. This works exceptionally great as it let me discover several new movies I never heard of.
However, I was disappointed to find that majority of the movies had no reviews. Not even a brief summary of the plot! Thankfully, they have a link to the IMDB page of the movie. I ended up searching for movies on FilmGator and reading the review and plot on IMDB.
The recommendation engine too is still immature. User participation is poor - most of the movies are rated by less than 10 users which skews the movie ratings terribly. Their collection is quite exhaustive though, and easy to browse through.
It’s still early to say anything, but right now FilmGator leaves a lot to be desired.
On FilmGator anyone can write reviews and rate movies, not just movie critics.”watch tv-shows
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