Movie buffs have another reason to rejoice and that’s because of Rinema. With the online platform, we can now stay updated, organised and share our kind of movies with a set of like-minded folks from across the globe. Founded by IIT graduate, Grishma Udani, while on the lookout for a ‘Goodreads for movies’ kind of service, Rinema was launched this February in beta mode and only went live on the 5th of September.
The movie platform boasts of 1,70,000 flicks from all over the world, with over 2,00,000 actors, actresses and directors in its database. Rinema has sourced movie data from Freebase and Wikipedia.
Getting started with Rinema
I knew I just had to get in there. Rinema has a smooth sign-up process. An email sign up or you can use your Facebook or Twitter accounts to login too. I logged through my Twitter account and was asked to select the languages I watched. After selection, the page threw up a Pinterest-like array of movies and asked me to rate them.
You begin by rating at least 20 movies, so that the platform understands your choice of movies. I went upto 121, so lost was I! I also added some movies into my ‘Want to watch’ list. In the next step, you can follow ‘Taste Buddies’ or Rinema users recommended to you based on the ratings you just gave. Interestingly, it also gives a similarity percentage based on ratings for the common movies, through which I followed quite a few.
Finally, I added some personal details to my profile and was set to go. ‘My Profile’ sorted every movie I had rated into Rated and also into Watched, and the others into ‘Wants to watch’. My home feed was ready with movies I would love to watch:
Managing, discovering and organizing my movie life
Under ‘My Movies’, you can not only manage all your movies but also organize them into personal collections. By default, the platform has also created collections named ‘Favorites’ and ‘Own it’ but you can create collections like ‘Inspiring’, ‘Hacker movies’, etc. I am yet to make collections and this is going to keep me busy tonight. Besides, there is an interesting feature here – you can export all this data into an excel sheet, as well as import it too through the ‘Import/Export Data’ link.
There are so many ways to discover movies in Rinema. Through ‘Movies’ you can either browse through the endless array of movies displayed below or else run a filter through genre, language or release year. Another way to find movies is through ‘Lists’. The Listmania features lists like AFI’s Top 10 comedy’, ‘Quentin Tarantino’s Favourites’, ‘1001 movies you must see before you die’ and many other iconic and popular lists by famous critics, film makers, Oscar winners, etc. You can also create your own list.
Besides this, you can also ‘compare taste‘ with another user through his/her profile, that will generate a similarity percentage. Based on that, you can get movie recommendations from that user’s collections. Additionally, you can find more Taste Buddies, or Facebook friends on Rinema or simply click ‘Explore Leaderboards’ to find the Top Reviewers on the network.
Users can also add/edit movies if they cannot find it listed. Rinema provides an editor’s manual to go about doing that.
Will Rinema be a hit?
Rinema is a classic platform for movie buffs over the world. Finding people who share similar movie preferences as you and discovering new movies through them is a boon, apart from the platform’s multiple ways to discover new movies. The ability to rate, review and explore movies, create collections, make lists, get recommendations and import/export my movies file, and find Taste Buddies makes this platform quite addictive.
Besides, the intuitive design coupled with the neat card-like layout and easy buttons to rate, add to watch, etc. makes for a smooth user experience. Many little things also add onto the overall social experience. Social features like tagging other members and movies makes it so much more convenient. The similarity percentage – through which I found someone with the almost exact ratings for the movies we had rated – is a cool feature.
Many startups are working on creating movie networks with a layer of social. Recently, we had reviewed Flixstreet, a similar social network for Indian movies but it has a long way to go in terms of getting social. In fact, Muvi is another social platform that started with Indian movies back in 2011 but now houses all kinds of movies; the user experience is poor though.
In comparison, Rinema seems way too promising with its many sticky features. Perhaps going further, Rinema could add more fun with movie trivia, quizzes and quotes all shared within the platform.
Read more: Five Films to Look Forward to This Fall