While Twitter users tweet like mad about new flicks Despicable Me and Dinner for Schmucks starring Steve Carell, I have to admit that I'm not a fan of The Office star. In fact, a good percentage of the movies that make the trending topics list on the micro-blogging service tend to be a little too mainstream for my tastes. As a result, I haven't made it a habit of relying on Twitter for movie-going recommendations. However, a new online tool called Fflick might change that.
Fflick founders call their service a "Sentiment Engine," which essentially analyzes and aggregates user data. Fflick scours movie comments on Twitter and issues films a score based on the conversations. Most importantly, with Fflick you can find out what your Twitter friends are watching and what they're saying about new releases. If you don't trust your friends, but follow some celebrities, you can find out what they're fflicking about.
For example, if skateboarder Tony Hawk is your hero, on Fflick you can hone in on his tweets about Robert Downey Jr.'s latest hit: "Iron Man 2 is a blast. My boys especially liked Tony peeing in his suit." If Tony's tweets don't do it for you (or if urine comments makes you cringe), you can search what his Twitter friends think about a wide range of films, from Tron Legacy to Inception.
If you're interested in feedback about specific movies, such as The Social Network, you can click on the movie poster on Fflick to see what your friends are saying about the founding of Facebook drama, look at the latest Twitter comments and sift through positive or negative reviews. There are also links on this page to find show times, buy tickets, watch trailers and more. The team behind this web service plan to sell data to movie studios to make money.
While I normally check out Rotten Tomatoes to get box office buzz, Fflick seems like a better way to get up-to-date and personal reviews. That might not mean that the trusted Tomatometer (the ratings tool on Rotten Tomatoes) is all fried up just yet, but it has some serious competition with Fflick's fresh new approach to crowdsourcing movie reviews.