Movie Monkey

Surely you haven't watched your favorite movie just once and the same can be said about a bunch of other good motion pictures. What's more, you probably enjoy them from the comfort of your desktop and it can get frustrating to sort through DVDs to find something good to watch. Luckily, applications like Movie Monkey let you create a database of all titles you own and organize them in categories to help you out.

Accommodation isn't a problem thanks to the simple design that puts all necessary controls at your fingertips, a side panel for quick access to all categories, as well as more than enough space to view each title.

However, a few minutes in and you realize the application is not really what you'd expect. First of all, movies need to be stored on your hard disk drive and equipped with proper metadata and tags so the application can identify them.

Sadly, you can't simply drag files and folders over the main window so you need to pick a target directory to be scanned. If successful, IMDb data is retrieved and the movie automatically placed in the corresponding category. These can be viewed and accessed anytime from a side panel.

All detected items in a folder are displayed in a list, with the possibility to modify name in case data is not retrieved. Additional options let you skip this step or add them to the list anyway. There's also a built-in search bar, but only to find titles locally.

What's more, there are no editing options whatsoever, nor any options to move items from one category to another. Titles are only displayed along with name and cover art and this is properly done only with an active Internet connection. Needless to say that export options are out of the question, nor can you directly launch them.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Movie Monkey is far from being a proper movie manager, with shallow features and little to no editing options. Although info is gathered from the Internet, it's a pity that no personal notes can be added, cover changer or any options to export a list.