Movie Reviews Search Engine: MRQE
Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE). Going to the movies is no longer an inexpensive evening’s entertainment, as we all know. We do not like to lay down our hard-earned jack for a ticket, only to end up disappointed, offended, etc., by what we see on the big screen. And the same holds true, of course, for movie rentals. Yes, there are reviews in your local paper, but maybe the reviewer’s tastes do not parallel yours. Well, you can always click around the Net and look at reviews from a number of sources — or you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by using the MRQE to cull through reviews on more than 40,000 different titles.
It’s a deceptively simple-looking website, designed and programmed by Stewart M. Clamen, a developer and systems designer who has worked as a consultant for movie review site RottenTomatoes.com. According to Clamen’s resume, MQRE’s database is populated by a Perl application that cruises the web, “automatically extracting current information from targeted review sources.” According to Clamen, “MRQE prides itself on promoting a diversity of opinion from around the (online) world – with sources ranging from mainstream media to independent individuals – in nine different languages.”
A simple keyword search box is available on the main page, as is a dropdown menu allowing you to view “precomputed lists of titles,” such as upcoming releases in the U.S. and UK, top 10 at the U.S. box office, recently released video titles, picks from the American Film Institute’s 100 Years series, festival award winners, and titles reviewed by such notables as Gene Siskel and Pauline Kael. You can see lists of the most popular titles searched for by users of the site over the past week, day, 12 hours and three hours, as well as the most reviewed films. Advanced search options include support for the Boolean AND, OR and ADJ. Results lists include direct links to full-text reviews online. According to the database statistics page, as of this past Tuesday, it contained “413461 articles of 40736 different titles, plus 51148 title aliases.”
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Gary Price is a Washington DC based Librarian and Editor of ResourceShelf
