Is this the best new movie website in Australia?

A new movie website shows a breakdown of what films are showing in Australia, and where you can go see them at a cinema near you.

There are a few things that make a great website: a clean interface, good design, and that it does what it says on the tin. A new website created as a side project by Virgin Mobile developer Rohan Nowell has nailed all three.

Called Moviies, it has a simple raison d'être: allowing you to find movies that are playing in cinemas around you. Usually, our experience when finding a film is going to a specific cinema's website, then going through a labyrinthine system of drop-down menus to narrow down the film we want to see, where we want to go and when. It's an arduous process, and not without its frustrations.

Nowell felt the same way. "One day I found myself browsing upcoming movies on Apple Trailers," he said on his blog. "Suddenly I realised I desired a clean and simple website that shows me what movies are now showing in Australian theaters. I couldn't find one. And with that my side project idea was born."

The execution is excellent. From the front page, users can see very cleanly laid out the films showing in Australian cinemas, their posters, length, Rotten Tomatoes rating and classification. A little further gets you the films that are coming soon.

Clicking on a film gives you more information, including the Twitter response, plot synopsis, and — a brilliant addition — the film's trailer. When you click on "Session times near you", the website uses the location of your computer (with your permission) to give you a range of session times across available cinemas, including Dendy, Hoyts, Event Cinemas and Imax.

The website uses Rotten Tomatoes' API for movie information, which means it's not necessarily all locally relevant; and Nowell hopes to add new features, such as active links to Rotten Tomatoes reviews, in the future.

And if you're interested in DVD releases, the website has that too; scroll all the way down the front page, and you'll get a list of DVD releases from the past couple of weeks.

In all, we think it's slickly designed, and works brilliantly. If you're looking for a go-to cinema website, we don't think it gets much better.