We’ve all come across those apps that are so awesome that they simply must be used all the time. As far as looks go, however, some of these awesomely essential apps are in need of quite a bit of polish (read: they’re hideous). However, every once in awhile, there’ll come an app that falls into that category that is consistently gorgeous and a joy to use.

Movies Now HD falls into the latter category.

Simply put, Movies Now HD is the most gorgeous application for finding currently-playing movies in theaters around you (it does more, though; hold tight), and the good looks were the first selling point that convinced me to pick it up.  The icon was designed by The Iconfactory, and the UI itself is totally custom and completely gorgeous. On the iPhone version of the app, the UI is all black, mostly matte, with white highlights and groovy outer glows.  A custom tab bar facilitates navigation, with four tabs—Now, Movies, Theaters, and Profile—housing the information you want.  It’s done a little differently on iPad, thanks to the extra screen real estate: There are still four tabs, but this time it’s Box Office, Upcoming, Theaters, and Tickets.  I’ll start diving into more detail starting with the iPhone version.

When you open the app for the first time, you see the Now tab, showing all the movies playing at the different theaters near your current location. You’re given the option to set a custom location or search by zip code, street, etc, as well as the familiar “locate me” crosshairs. Each film’s entry is full of information, showing the distance to the theater shown, time until the beginning of the next showing, name of the flick, and the ability to purchase tickets directly from the app.  Tap on an entry to see more details, including runtime, a description of the movie, the movie’s poster (some with the ability to play the preview), cast, director, rating, and others. A tab up at the top of this detail view switches between Details and Showtimes, the latter showing nearest theaters (including all of their information) and the corresponding showtimes for the selected movie.  That’s a lot of information, sure, but it’s all presented in a very elegant and attractive way.

The next tab over is Movies. A segmented controller shows Box Office, Upcoming, and a Wish List at the top of the screen. The Box Office view features a list showing Top Box Office, Just Released, and Also Showing films.  Each entry shows the poster, name, genre, and rating along with the ability to dive into the familiar details view. The Upcoming view features Most Anticipated, Other Upcoming, and Releasing This Week sections, once again in a list.  Finally, the Wish List houses anything you’d like to remember to view later.

The Theaters tab shows a list of theaters near your location, with the option to search for theaters in other areas as well.  The list shows name and distance from your location, and a tap shows the address and a list of movies and times for today, tomorrow, and the day after.  You can add individual theaters to a list of favorite theaters, accessible in another segmented controller up top. In addition to the favorites list is a map view, with dropped pins showing theater locations.

Your Profile tab shows the option to log into a MovieTickets.com account (for instant purchases of movies using a stored credit card) as well as the option to manually add a separate credit card if you don’t want your information stored on some sketchy server somewhere.  Also included is the “Tell a Friend” option, allowing you to simply and easily whore out Movies Now to friends using a pre-filled email form.

Did I mention that the iPhone app is gorgeous? Well it is.  The iPad version is even better. It’s all matte, with glowing points of color here and there, like a blue crosshair and gold star, and that ever-present glowing white text.  The options at the top of the screen include quick access to Wish List and location popovers as well as the equivalent of the Profile tab from the iPhone version, and are consistent throughout the app.

The Box Office tab shows a vertically-scrolling list of horizontally-scrolling lists. That is, the entries in each category scroll horizontally, showing their poster, and you scroll down this list to see different categories.  Each entry opens to the detail view as a popover with all that familiar information and gorgeous effects.  The Upcoming tab features more scrolling lists, presented with the same sexy movie posters and popovers for information.

Theaters immediately presents you with a map showing your location and all nearby theaters, which is of course zoomable. The top of this view shows the crosshairs and a popover button to enter a custom location or pick from previously searched locations (which is nice, because for some reason my WiFi occasionally thinks I’m in London), as well as a popover that shows a list of nearby theaters. The Tickets tab just shows your purchase history.

One sort of negative thing I noticed while using this app is that only a very small handful of theaters support purchasing tickets from within the application.  At least around me, there’s only one out of probably 25 locations that allows it.  Now, by no means is this a problem on the sides of the application itself, but it could be potentially frustrating to someone who would want Movies Now HD just to buy tickets.

So what have I taken away from using Movies Now HD? I mean, I’ve told and shown you what it does, Dear Reader, but what exactly should you take away from this review?  Frankly, it’s an amazing piece of software.  If you frequent movie theaters, or even if you only occasionally go out, buy this.  It’s only $1.99, and even if you don’t go out to the movies, this app will show you what’s out there in an absolutely gorgeous UI.

That being said, I feel like this application wasn’t actually deserving of “awesome” status until it was ported to iPad.  While the iPhone version does indeed work well, it’s got quite a few workarounds that are less than ideal.  The iPad’s screen changes everything, and that’s apparent in how well AppSpark (with designer Matthew Scherf) laid out the loads of information needed for this application. Where the iPhone version is good, the iPad version is an absolute joy to use.  The iPhone app is good for mobile use; it’s a utility.  The iPad version is entertainment.  It’s that good.

So go to your local App Store and pick up a copy of Movies Now HD right now.  It’s inexpensive, it’s universal, and it’s a damn slick app.