The movie itself was great, excellent! But the thing that destroyed the earlier part of my day was... the bloody cinema! Or, to be more specific, the management at the cinema! Singapore only has like 5 major cinema operations and this one is one of 2 that I don't like. The cinema is at... West Mall. Enough said. Singaporeans should know the place well and I think they might've had their own experiences too....
Its early on a Thursday afternoon. Mum and I now watch movies on Thursdays before I go to work cos it suits both our schedules well. We caught the 11am showing of Shutter Island. Here's what went wrong...
- Management screwed up the movie timing for the staff so they ended up screening the show earlier than they were supposed so they had to rewind the film (which apparently takes some time). Therefore....
- Movie started at 11.28am instead of 11am. No one official came in to tell us it was gonna be delayed, just some normal staff who said it was only gonna be ''5 more minutes''
- The first 5 minutes or so, they had the wrong... lens or something so the actors were all squashed up, heads cut off as well as subtitles.... (t felt like watching a pirated movie or something) Oh, get this.... the lights were on as well!
- About 3/4 through the show, the projectionist screwed up again. The bottom half of the film was at the top and vice versa. This carried on for about 5 min at a point in the film where things were getting discovered.
- Show ended and immediately after the first name was shown on the credits, they cut it off. The was no picture and no sound for about 30 seconds. Then the credits continued but I couldn't remember if there was sound cos I was kinda busy storming out of there. Later, I overheard that they probably cut off the credit cos they were rushing for the next movie to start. (Do I f***ing care???)
- Staff were not apologetic at all. AT ALL. They still insisted on us exiting through the front of the cinema and their faces looked, dare I say, irritated even! When my mum mentioned about the horrible service we experienced, they just blamed the management. I mean, there's gotta be some kinda manager there right? Not even a lil compensation or even a full f***ing refund?
They should thank their lucky stars that the 15-20 unfortunate patrons that morning did not make a big fuss like we could have. Mum and I worked in service line before and we know what it's like when things go wrong so we didn't wanna make things difficult for them when it's not their fault. Funny cos this isn't the first time that we had bad experiences at that cinema chain. They often forget to turn off their lights in the beginning; once the film just stopped halfway then continued on 5 min later; they blind your eyes after you've been sitting in a dark theatre for 2 hours by turning on the spotlights IMMEDIATELY after the show ends and most of the staff there really look like they are not happy to be there and might spit in your popcorn if you say something wrong!
Why, just recently, my friend and I were late for a movie cos we had to wait 15 min to get drinks! There was only 1 bloody counter open and they were really slow.
Today did it for me... I'm not visiting that cinema for quite some time if I can help it! DON'T GO TO THE CINEMA AT WEST MALL!!! And perhaps the other branches as well (I've only been to the other one at Suntec) You pay the same price at other places and get service 10 times better!!!
P.S. Go watch Shutter Island tho... it's a fantastic psychological thriller and a great homage to the film noir style. Stellar performance from DiCaprio, as usual great directing from Scorsese and I love the raw editing! Although, as one who watches a lot of movies, I kinda guessed the plot (correctly) from the first clue... Watch it!
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