Familiar names you will find in the roster of critics for the movie section of the Strait Times, Life! papers.
Anybody who bother to read their reviews on the latest releases would have notice that they do have a fine application of words and vocabulary (of course... how can you ever get into ST with bad English command). You'd even think they are the kind of 'experts' we can rely on before we ever made a foolhardy decision to spend $9.50 on a weekend flick.
Well, other than good writing, that's all I can speak for the three of them.
When it comes to movies, they practically know nuts.
Let's take for example a particular film I had caught recently and is probably one of the best I watched this year: The Incredible Hulk.
No doubt about it, if you are thinking the same as I do, you would give Hulk a '9 stars upon 10' on the IMDB scoresheet. Or, at least, you would have exclaimed, 'THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE MOVIE !!!' (okay, excuse me for the cheesiness).
On the other hand, Ms Ong, I assumed, spend a good 114 minutes in some cold, sticky theatre in Chinatown and done, she got back to her dusty keyboard and concluded that Hulk is a '....big snooze' with a '2 star and a half upon 5' rating.
I don't know how I should take her words for it when online critics and friends are giving me positive views. Or the fact that several movies I thought good had been classified as rubbish by Ong and her gang of ST film nazis.
Her ex-colleague, Tay Yek Keak is no better.
For all the funny bashings he can write about supposedly 'bad' movies', he can't disguise the fact that underneath those comical rantings, he's really a screw-up in giving reviews like Ong. Come on, who are they fooling?
All right, why can't I try to understand their position?
Agreed, these veteran cinema goers had watched more films than I had in my lifetime. Yep, it's very believable for the horror they experienced, viewing the worst form of craps rising out of 'Floppies Hell'. After such a traumatising journey, would they be in the right mind to tell a good film from another?
Or even identity whatever makes a bad movie...?
Meet The Spartans, an inhumanly retard flick that should have never see the light of day, was given a '2 stars and a half upon 5' by (if I'm not wrong) Douglas Tseng.
It's a failure rating all right but this also means that it's a half star towards a passing grade. Puzzling for a stinko that does not even deserve half a star from anyone. Tseng's suggestion seems to tell us that the movie could have its second chances only if we are grossly dumb enough to watch it in the first place. It only goes to illustrate how the opinions of Ong and Co had strayed further away from reliability in recent years.
What then, you asked?
Well, I would say, stop believing in everything the current Straits Times movie critics had written or are going to write. I do admit that at a point of time there's things I could agree with them about but the riff due to differences had been deepening to a point that trustworhtiness no longer applies.
So do yourself a favour. Read my reviews (I don't write much but I can be quite accurate in what I say) or for better, varied opinions, read others like First magazine or IMDB.com or listen to the remarks of the common cinema goer.
Just don't listen to Ong, Tay And Tseng.
Period.
Our next article will be given by our ever so reliable Ong "I suck at reviews but I can write' Sor Fern.
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