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Reviews
Wilson's Reward (1980)
Wrong Headed Rating
How can IMDb give this film a rating of 2.9 when seven of the reviewers gave it a rating of 10, one gave it a rating of 8, one a rating of 5, and one a rating of 1. That's an average rating by people who actually saw the movie of 8.4/10.
What kind of a rating system are you using when you turn that kind of excellent rating into a "weighted" rating of 2.9. "Weighted" by whom? Using what criteria?
Someone at IMDb is completely lacking in aesthetic sense, and has no concept of what makes a fine film.
This movie retells Somerset Maugham's short story of Ginger Ted ("the Beachcomber") and the uptight spinster missionary - with commendable fidelity, not only to the story itself, but to the author's atmosphere of light comedy. It is marvelously acted by Sandy Denis and Gerald O'Loughlin, and includes an operatic musical score that greatly enhances the feeling of humor and farce which is conveyed by both the dialog and the musical background.
But I suppose it requires a degree of literary and musical taste to fully appreciate such an excellent rendition - something which your "weighted rating" system is apparently incapable of recognizing.
I shall never trust or rely on IMDb's rating system again.
Helen of Troy (2003)
Not a bad job
I disagree with the reviewer who thinks Paris is prettier than Helen. Sienna Guillory is gorgeous! As in the Iliad Paris & Helen are a matched pair. I also disagree with the reviewer who panned the movie because it was not faithful to the Iliad. No movie, not even a TV miniseries, can be expected to be totally faithful to any book. A movie is always a selection. The question should not be what was omitted, or whether it compressed or altered the text for cinematic purposes. Of course it did! The question is whether or not it captured the spirit of the original, or whether it did violence to that spirit, as too many movies do. In my view this movie captured the spirit of the Iliad surprisingly well. Perhaps the Greek heroes, especially Agamemnon, do not come off as heroically as the modern viewer has come to expect. But then our idea of heroism, (confused as it too often is with idealism), is not Homer's; and, then again, this movies portrayal of the Greeks as devious aggressors plotting the conquest of Troy is both historically accurate and does nothing to distort Homer's portrait of them. He certainly would have agreed. I did feel that the movie became somewhat rushed at the end. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common problem with many movies based on classic works of literature. The director seems to lavish most of his energy and resources on the beginning and middle of the story. Then, as time and money begin to run out, the ending becomes hurried, episodes are combined, the story becomes perilously compressed. But even here, the movie does not really leave the viewer disappointed. The scene in which the Trojan Horse suddenly appears without explanation outside the walls of Troy is particularly effective, because it appears to the viewer just as it must have appeared to the Trojans. Even though one may wish for more, nothing in the movie's ending distorts Homer's tale of the fall of Ilium.