Movie disappointments

The Pilot's Wife. What the hell was this movie about? A couple of years ago, I started to read the novel it's based on, but I got bored pretty quickly and never finished it. The movie (and I assume the book) starts out about one thing - a distraught wife who discovers her dead husband was leading a double life. Then it goes off in a completely different direction (for awhile), focusing on the IRA and terrorism and who knows what. Then, in the end, it casually comes back to the original story and the wife makes peace with her massively deceptive husband and moves on with her life. The terrorism and the death of the 104 innocent people on the plane are moved past without comment. Holy cow - I never saw a terrorist act used as a plot device before. SHAME!! As long as her and her daughter are o.k., I guess the rest of the people don't matter. Crazy, weird, unsatisfying movie. It just couldn't decide what it wanted to say. A waste of a terrific cast and 90 minutes of my life.

The International. This really should have been in the same league as movies like Syrianna, but just didn't hold together. We all got bored despite a first rate cast and decent performances. At the end, I wondered SO WHAT??? I thought the point had been lost - what was the filmmaker trying to say? Needed more of a point of view. Reminded me of Vantage Point, which started strong, but ended with a whimper instead of a bang, and didn't have much of a point of view despite the title. If you're going to go to the trouble to make a movie about an Important Topic, you should bother to make a substantial movie! I had pretty low expectations because the reviews had been lukewarm and the movie did not catch on with audiences. But I foolishly thought it was too intelligent for the rank and file (I'm smug like that). Instead it's flaws were fully on display. Really frustrating, because I wanted to like it.