In case you hadn't guessed, I don't update the Abattoir that often.  Two, maybe three reviews a month. That doesn't mean I don't watch a lot of movies, though. I've discovered that I have to write a review within a few days of seeing a movie, and if I don't (for whatever reason), it's hard for me to get into the swing of writing a review for the movie, and it never gets done.

To make a long story short, here are mini-reviewlets of movies I've seen, but saw so long ago (not more than a month or so) that I couldn't write a decent review.  I apologize profusely, as there are a few in here that were specifically requested, but...what can you do?

Tucker: A Man and His Dream - Jeff Bridges has two emotions in this movie. They are: "golly gee whiz, we can do anything, it's America, aw shucks!" and "arrrrrgghhhh! (throw something heavy against the wall)". Chris called him "determined", I called him "borderline psychotic."  This man has one thing on his mind, and it's his car.  I kept waiting for the scene where his wife or his kids finally blew up and said "Dammit, Dad, it's just a car! Why don't you pay some attention to us for a change?!", but they seemed just as determined/psychotic as he did. His "one minute speech" at the end in which he proclaims America as the greatest country in the world lasts waaaay longer than one minute. The cars were really pretty, though.

JFK - Would The X-Files have been created were it not for this movie? Paranoia becomes cool again as Kevin Costner (in only the second movie I've seen him in) reminds us of the whole "back and to the left" thing. I wasn't alive when JFK was assassinated; my generation's "Where were you when (insert life-altering event here) happened?" question involves the Challenger explosion. (Answer: Seventh grade science class. The principal came on over the PA and said "something's gone wrong and they've lost contact with the Shuttle."  We imagined Christa McAuliffe chugging Tang and piloting the Shuttle with no earth contact. Then we got home and learned we were wrong.) There's a little bit of post-modern goofiness here (or so I call it) because the real Jim Garrison (King O'Conspiracy) plays Justice Earl Warren (King O'Single Shooter Theory). Great editing in this movie.  It's the assassination of John F. Kennedy.... and you.......are.......there!

GoodFellas - said it before, saying it again: being a gangster would be cool, if you overlooked the violence and the drugs and the beatings and the murders and all the illegal stuff.  My favorite scene is where Karen Hill (Lorraine Braca) holds her fingers about an inch apart and Henry (Ray Liotta) gives her an inch-high stack of money.  Sigh....I'm such money-grubbing scum.  I never thought I would see a movie where a character is nearly killed to Donovan's Atlantis, but now I have. Excellent, excellent movie. Joe Pesci carrying a knife larger than his head is a very scary sight. Won't listen to the guitar ending of Layla the same way. When Martin Scorcese hasn't won an Academy Award for directing and James Cameron has, you know something's wrong with the world.

All The President's Men - I watched about half of this movie over two nights and just couldn't get into it.  All they did was smoke and type on typewriters and interview people. My father has an autographed book from Bob Woodward (The Bretheren). He got it because my aunt used to work for The Washington Post. I realize a big point could be made about the difference between journalism then and journalism now, how the words "make sure you verify that source" are probably never uttered anymore, but I do not possess the knowledge of the journalistic world to make that point.  So I'll let someone else do it.

The Celluloid Closet - A look at the world of gays and lesbians in the movies. Very insightful.  I'll never watch Ben-Hur the same way again.

Sherlock, Jr. - I usually don't like slapstick comedy.  The Three Stooges make my skin crawl. This Buster Keaton classic, however, rocks. It's short, too, for those've you with small attention spans.

Hoop Dreams - Great documentary, but I don't understand athletic scholarships to schools, particularly high schools. Aren't you supposed to go to school for...oh, I don't know, an education? Everyone, even in this movie, says "Your education comes first, your education comes first, blah blah blah," but if that's the case, why are schools giving scholarships for something that's so supposedly not as important?  It's an ugly, ugly machine.

The Game - This is a movie my mother kept telling me I had to see, I had to see.  So I saw it. If my sister ever pulled something like that on me, I'd kill her.  It would have been interesting to see Jodie Foster in the Sean Penn role, as I understand that's how it was originally scripted. In my "alternate reality" movie casting, Michael Douglas would play a sweet, good-natured, middle-class guy who is tormented by the evil, rich and unpleasant Tom Hanks. This is one of those movies that is very cool and intricate when you first watch it, but when you analyze it afterwards, it all falls apart.

The Shawshank Redemption - This is a great movie.  For the most part, Different Seasons was good source material. (The exception being, unfortunately, Apt Pupil.) Andy Dufresne hid his rock hammer in his Bible. If the Bible is a standard issue item given to all the prisoners, the warden (who also played the evil Dean in Patch Adams) must have handled many of them.  Wouldn't he notice the difference in weight? Wouldn't a rock hammer weigh much more than a stack of paper in the shape of a rock hammer? My senior year of college, I remember sitting outside my thesis advisor's office, waiting to meet with him, listening to him talk with another student about this movie. Their conversation went something along the lines of "Andy pulled the first chunk of concrete out while writing his name.  Language and writing will set you free."  It makes sense.