Swartacus

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.

Favorite films

  • Raising Arizona
  • The Limey
  • Trading Places
  • Full Metal Jacket

Recent activity

All
  • The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

    ★★½

  • The Deer Hunter

    ★★★★★

  • Elemental

    ★★★

  • The Outsiders

    ★★★★

Pinned reviews

More
  • To Leslie

    To Leslie

    ★★★½

    The beauty of the drunk. The horror of the hangover. The majesty of winning the lotto and having it recorded on betamax for posterity. Not a life changing lotto though, more like a detour lotto. Anyone that's ever called themselves "a regular" at a bar either knows a Leslie or is one. That slow languid pan across the counter at a dive bar at last call seems epic in scope, yet ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme.

    Leslie's are fucking…

  • The Game

    The Game

    ★★★★★

    I was somewhere near New Trier when the sadness took hold. I started scream yelling random curse words like a man with Tourette’s and bawling all the way down the highway. Wounds let the light in they say. Bullshit, I say. I was two towns down the road before I realized where I was and regained my composure. The same damn Kwik Trip in the same damn town as I was last week. The ice cold air conditioning was backhanding…

Recent reviews

More
  • The Deer Hunter

    The Deer Hunter

    ★★★★★

    It’s dusk near a forgotten lake. Crickets chirp aggressively, then they stop succinctly as if cut off by a dude running a television station audio board. A middle-aged suburban man walks down a wooden walkway with reeds and cattails taller than he is surrounding him on either side of the path. The doctor told him 30 minutes of exercise per day for his high cholesterol. 

    A Pirate Looks at Forty by Jimmy Buffett is playing on his AirPods as he walks…

  • The Outsiders

    The Outsiders

    ★★★★

    "I've always believed that kids have many more feelings than we give them credit for."
    -Francis Ford Coppola

    The Outsiders is the embracing warmth of a Stevie Wonder ballad, the subtle hilarity of a stupid name like "Sodapop" Curtis and the iconic fuck-all melancholy of a soot-faced C. Thomas Howell angrily lighting a cigarette in the middle of a hospital burn unit. 

    I just realized that the opening scene with Ponyboy and his notebook is probably the first time I…

Popular reviews

More
  • Cop Land

    Cop Land

    ★★★★

    You can look at this film in two ways:
     A pseudo-indie film experiment which imploded under the weight of its slumming superstar cast....
    Or you can look at it as a kick ass slow burn neo-western in which James Mangold slyly subverts and toys with the underdog Rocky persona...and then eventually celebrates the vengeful forgotten man persona of Rambo.

    It would have been really interesting to see how this film would have been perceived had it just been Sly and…

  • Oblivion

    Oblivion

    ★★★★★

    Oblivion is a film you may or may not remember from about 7-8 years ago. Tom Cruise is in it playing a man on a post-apocalyptic Earth. There isn’t much to know about the plot other than Cruise bombs around in a cool looking spaceship (and sometimes a futuristic motorbike) looking for damaged drones to repair. He has a partner in a high tower that helps him find these things, and in between missions he finds tchotchkes from “old Earth”…