Blogcritics Author: Louis Boram

Movie Review: The Strangers

Louis Boram — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:20:33 EST

Knock-Knock. Who's there...?
“Because you were home”—that’s the pragmatic explanation a masked psychotic butcher, one of a trio of aspiring coed murderers, softly and matter-of-factly provides when frantically asked by the captured Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler), and her boyfriend James Hoyt (Scott Speedman), why the trifecta is terrorizing the...

Movie Review: The Visitor(2008)

Louis Boram — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:57:58 EDT

Strange bedfellows...
On the stuck-up heels of Smart People comes another aloof-trumps-affected characterization, an allegedly edifying higher-learning chapter from Sideways (2004) producer Michael London—released one week after People—called The Visitor (2008). Again, the scholarly and indifferent college professor protagonist is an aimless widower with a...

Cool Hand Luke: World-Changer, Boss

Louis Boram — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:14:23 EDT

Coolness personified...
Moviegoers coming of age after the likes of Jaws and Star Wars ushered in the glossily produced, widely opened, mass-merchandised movie blockbuster 30-plus years ago, may not be aware, or appreciate, what the last golden era—the 1970s—of American movies said about unwilling heroes and their nonconformance to a hypocritical society. To...

Movie Review: Smart People

Louis Boram — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 18:08:17 EDT

Small talk...
Dropkicking the suffix “ass” from what would otherwise be a more shrewdly titled movie, if not story, Smart People is too self-conscious and knowing to come across as anything other than smug. Being a single father widower (without further explanation, mom died “years ago”), wearing corduroy sport jackets, and driving a Saab...

DVD Review: Snow Angels

Louis Boram — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:56:32 EDT

Domestic clutter.
If—like the Beatles surreally imagined—happiness is a warm gun, writer-director David Gordon Green's (Undertow, 2004) misleadingly titled, adult-themed Snow Angels makes a case for an alternately depressant dose of reality. Starring Kate Beckinsale (Annie) and Sam Rockwell (Glenn), the fairish melodrama is a downer tale, based on...

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest

Louis Boram — Tue, 9 Sep 2008 17:57:15 EDT

Bloody stiff...
A literary and cinematic horror-rich character long sustaining on the plasmatic coagulate of tasty souls - Count Dracula - gets slapdash type B-movie treatment from guerrilla filmmaker, writer, director, and producer Michael Feifer. Results have one-stop-shopping Feifer doing his best to collect straight to DVD coin by conjuring author Bram...

Movie Review: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Louis Boram — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:59:31 EDT

Where there's smoke...
Through the haze of brain-y altering recreational drug use, audiences will find themselves either giggling or hacking fitfully from this dopey comedy strain — partying with Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn), two academically gifted collegiates on a quest to fulfill their under-the-influence gratification and raunch-ified wet...

Movie Review: 21

Louis Boram — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:54:22 EDT

Money for nothing...
Shuffling between cautionary tale and misbegotten visceral pleasure, 21 is a glossy rendering of the spurious 1990s reputed MIT “Blackjack Team.” Based on the book Bringing Down the House, the film deals onlookers TV commercial-paced, hyperactive editing, a throbbing (and grating) techno-centric soundtrack, and cumbersome narration in...

Movie Review: Shutter

Louis Boram — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:30:08 EDT

Dead wait...
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. That idiomatic sentiment goes double for this rarified anecdote, considering the aforementioned unbalanced and infatuated mistress is bloodless and breathless. In other words — dead. That’s the dim lit and dimwit paranormal premise of Shutter, a recycled remake of a Thai film of the same name...

Movie Review: Vantage Point

Louis Boram — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:31:28 EDT

D�j� vu doodoo...
Formulated and orchestrated with all the stylistic panache of a freshman Psych 101 term paper, Vantage Point enumerates Suspense For Dummies diagramming, Cliff-noting shortcuts on its depreciated way to ‘Master of Suspense’ - Alfred Hitchcock - emulation. Whereas Sir Hitch plugged into primal fears of the unknown by having ordinary...