Teen Peeping Tom acts upon oedipal urges in dysfunctional family drama from Scotland.
Comment
09/06/08
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Mister Foe (2008)
77 %
Reviews Counted: 47 Fresh: 36 Rotten:11 Average Rating: 6.6/10
Consensus:
Carefully balanced between the dark and the dreamy, Mister Foe is a charged coming-of-age story with whimsy and bite.
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Theatrical Release: Sep 5, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Jamie Bell is Hallam Foe, a troubled young man whose knack for voyeurism paradoxically reveals his darkest fears, and his most peculiar desires. Driven to expose the true cause of his mother’s death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city of Edinburgh for love. Featuring... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Jamie Bell, Ciaran Hinds, Sophia Myles, Jamie Sives, Maurice Roeves
Reviews
A worthy addition to Holden Caulfield's coming-of-age subgenre of off-kilter teenage boys let loose in big cities. Bell and Myles give terrific performances.
09/05/08
Although it's nice to see Mackenzie find uplift in the erotic, what helps drive Mister Foe is how deftly he turns chasm into intimacy between Bell and Myles, both of whom give sharply observed, charismatic portrayals.
09/05/08
Top Critic
Jamie Bell gives a watchable performance in this self-conscious, coming-of-age drama, though the film's overall effect is best described as David Lynch lite.
09/05/08
Top Critic
Jamie Bell has his best role since Billy Elliot in Mister Foe, a darkly comic tale of a twisted teen on the cusp of adulthood.
09/05/08
Top Critic
Director David Mackenzie's complex story is never sure exactly what tone to strike.
09/05/08
You find yourself wishing that what happened in Edinburgh stayed in Edinburgh.
09/05/08
Top Critic
[The film's] intellectualized sexuality stirs neither the head nor the nether regions.
09/05/08
No review available.
09/05/08
Top Critic
There's a chance that Bell's strong work could turn this into a cult item.
09/05/08
Boring, meandering, and painfully self-important, "Mister Foe" is writer/director David Mackenzie's follow-up to his much better effort "Young Adam" (2003).
09/04/08
An engrossing, provocative drama, the feature sniffs out just the right level of lurid behavior to keep the viewer in concert with the mounting domestic woes. It's a feature of unpredicted, and quite thrilling, discomfort.
09/04/08
It's a showy part, but the movie ably supports it with splendid use of Edinburgh, Scotland's cityscapes, a basket full of startling surprises in the screenplay and characters without a fleck of sentimentality.
09/03/08
Top Critic
What makes Mister Foe such unlikely fun is Bell's accomplished smart-ass routine and Mackenzie's blithe attitude toward taboos.
09/03/08
Top Critic
In his attempt to make the audience sympathize with Hallam, [director] Mackenzie uses the cheapest trick in the book: attempting to give the audience a link into his head with a manic soundtrack.
09/03/08
A striking film but certainly more of one that grows on you rather than one that's immediately compelling.
09/02/08
Mister Foe flirts too often with the unlikely and the foolish, yet there is something to admire in the nerve of its reckless characters, so uneasy in their skins.
09/02/08
Top Critic
A movie about a Scottish Peeping Tom who is sufficiently demented to give even Peeping Toms a bad name, it seems to be a lot less about fetish and voyeurism, than warped emotional espionage as pathological mommy love.
08/30/08
Equal parts sweet and perverse, this Scottish film is unpredictable in places where it might be twee, and subversively fanciful in others where it might be punishing.
08/22/08
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