Jamie Bell, who plays the title character in the new film Mister Foe, is the next Christian Bale. At least.

| Jul 17, 2019

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Bell was a decent kid actor and a terrific dancer in Billy Elliot, but he's grown into a really first-rate actor.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 18, 2008

[A] prettily photographed but relationally science-fictional coming-of-age blather.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 18, 2008

It's a coming of age you can believe in.

| Oct 9, 2008

While the film playfully telegraphs its inspirations, Mister Foe never persuasively comes together as a dark fable about an adolescent misfit stuck in loss.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 19, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 5, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 5, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 5, 2008

You find yourself wishing that what happened in Edinburgh stayed in Edinburgh.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 5, 2008

[The film's] intellectualized sexuality stirs neither the head nor the nether regions.

| Sep 5, 2008

Mister Foe is infused with enough macabre and comical touches to prevent it from sliding into clinical sensationalism.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 5, 2008

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.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2008

What makes Mister Foe such unlikely fun is Bell's accomplished smart-ass routine and Mackenzie's blithe attitude toward taboos.

| Sep 3, 2008

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.

| Sep 3, 2008

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.

| Sep 2, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 22, 2008

An occasion for David Mackenzie to infuse his smutty purview of modern romantic relations with twee affectation.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 1, 2008

A dark, often funny Oedipal and erotic tale from Young Adam director David Mackenzie, Mister Foe benefits from the emotionally and physically agile performance of Bell.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 11, 2008

Somehow the whole works surprisingly well, whether or not you end up thinking that it might have been still better left on the page.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2007