StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

paul2001sw-1 If you wanted to mock 'Hallam Foe', it would be easy. There's the over-enunciated Edinburgh accents, for a start; the spider-man like abilities of the film's eponymous hero; the hackneyed device of a beautiful, sexually aware but troubled woman; the slightly unsatisfactory plot resolution; and the use of soft, folky music to provide a generic mood of wistful depression. But see it not as realism, but rather as a modern day folk tale, and its equally easy to like the movie, with its slightly fanciful vision of Edinburgh, and a slightly more fanciful vision of a fey but horny teenager let loose in the adult world. And there's a final bonus for anyone who re 'Tutti Frutti', in a decent role for (the highly underrated) Maurice Roeves.

west-travel Jamie Bell is obviously a talented actor. Having said that, we can begin to rely on the strong foundations of this movie. At moments it soaks in an heavy indie manner and becomes bleary, but then the frames get wider and an arty film unveils with a broken censorship.Hallam is a loner after his moms supposed suicide. He has a need for watching other's peoples lives, not for sexual arousal, but rather for trying to put the clues about life together. All the while he pursues the conviction that his stepmother is responsible for the death of his mother. He escapes to Edinburgh and his voyeuristic habits finally pay off when he spots a woman that looks just like his deceased mother. But this is not a film about romance, far from it, I would say. Hallam's and the look-alike's relationship elopes from obsession and need for love, love from anyone that is willing to give it. I think the film hits some good morals this way, because teenage love tends to be synonymous with the simple human need for romantic companionship. Hallam's need for company is empowered by the absence of a mother and it drives him to do very impulsive things. I really thrived on the ending scene when Hallam understands that he won't find anything in Kate. As he walks through the city the camera films the understanding on his face; first it's miserable and childish, then it goes up and you see a new Hallam, a clear and beautiful character development.That is why this movie is good. Not only is it well done but it teaches stuff too, especially to teenagers who are willing to watch it.

Martin P Hallam Foe tells us the story about a boy who lost his mother and experiences some sort of Oedepus complex afterward.It is something like 95 minutes long but would be better in ten. There's like an hour in the middle where he is doing climbing practice on rooftops, and habits in a church tower like Quasimodo (only he is much less sympathetic).There's a strange love story involved which doesn't have anything to do with anything. She happens to look like his mother, yes so what? We know he misses his mother, that's what the first ten minutes were about. They should just have put the beginning and ending together and it would have been a O.K. short film. Now it's a portrait of a character who doesn't change. He is a guy that stuff happens to. The only active choice he has in the whole middle of the movie is to apply for a job.There's this whole Oedepus thing going on which is supposed to make us analyze his character. He paints his face, dresses in women's clothing and wears a dead Badger on his head. A Badger! You've got to see the ending! He returns to his home with the badger on his head (and it is shot like a tacky Horror film) to kill his dad's new wife (which he had sex with in the beginning). And somehow they thought this wouldn't be entertaining enough so they put some indie punk music in the background. I've got to it though, I'm kind of allergic to films that want to write a psychological complex on your nose. It feels like this MacKenzie director/guy/whatever is trying to show us that he also has been studying psychology in school. You are so smart! Thank you for bringing all these forgotten theories back into our memories! You really dug! What a Wallraff! Okay so now I realized this film is based on some random book, but anyway..Photowise it is boring. A lot of talking heads. Plus the editor has changed the colors from scene to scene, you know cold and warm etc.. why? maybe "Hallam Foe" is both a feature and a test film for color blind people. Or maybe they just thought that the drama wouldn't be enough to tell us that he feels lonely, so they increased blue so that we really get it.I'm not even gonna comment on the cliché indie-oh-how-how-how-cute drawings they have made in the presentation. And all the "cute" sex stuff going on. This whole film is an independent cliché. But I do recommend it. I laughed more than a few times. Though it is really annoying to be a film student and to see how crap like this gets through the machine.

Chad Shiira The boy has issues. Hallam Foe(Jamie Bell) hates his new stepmom, but it doesn't stop him from doing her, in a tree-house, no less. The young lad hates Verity(Claire Forlani) because he suspects her of killing his mother. That's why the sex is so shocking, and more disturbingly, erotic, because sex with the mother surrogate might be some fulfillment of a deep-rooted craving for his real mom. Initially, the tree-house episode starts off as a half-hearted murder attempt. Hallam grabs her neck; the stepmother retaliates by grabbing his c***, then baser instincts take over. As they rut like pigs on the floorboards, there's the added luridness of the dead mother's likeness overlooking their unwholesome coupling. Hallam hangs a poster-sized image of his mother, in which she looks more like a woman instead of a parent. Shot in black and white, the mother could be modeling a fragrance. For the Oedipus complex to be fully realized as a central theme in "Hallum Foe", however, the boy needs to make an overture towards killing his father. The fact that Hallum has no such murderous intentions with Julius Foe(Cirian Hinds), speaks to the filmmaker's timidity with the matter of his son's psycho-sexual problems. "Hallum Foe" is kinky, but not too kinky, and ultimately, not too honest about the delicate subject that is incest.Hallam Foe needs a new scene, so he leaves the Scottish countryside and moves to Edinburgh, leaving behind his mother issues. Hallam Foe needs a girl. Alas, the first girl that catches the young man's eye just happens to be his mother's doppleganger; he follows Kate(Sophia Myles) to the hotel where she works as a human resources specialist. She hires Hallam as a kitchen porter. He's smitten. She's smitten, too. Soon, the lad is up to his old voyeuristic ways, spying on her from behind a clock face in the hotel's attic, which offers up a perfect view of her apartment. At times, "Hallam Foe" suggests what "Back to the Future" would look like if Alfred Hitchcock directed it. In the Robert Zemeckis film, the Michael J. Fox character goes back in time and meets his mother(Lea Thompson) as a contemporary, as a pre-maternal woman. They're simply Marty and Lorraine. In a parked car, Marty watches in awe as his mother drinks and smokes. He could have her. In "Hallum Foe", the boy looks out of a crack in the clock's face, which could be suggested as a rift in time that allows Hallum to have what Marty had, a chance to know his mother as a nubile. After Hallum watches Kate have sex with her boss, in the very next scene, he's perusing one of his mother's old birthday greetings. Since Hallum eventually beds Kate, the sight of the mother's double having rough sex with another man would seem to indicate that his covert witnessing triggered a feeling of longing that's both romantic, and parental.In the film's most pivotal scene, "Hallam Foe" evokes Hitchcock's "Vertigo" when Kate wears the dress of Hallam's dead mother. The boy bursts into tears, then cuts away to the two lovers lying in bed. To a certain extent, the filmmaker shrinks back from dealing directly with Hallum's psychosis. The most basic question goes unanswered: Does Hallum accept Kate as a separate entity from his mother? The film is too coy, although the film hints that he's knowingly having relations with his mother, through the use of a key close-up that isolates Kate's eye, an echo of an earlier scene back at the tree-house, in which Hallum tears down his mother's vandalized blow-up, leaving behind a single eye. A brave filmmaker, such as David Lynch, for starters, would crank up the erotic heat once Kate brings Hallum's mother back to life by wearing that dress. If "Vertigo" was made today, and not 1958, Scottie Ferguson(Jimmy Stewart) would nail Judy Barton(Kim Novak) in an instant after raising Madeleine from the dead. Since the film's treatment of their workplace romancing is rendered as cute and healthy, the filmmaker misses a golden opportunity to challenge his objective attitude towards their almost-incestuous relationship by making it unequivocally clear that Kate is Hallum's second chance to indulge in his sexual psychosis, which went unconsummated when the boy's mother drowned. The film's climax, albeit exciting, is all wrong. He goes after the wrong person. By going after the stepmother instead of the father, "Hallum Foe" never fully commits to the idea that the boy thinks Kate is his dead mother. Hallum has a complex all right; it's just not the Oedipus one.The filmmaker pulls too many punches; he tries to make a crowd-pleaser out of some very dark material.