Mister Foe

Mister Foe/ Hallam Foe (2007)

Review by AJ Detisch

Directed by David Mackenzie
Written by David Mackenzie and Ed Whitmore, based on a novel by Peter Jinks
Cinematography by Giles Nuttgens



David Mackenzie’s follow-up to the brilliant Young Adam wants to be a feel-good underdog story of a lonely voyeur who is trying to confront some psycho-sexual issues with his dead mother. It wants to be gritty, realistic, and mysterious. At the same time, it wants to be funny and nonjudgmental of its disturbed lead as he establishes himself as an adult.


To meet this end, the film tries hard to be youthful. Its poster has hand-drawn letters looking like that of Juno. Its original soundtrack is comprised of fast-paced indie rock which tries to convince the audience that Hallam is OK; just a little misguided. But strangely the film is anything but youthful.


Like Young Adam this film’s central mystery concerns a drowned woman- in this case Hallam’s mother. Young Adam keeps its mystery quiet, contemplative, and paced well enough to hit you with the truths as they come. Hallam Foe does the opposite. It foregrounds its character’s psychosis so clearly and so early that he never really does anything outside his expected parameters. The opening scene is Hallam in his treehouse watching his sister fooling around with her boyfriend. Hallam swiftly interrupts, asserting his presence in the household. Here we see everything that Hallam will do for the rest of the movie.


The mystery surrounding his mother’s drowning is whether it was suicide or murder by his father’s girlfriend. The audience can never really trust Hallam because, besides being creepy, we think his obsession has led him close to insanity. This hindered the mystery element for me because Hallam is too sporadic to be relatable. Right when he's found some clues that would support his claim he runs away from home, at first it appearing to be looking for the police. Then he gets extremely sidetracked by a girl who resembles his mother, which frustratingly leads the story away from the mystery element.

While Jamie Bell does bring out some very endearing traits in his lost character, he was limited by the obviousness of his psychological needs. This movie is in no way mysterious, yet it is not blunt either. It tries to be realistic in dealing with such issues, but it adds a very self-conscious spunk which registers itself as quite the opposite. It goes for a soundtrack-heavy, Trainspotting attitude to help the audience root for a protagonist who scales buildings, picks locks, and camps out for the sake of voyeurism. These urban peeping tom adventures Hallam engages in are way too difficult for an inward-drawn country boy to engage in and they are not sexy, giddy, or pleasant. They are more neutral than anything; not propelling the character or story. Mackenzie makes you understand Hallam, yet he fails to build common ground.


He expects you to enjoy Hallam’s trials and tribulations without much ideological justification. The film hinges on its audience’s perspective on voyeurism/the kind of person who engages in it. Obviously, most people would be disgusted by it. And Hallam Foe realizes that, but it does not let us see Hallam weigh the morality of his decisions. He goes from person to person, trying to fill his deep void. There is a particularly disturbing line from Hallam’s love interest Kate where she drunkenly says “I love creepy boys,” perhaps asking the audience to do the same. The line tries to foreshadow her understanding of him (her motivation remains vague throughout) and tries to further us from judging him. It’s not hard to like Hallam, but it is very hard to participate in his adventure- if it is even an adventure at all. All the while, the film tries to use its flamboyant soundtrack to mask its indecisive mood.

Great performances are weighed down by a film with a weak third act, muddy development, and needlessly ambiguous direction from Mackenzie. Recently this film was re-named for a US release, and for what reason? Not only is it more unappealing, but the hard truth is that the Hallam character never earns the title 'mister.'

Doomsday (2008)

One thing that makes "Doomsday" an interesting entry into the neo-post-apocalyptic genre is its blatant recognition of the "Mad Max" era the movement owes itself to. Unlike the gritty realism of the "28 Days Later" movies and the "Private Ryan"-indebted "Children of Men," "Doomsday" takes the ultra-seriousness of its own kind and reaches back to the Eighties to create a sense of comedic contrast. Not that the film is exhilarating or side-splittingly funny, but it finds a new voice for familiar material and manages to be cheaply amusing from beginning to end.

The film starts with a Malcom McDowell voice over that tells us of a wicked virus that has isolated Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. A large wall is built around the area to quarantine the virus and annhialate the infected people. In London, order is barely maintained from a series of Orwellian lies being fed to the media. Here, we meet sexy English police officer Catherine Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) and her government-affiliated ally Bill (Bob Hoskins). Bill is told about a community of survivors beyond the wall including a power-hungry scientist Kane (McDowell) who might hold the cure. Little do they know of a band of rebels, who are spiky-haired, cannibalistic savages with a taste for S&M chic. Sinclair is sent with a few fortune soldiers on a suicide mission to find the cure and somehow make it back to the wall alive.

The video game-like plot itself is really nothing special. The zombie lore of microvirus holocausts proved itself tired beyond belief in "28 Weeks Later," and post-apocalyptic imagery in general is starting to become banal. However, Neil Marshall seemed to keep himself inspired throughout the production - even as he pretty much recreated scenes and tones from other movies and hoped to bind the film with his own flourishes of originality. He is occasionally successful of this hope, giving the movie moments of shocking bravado when you think it's taking a turn for generic. My favorite scene is a communal blood feast seemingly inspired by the flesh fare in "A.I.," where eighties New Wave music is played over a spectacle of brutality. The scene serves as the film's dynamic centerpiece, allowing the retrogressive style to completely unfold and the movie takes self-indulgent pleasure in its grab bag of influences. The grace of Neil Marshall in that scene, and in the movie as a whole, is that he allows the audience to have as much fun in watching as he obviously did making it.

In the third act, Kane is finally revealed in a tribute to the great revelation of Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now." His megalomania is established in a familiar monlogue, and the scene carries on with a "Gladiator"-like fight sequence which throws in the sword and sandle epic to the many hats the film tries on. It all feels a bit underwhelming at this point, and Malcom McDowell's latter years status as a B-movie icon seems all the more appropriate. The conclusion shifts back to "Mad Max" mode with an old school car chase and by the end, it definitely feels like a tad too much. Then again, that is precisely the film's unique charm is its celebration of the sci-fi/fantasy days of old that have been all but forgotten in this ultra-serious age. A lot of critics complained that "Doomsday" was laughable in comparison to Marshall's previous breakthrough hit "The Descent." Yes, of course it is. And that's why it's more fun.

Modern Vampires (1998)

Probably seen by most on the after-dark Cinemax circuit of the late 90's, (most likely wedged between an "Emmanuelle in Space" episode and something starring Gary Daniels) the 1998 direct-to-video flick "Modern Vampires" surely amassed some sort of cult following. Directed by Danny Elfman's brother Richard, ("Forbidden Zone") and honing an eclectic cast featuring Casper Van Dien, Craig Ferguson, Kim Cattrall, and the legendary Rod Steiger, this is definitely a unique film in its blend of wild comedy, pop culture, horror and spoof.

Talented screenwriter Matthew Bright ("Freeway," "Gun Crazy") continues his themes of troubled urban youth and the moral perversion of mainstream America with a story about a band of vampires living in L.A., who are carefully trying to protect the secrecy and dignity of their breed. They hunt down reckless prostitute Nico, (Natasha Gregson-Wagner) who has been using her profession to wantonly lure nightly blood feasts, and is consequently calling dangerous attention to the vampire community. The gang is led by the youthfully handsome Dallas, (Van Dien) who falls for Nico and tries to protect her from his contemporaries.

Things get interesting when Rod Steiger's Dr. Van Hellsing comes to town to find Count Dracula among the city's growing vamp population. The best scenes of the movie rise from a sub-plot where Hellsing hires South-Central Crips to help him with the vampire slaying. The comedic contrast between the stubborn, culture-clashed Steiger and the joint-sucking, gangsta-rap blasting thugs is a stroke of genius, and Elfman uses enough restraint to keep the running gag amusing throughout the entire movie.

In similar ways, Richard Elfman allows the campiness of his own direction, and the natural disparity of the cast, to keep each scene entertaining with an appropriately silly tone. Think of the carefully balanced spoofery of "Fright Night," the teenage wit of "Scream," and the schlock of 90's B-movies like "Jack Frost" and you have "Modern Vampires," a send-up of vampire lore that doesn't take a frame seriously. The fun of this movie is that it feels completely aware of its own badness, and seems to string many of its laughs around the kitschy acting and production values.

However, one of the problems Elfman has with balancing spoof and horror is that he mistakenly allows a certain amount of laziness to be taken towards the material. To fully make fun of something, a director needs to have complete control over the things s/he is spoofing. "Modern Vampires" has very little establishment of its own mythological rules, its action sequences are dull, the special effects are half-baked, and the flashy, frequently used editing trick of inserting quick B-roll shots for dramatic effect is annoying. It's too easy to make a slapdash spoof with the excuse that it's "supposed to be bad." Great send-ups know how to poke fun at the subject matter, but give you what you want out of the genre anyway - like what Spielberg did with adventure serials in"Raiders" or what Tarantino did with kung fu movies in "Kill Bill," etc. This film is just a contentedly bad one, with a few laughs scattered around the camp.

The problems don't end there, either. There seem to be whole expositional scenes missing, the cinematography is bland and the sound design consists of obnoxiously artificial stock effects. There is also some needless, jarringly dramatic material, like when Nico returns to the trailer she grew up in to confront her abusive father. While going along nicely with Bright's body of work, the heaviness is simply unwarranted. The movie is oddly unbalanced, and towards the middle it starts to feel like Elfman didn't have a clue about where to take it.

If one can accept "Modern Vampires," on its own terms, there is still plenty to enjoy. The cast is vibrant and clearly having a good time and there are some genuinely funny moments. The under-appreciated Natasha Gregson-Wagner is a great fit, even making lines like "You're a card that needs to be dealt with" seem purposefully funny. "Modern Vampires" is pure, straight-forward cheap thrills that still deserves a watch - even if you're not just watching it to kill time between Cinemax After Dark flicks.

Chappaqua (Conrad Rooks, 1966)

Who is Conrad Rooks? His only other film credit, besides "Chappaqua," is an early 70's adapatation of "Siddhartha," which was probably more revered for its cinematography by Ingmar Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist than anything else. The question is asked in "Chappaqua," Rooks' autobiographical depiction of the wonderland of narcotics, which attempts to assess the identity of a man who has relied on consciousness-altering substances since his early teens, as well as the identity of a culture which surrounded his addiction. An informative card in the opening credits tells the audience all of the background information, and it is assumed that Rooks is just a former addict with a story to tell.

As "Chappaqua" gets going, one sees that it is not really a story at all, but a pastiche of beautiful and haunting images, themes, and visual ideas. Conrad Rooks apparently stars as himself, veiled as a character named Russell Harwick, and his tale begins in New York city - where debauchery has made a monster out of him. He lies on the floor of a nightclub munching crushed fragments of LSD and avoiding people's dancing feet. Infused around this sequence are various vibrant shots of urban glitter, ferociously edited together using blended opacities and Godardian fast cuts. The film follows Harwick into a rehabilitation clinic, where he is promised a "sleeping cure" for his drug addictions. What follows is a series of unconnected sequences, featuring visions of Native-American, Indian and American cultures.

The clinic immediately seems fashioned after the one in William S. Burroughs' "Junkie," and when Burroghs himself appears as Harwick's doctor it feels all the more appropriate. There is another appearance by Allen Ginsberg, and, considering the bodies of work of the two authors, the story is actually enrichened by their presences throughout the movie. "Chappaqua" is deeply inspired by the stylish, deeply personal works of the beatnik era, and its surreal, Dadaist realism takes on an interesting life of its own, especially considering the surrounding hippie movement of the time.

The film's many elusive, hallucinatory sequences are undoubtedly disjointed, but they quickly perculate into a trippy meditation on drugs and their corresponding cultures. Some of these scenes show drugs as cerominal or transcendental agents, having a spiritual purity in certain rituals. Others are nightmarish, like the unforgettable ode to American horror movies, where Harwick walks around the streets of New York City in a Nosferatu-like cloak. The film's title comes from Rooks' hometown, which is an American-Indian word meaning sacred burial ground. One of the film's prominent themes is purity in itself, whether as being devoid of controlling substances like drugs or of widespread cultural confusion. Rooks seeing 1965 New York City as a place of excess was a rare perspective for its time, but it now feels all the more astute. He explores the cultural roots of drug use to comment on the cultures in themselves, and one of the most important messages of the film is found in its pursuit for clarity of self. Irony is shown in how Native Americans and Indians once used drugs like peyote and marijuana as a means of spiritual identification, contrasted with its use as an instrument of excess in 1960's America.

Rooks seemed to channel the French New Wave in his visual and editing aesthetics, and it's not hard to connect directors like Godard and Truffaut with the visual motifs presented in the film. Rooks uses the liberating new teqhniques of the Nouvelle Vague to convey an unhinged vision of altered consciousness, and in certain ways pushes them forward. The beautiful cinematography by Robert Franks alternates between crisp B&W, washed-out B&W and grainy color in a style that may have never been used before in a feature film, and certainly wasn't used much until Oliver Stone's "JFK". Rooks' experimentation also owes some of its inspiration to a fellow American, Dr. Kenneth Anger. The cross-dissolves and occult-like imagery seem to come straight from "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome," and the teenage motorcycle iconography of Harwick seems to be taken directly from "Scorpio Rising."

While making these connections, it is important not to thoughtlessly rank Rooks with his contemporaries. This being his first film, it is far from a realized vision. Its sequences, while impressive, are sloppily connected with way too wide of an array of themes. The frequent experimentation undermines the film's thematic strength, and the sequences only seem to add up to hopeless ambiguity by the conclusion. The locations of France, India and the the U.K. (even Stonehenge where a wizard in a white cloak waves a wand on top of the world wonder) are impressive for an independently-financed film in any era, but seem like pointless frivolousness in relation to the truly important elements of the film. Nevertheless, the arresting images and counter-cultural observations should make the movie relevant in historical and social contexts and, at very least, make it a terrific watch. Where else are you going to see a dancing wizard on top of the real Stonehenge?

**Thanks Chase for bringing this home!

Cyborg (1989)

Directed by: Albert Pyun
Produced by: Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan
Starring: Jean Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, and Ralf Moeller.
Cinematography by: Phillip Alan Waters




(By Guest Critic/Twin Brother to Nick, A.J. Detisch)

I asked Scott, the guy I rent movies from, what the best Van Damme movie is. Without any hesitation he said Cyborg so I went over to his sci-fi section and picked it up . He said it would be a lot better than the crap I usually rent and after watching the movie with my brother, I could see what he meant. At the time of writing this review, I admit I am not very familiar with Jean Claude's work, but I found Cyborg lacking in storytelling but superfluous with quality action.

I'm a fan of the film's director Albert Pyun (Mean Guns, Nemesis, Captain America). A student of Akira Kurosawa, he incorporated a zen style into his filmmaking in the B-Action genre. He does not storyboard and shoots with a wide array of unpredictable angles and camera maneuvers, which make most of his films very visually stimulating. If Goddard had an influence on action film aesthetics, it is evident through Pyun. This movie incorporates steadicam, good intraframe slow-motion shots, and lots of good kicks and knife throwing by J.C. himself.

As much as I hate to criticize Pyun in such a general way, his films all get pretty scatterbrained at times (see Nick's review for Ticker). The plot is simple enough: Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean Claude) must stop a team of post-apocalyptic cyborg rogues from destroying a team of scientists who may have a cure for a deadly virus. But Pyun has no unity in production design or costumes, which make certain aspects of the film generic. It seems like he's trying to create a backwoods Mad Max without the cars (Van Damme's character's name is Gibson after all), but he undermines the effort by too much genre bending. He tries to incorporate Western, Pirate, Post-Apocalyptic, and Sci-Fi elements into one story that has not the depth to justify it.

However, Pyun creates a very hilarious scene in which he envisions an action-movie alternative to getting crucified. Gibson gets crucified and left on a T-shaped cross for a whole night and instead of shouting "Why have you forsaken me?!" he kicks his way off the cross! What would J.C. do?

The movie is a lot of fun, but I'd like to think Van Damme's glossier work (Time Cop, The Quest) would offer better production values and characters. I'll have to take it up with Scott. Fun fact: Jean Claude Van Damme did some ghost editing on the film.

The Brown Bunny

The infamy surrounding The Brown Bunny is something that will always define it. I remember the dark days surrounding the film’s premiere at Cannes, where actor/writer/director/director of photography/editor Vincent Gallo was criticized as misogynistic, narcissistic, artistically and morally misguided. Roger Ebert slammed the film, having allegedly made audible jokes during the screening (which was eventually booed by its conclusion).

Its controversial sex scene, involving graphic, questionably pornographic fellatio performed by Chloe Sevingy onto Gallo, brought up a debate about decency and art. Gallo’s control over almost every aspect of the movie made it seem like he had an agenda of his own, whether it be chauvinistic or intimately personal. I remember Gallo’s apologetic defense of the film, where he was hurt by the vile negativity of his critics, which made him recall harsh teasing in his youth for being “ugly.” The whole ordeal of the film’s wide panning at Cannes seemed like a nightmare and a day of reckoning for Gallo, who claimed he would never make a movie again.

But then he re-edited the film, got a great distribution deal, got some rave reviews and actually made money from it. Ebert himself gave the movie a “thumbs up.” For all its controversy and negative implications, The Brown Bunny somehow evolved into a legitimate, and even respected, cult film.

A complete contrast to the cinematic, inventive, densely dramatic Buffalo ’66, The Brown Bunny is stark, fragmented and aimless in structure. The movie opens with a long, shaky handheld shot of a motorcycle race which dissolves into the second-place loser Bud Clay (Gallo) recuperating and packing up. The DIY style, which feels like Gallo is the sole crew member behind, is reminiscent of Mario Van Peebles’ authoritative blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadass Song. The ultra-minimalistic production values give the film a raw, truly independent energy like an inspired, experimental thesis student film. Probably half of the film is some kind of an interior car shot, which bridge a barely existing narrative about Bud’s lonely limbo of guilt and disbelief.

Gallo’s performance is strongly subtle, with his quiet voice and mousy presence effectively carrying out his character’s torturous inner existence. Because the film is guiltlessly indulgent, I started wondering how it would have played had Gallo cast another actor as Bud. To Gallo’s defense, he is pitch-perfect in the role to the point where casting anyone else seems pointless.

Although the movie is airy in dramatic substance, it is always compelling and never feels flimsy or gratuitous. For having a comparatively non-existent crew, the movie holds together well as a character study and a meditation on remorse. As far as the notorious ending, it is disturbing and shocking in a way that undoubtedly finalizes the narrative. The incestuous nature of sex in art is troubling in itself, but despite one’s possible moral objection to the material, the impact of the scene is appropriately troubling and consequently powerful.

My Brother's Wedding

After making his vibrant and momentarily celebrated, but ultimately under-recognized, student thesis film at UCLA called "Killer of Sheep," (which wasn't given a proper DVD release until late 2007, when music rights could finally be secured) young director Charles Burnett seemed to have a limitless amount of things to say about lower class marginalization and interpersonal relationships. Unlike his dramatic first feature, "My Brother's Wedding" is told as a lighthearted comedy, despite tackling issues like responsibility, generational disparity and class division.

Stark production values aside, the movie carries itself with an apparently effortless tone. Its hero is a good-hearted, but developmentally-arrested 30 year old man named Pierce, who lives with his parents, works at his family's dry-cleaning shop and feels somewhat betrayed by his lawyer brother when he decides to marry into a wealthy family. His old buddy Soldier is fresh out of prison and raising hell again, which is troubling to Pierce after he promised Soldier's mother to keep him out of trouble. The bittersweet story walks a fine line between its fluffy, heart-warming comedic bits and some very heavy plot elements with so much natural competancy that the film shifts into its dramatic scenes seamlessly.

One of my favorite scenes is indicative of the film's balance of comedy and hard truth, where Pierce's strong-willed mother stands up to two men who seemingly enter the shop to rob her. After they cautiously walk in and nervously eye the store, she impatiently yells, "If you got somethin' to do, you better well do it!" The strength in her voice sends the men sheepishly out of the store, and the scene concludes with both hilarity and poignancy.

Like "Killer of Sheep," the film chronicles its lower-class family over a series of days that are representative of the collective plights and joys of families in similar economic and social statuses. The ordinary home life of the films characters is painted in a realistic, but warm tone - similar to nostalgic works like Gene Saks' adaptation of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" or Robert Mulligan's "Man in the Moon." One falls in love with the characters and sympathizes with their predicaments, even when the low-budget production values and unprofessional acting get in the way.