October Country
Release Date: February 12, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Time OutKevin B. Lee
Jersey Shore may be the hyped example of trashy onscreen “reality,” but this portrait of an upstate working-poor family forsakes guilty-pleasure exploitation and simply wows you in every other way. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Manages to excavate enough universal pathos from the mundane to find something truly extraordinary in the ordinary. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
October Country doesn't really have a point, or a story, but it's an almost unbearably vivid portrait of four generations in a single working-class family. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
The beauty of October Country, beside its artful images, is how it compresses the windblown fortunes of working-class America into the fallen leaves of one forlorn family. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is the face of dysfunction. Apparently alcohol and drugs are not involved, except perhaps with some of the missing men. The drug here is despair. They seem to treat it with cigarettes. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
October Country feels at once personal and objective, a fascinating hybrid of two important tendencies in the modern documentary. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
A beautiful evocation of a time and place -- Mohawk Valley in upstate New York, spanning from one Halloween to the next -- and a loving but unflinching probing of the lives of Mosher's family in the course of a year. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
There's rancor here, but also unexpected tenderness. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
In digging deeper into the stories behind the junk--many of which involve the drug problems, legal problems, custody battles, cycles of abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorders of Mosher’s own family--October Country veers awfully close to exploitation. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeJanice Page
What results is both real and surreal, giving and self indulgent. That’s the country we all live in. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineMark Keizer
With the nation’s unemployment rate hovering around 10% and home foreclosure numbers stubbornly high, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s haunting documentary of multigenerational troubles is either a case of great timing or, possibly, the worst timing ever. Read full review
60
Village VoiceKarina Longworth
Best understood as a work of creative nonfiction. The directors employ art-film techniques to aestheticize a swamp of big issues--the military, poverty, madness, family planning, spousal and child abuse--and give a family's (and America's) angst a clear voice and seductive form without leveling judgment. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterFrank Scheck
Family dysfunction has proved a rich resource for documentary filmmakers in recent years, but "October" lacks the narrative drive and emotional resonance of such examples of the genre as "Tarnation" and "Capturing the Friedmans." Read full review
30
VarietyAndrew Barker
A feel-bad film through and through. Chronicling a year in the life of a low-income Mohawk Valley family beset by external hardships and shockingly bad decision-making, the docu straddles the line between unflinching intimacy and invasive exploitation. Read full review
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