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October Country Review

  • Release Date: Feb 12, 2010
  • Runtime: 1 hr. 20 min.
  • Genres: Documentary
  • Director:Donal Mosher

Other Critics provided by Metacritic.com

Critics scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 4.0
    66

    out of 100

    Metascore®
    Generally favorable reviews
    based on a weighted average of all
    critic review scores.

  • 30

    out of 100

    Variety

    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.

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  • 50

    out of 100

    The Hollywood Reporter Frank 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."

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  • 60

    out of 100

    Village Voice

    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.

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  • 70

    out of 100

    Los Angeles Times Kevin 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.

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  • 70

    out of 100

    The New York Times A.O. Scott

    October Country feels at once personal and objective, a fascinating hybrid of two important tendencies in the modern documentary.

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  • 75

    out of 100

    Chicago Sun-Times Roger 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.

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  • See all October Country reviews at Metacritic.com

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