It's ones of those you watch and then what the hell did I just watch I feel dumber for seeing this

It's weird that I don't think I can be objective about this movie because I know some of these people and know the locations so well.

I watched this because it was filmed largely in Ilion and Herkimer New York, just several miles from where I live, but I was expecting it would be a small budget bore. Instead, I found it to be a worthwhile documentary, even if you don't live in the Mohawk Valley. Basically it's a very compelling portrait of three generations of lower middle class residents of Ilion who have gone through some simply terrible things, and who seem to believe that their fate has been pre-ordained . What I liked best is that I was sympathetic to every one of the main characters; they all are good people, but most have been hurt by bad choices. My favorite character is the patriarch, a decent but extremely closed off man who has been haunted all his life by the ghosts of the friends he saw die in the Vietnam War, but who is finally writing about his experiences as catharsis. It is is available to watch via streaming video on Netflix

A searing documentary about America's forgotten. Following the lives of one lower class family struggling to make it through their daily lives for one year, the doc presents a complicated portrait of modern life and explores the rarely seen underbelly (and reality) of the American dream. Few of its subjects are likable, but it's hard to ignore this kind of raw honesty.

A poignant family docu that introduces us to the most honest dysfunctional family and the ghosts that test their relationaship.

The 1 person that stuck out most for me in October Country was Dottie.She truly has a heart of gold for letting Chris back after he steals from her & her husband again & again.She even takes him to buy clothes at Wal Mart because he doesnt have any after he steals from her again.What a woman! A GREAT documentary that would've been perfect if only there were updates on what happened to The Mosher Family after the documentary was over.Thats always disappointing.

Intimate, disquieting and ultimately tragic portraits of the working poor, along with the continuing cycle of domestic abuse and the scars of war.

A disturbing honest portrayal of what goes on in so many homes in this country. Worth seeing.

Dysfunctional families spawn broken, self absorbed and self destructive losers that litter the American landscape today. This movie offers a disturbing view of the kind of people the family systems of the "working" poor produce. Mohawk Valley will fall on even harder times when the Remington Gun Company moves its operation to China.

if you like documentaries you might just care for this movie. its about the struggles of the family a normal family i don't want to sound mean but i think that they brought it upon themselves. be prepared to see alot of teeth for some reason they like to focus on these people's teeth. all i can say is gross no disrespect but if the actuall people saw their life story on a big widescreen for the world to see i would have been embarrassed. i can tell you this i have seen better documentaries so trust when i say don't bother.

if you like documentaries you might just care for this movie. its about the struggles of the family a normal family i don't want to sound mean but i think that they brought it upon themselves. be prepared to see alot of teeth for some reason they like to focus on these people's teeth. all i can say is gross no disrespect but if the actuall people saw their life story on a big widescreen for the world to see i would have been embarrassed. i can tell you this i have seen better documentaries so trust when i say don't bother.

Real-life 'Adams Family' debuts in upstate New York *** This review may contain spoilers *** Believe it or not, there's a real-life 'Adams Family' and they live in upstate New York. October Country was originally developed from a series of photographs taken by Donal Mosher in the small town of Ilion, New York. Collaborating with Michael Palmieri, Donal shot video footage of his own family over a year's time which included four separate visits, from one Halloween to the next. We never actually see Donal but it can be easily surmised that he was the 'normal one' who 'escaped'. All of the Mosher family members have names that begin with "D" and each have skeletons in their closet. The patriarch is Don, a Vietnam vet who worked for years in the local police department. Don is perhaps the most introspective of all the family members and is extremely reluctant to talk about his experiences in Vietnam but when he does, his words are both shattering and moving. Like his wife Dottie says, he never was the same after he came back from Vietnam. Don has one major shortcoming: he won't forgive his sister, Denise, a Wiccan who hangs out in the local cemetery trying to conjure up spirits and also trying to cope with her crippling arthritis. It seems Denise cursed Don out the day he left for Vietman, when she was very young, wishing that he would be killed there. Don's wife Dottie has a heart of gold but can't put her foot down. She takes in Chris, a troubled young adolescent, as her foster son, who ends up stealing property from the Moshers on more than one occasion. Don and Dottie's daughter is Donna who has two daughters, Danael (who loses custody of her infant daughter, Ruby, when we first meet her) and Desiree (nicknamed Desi), a spunky teenager who seems to be the only one who appears on camera who is reasonably well-adjusted. Of all the family members, I can't remember much about Donna?only that she looked older than someone in her late 30s. We do learn that Donna's former paramour (Danael's father) is now in prison, after molesting Danael when she was young (Danael relates that she prevented her father from trying to molest her younger sister by getting in between them in bed). Danael makes the same lousy choices in men as her mother did. After breaking up with the father of her child, she's seen with a new boyfriend whose authoritarian outlook and controlling attitude towards women, is obvious. The Moshers never seem to notice that they're being filmed. Despite all the dysfunctional behavior, they are all self-reflective and critical of themselves. The problem is that despite recognizing and understanding what their problems are, they're still unable to change themselves. October Country has a haunting soundtrack and cinematography that focuses on conveying the environment where the family lives. It's an environment that includes beautiful shots of nature coupled with the more mundane (and sometimes ugly) images of small-town America (Wal-Mart is a significant social gathering spot; Remington Arms, the local gun plant, is where most people are employed). October Country sometimes drags in spots?as in real life, not everything that happens is dramatic. Still, for those who are interested in the offbeat, October Country is for you. It's a documentary that's both a little sad but funny at the same time. When all is said and done, the Mosher family might seem a little strange, but they are not that much different than you and me.

Excellent documentary about the struggles of a family from upstate New York. A look at the sad underbelly of whatever it is that passes for the American dream these days.

Anyone old enough to remember the 온라인카지노추천 show Queen for a Day will recognize its modern "reality" version in this so-called documentary.

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I really do not understand the buzz over this film. I was so excited to see it at a film festival last year because it had tons of hype. But it turned out to be just that -- hype. This film didn't leave me feeling nothing. It left me feeling angry. Not at the characters. Not at the desolate world of upstate New York that surrounds them. Not at any sort of social or familial injustice the film may or may not be grasping at revealing. It made me angry that filmmakers are passing this sort of shlock off as documentary filmmaking. It doesn't document. It constructs. The much-praised cinematography seems like the desperate, obvious work of a film school project. The characters feel forced into faux-cinema verite scenarios as contrived as the constructed plot of the film's flimsy third act. **SPOILER ALERT** The third act centers around a Halloween party where quite out of the blue all the plot lines neatly come to a head. The shooting of it feels so contrived it makes one wonder how anyone would dare pass it off as documenting the life of human beings. **SPOILER ALERT OVER** If this is the direction that independent documentary is going in, it is a sad day for viewers whose perception has perhaps been warped by reality television and for subjects whose performances are carefully crafted by the filmmakers (not unlike reality television). The verite scenes seem to be cut together from responses to carefully crafted (and perhaps led) interview questions. Instead of feeling intimate, it feels forced. Yes the characters are weird in a "bug under a microscope" sort of way. But the filmmakers hold back on information, doling it out in an attempt to create a dramatic build where there is none. Or perhaps there would have been, were this documentary and not the work of filmmakers who owe more to reality tv than they do to the great verite pieces of the 1970s. Other elements that are overwrought: The music. The pointless 'cinematic' sequences. The editing. The exclusion of the leading interview questions. The constructed narrative in a film that has none naturally. Having seen many, many indie documentaries at film festivals, it is sad to me that October Country is getting so much attention and distribution.

Mostly about women and how bad men have shaped their lives; mom, daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter all in the story; also reflects the death or stagnation of the town; a lot of the shots were nice but seemed forced to be artistic