Kaaterskill Falls
by Peter Olsen, Josh Apter
Our Price: $37.28
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $0.88 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Leslie, Hilary Howard, Mitchell RiggsDirector: Josh Apter, Peter Olsen
Writer: Hilary Howard
Writer: Anthony Leslie
Writer: Mitchell Riggs
Cinematographer: Peter Olsen
Writer: Peter Olsen
Editor: Josh Apter
Writer: Josh Apter
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-09
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Kaaterskill Falls
Movie Review: A film that made me think
Summary: 5 Stars
"Kaaterskill Falls" proclaims itself to be low budget from moment the `Low Fi' logo appears on the screen, and it doesn't take long to realize that this film was made on a shoestring by Hollywood standards. Yet, despite this - or maybe even because of this - there's an intimacy in this film that drew me in and made me feel like a voyeur. When we meet Ren and Mitch, a sophisticated New York couple driving somewhere in rural Upper New York state in the early spring (the grass is green but the trees are leafless), we are sitting in the back seat of their car struggling to eavesdrop on their plans for the weekend (we later learn that they are "trying to make a baby"). Picking up the hitchhiker, Lyle, doesn't seem like a smart thing to do, especially when he turns out to be rather truculent. But when Ren and Mitch invite him to stay in their rented cottage, I found myself shouting "Don't do it!"
We are present at an improvised dinner that evening with Lyle, Ren, and Mitch. The presumably unscripted conversation meanders in several not very significant directions. Lyle's big complaint is about the incursion of cell phone towers in his beloved woods; perhaps by extension he laments also the incursion of the cell-phone-bearing city boy, Mitch. As the evening wears on, stereotypes are broken: the rural Lyle is savvy in the kitchen with Pasta Puttanesca, but fails miserably at making a fire, which the gentrified ex-boy scout, Mitch, gloatingly teaches him to do. Beyond the words, however, can be sensed the growing attraction between Ren and Lyle, an attraction not lost on Mitch.
Surely it cannot have been a case of sloppy movie-making that the next day, when Lyle agrees to lead the couple on a hike to Kaaterskill Falls, the formerly-barren trees are in full leaf? Can their lush green canopy be a proxy for the unfolding passions of the three characters, long curled up inside tight buds within them? Symbolic or not, something base and primitive suddenly commandeers the characters' instincts and commands their actions with shocking results. Or was it all a dream? Whatever it was, this film stayed with me and kept me pondering for the next twenty-four hours. And I like a film that makes me think.