Critic Reviews

Stone and his crew get the audience hooked on the mystery of this charismatic crank, and then take their time before they answer some of the bigger questions.

Transfixing in its workplace detail and haunting in its harsh commentary on a solitary existence.

It is the film’s cosmic dimension that makes it so special.

This intimate, unvarnished, and occasionally transcendent micro-portrait may seldom leave Dunning’s property, but it takes stock of the whole world.

Dunning recounts spellbinding tales that led to the gradual downfall of his expansive Mile Hill Farm, and the destruction of his two marriages.

With this rueful, cantankerous yet hugely charismatic figure at its center, Tony Stone’s beautiful documentary reveals the twin burdens of working the farm alone while beating back an encroaching inner darkness.

Peter and the Farm is ultimately a portrait of whatever the opposite of “getting back to nature” is: the cycle of the land as a circle of hell.

Peter and the Farm is a warts-and-all portrait that asserts its subject's sense of purpose even as it seems to slip out of his grasp.

This is one tortured soul, and a rare case in which a farmer’s struggles seem to be entirely of his own making.

A very unusual and rare kind of movie: one that is good in spite of itself. Which isn’t to say that the movie’s director and co-producer Tony Stone doesn’t make some provocative, interesting choices.