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Reviews
Impossible to Imagine (2019)
It screams "amateur"
This movie looks like it was a school project done by students who quickly learned a few things about filmmaking. It looks a bit like they tried to imitate Ozu Yasujiro, but failed miserably.
While some of the writing isn't that bad, at times, the story is too random and repetitive. About 12 minutes into the movie, the main male character walks into the house and has a conversation with the woman, then leaves. Then right after, he's back again and does the same thing, but it's a completely different day. The filmmaking is atrocious and cheesy. It looks like the filmmaker wanted to cram every little trick he learned into this movie, so you will find cheesy transitions, freeze time effect (right at the beginning) and slow motion that was shot in wrong frame rate and then slowed down, so the slow motion is choppy. Many shots are overexposed.
Colour grading and white balance is all over the place; it's like the cinematographer shot it in auto everything. Many scenes are repetitive and filmed in exactly the same spot.
The acting is not the best, the dialogs seem forced and awkward and the actors appear to be stiff.
Framing of shots is also very, very bad and so you'll see actors' top of the heads being cut off or their shoulder is cut off, because they're too far left or too far right in the frame.
I think whoever gave this movie a positive review might be a friend or family of the filmmaker, because the movie is done very poorly.
Suburban Nightmare: Chris Watts (2022)
Amateurishly made
I have seen the other documentary on this case, but I decided to watch this one as well.
Right away, at the start, they reveal it all. It was like a spoiler right at the beginning where they told you exactly what happened and who did it.
Most of the "experts" in the documentary provide commentary like emotional teens would comment on social media. They are judgmental and jump to conclusions. Now, obviously, they already know the outcome, but they should comment on the case as if they wanted to understand it and find out the truth, rather then as if they are writing a fictional story.
The psychotherapy expert labels Chris a narcissist, yet throughout the documentary there is no indication that he was one. In fact, he was described as the complete opposite. He wasn't flashy, he didn't like to be in centre of attention, he wasn't manipulative, he was calm and collected, he avoided confrontation and he didn't like that Shannan filmed him and posted him on social media all the time. Yet, here we have this expert just throw that label on him.
The FBI expert provided comments that at times sounded like I was listening to an angry mob posting comments on social media. There was no expertise in any of it.
It all sounded like the commentary was done to add drama and to rile the viewer up, because we know that planting negative feelings in someone is a good way to keep them hooked. That's what social media has been doing to get people addicted and that's what advertisers on social media do to get you to comment on their posts.
The documentary did not seem credible to me.
Another thing I thought was off was that the jump cuts were too quick and at times the pace seemed to be much too fast. You didn't even have a chance to absorb something and they're already jumping to a completely different thing.