Catfish (2010)

Sorry, this movie sucks

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Not Worth Watching... Not Worth Watching... Not Worth Watching... Very Boring...Very Boring...Very Boring...Very Boring... Complete & Utter Rubbish...Complete & Utter Rubbish... Don't Waste Your Time Watching This Muck...

It's 2007. Yaniv Schulman gets one of his photos in the papers. Then he is contacted by 8 year old Abby from Michigan who sends him a painting of the photo. As his friendship with the young girl over the internet grows, he gets to know her mother Angela, father Vince, and beautiful older half-sister Megan. Yaniv's brother Ariel and Henry Joost film him for a documentary. As Yaniv falls for Megan, cracks start appearing in the story. Yaniv goes on a search for the truth.If taken on face value, this has an intriguing story of the modern internet world. There are problems with this idea. It's hard to take this on face value when the whole point is not to take things on face value. It's obvious from the start that the internet relationship is based on false grounds. The question for me throughout watching the movie is how real Yaniv is actually being. The whole movie could be catfishing the audience. In the end, it's difficult to take this completely on face value. On the other hand, the reveal of Angela and her psychological story are actually quite interesting.

Catfish: A documentary of online relationships, and finding your unknown partner. Is she real? In this day and age of social media it is hard to believe that anyone is out of reach or unknown with around half the population of all of Australia on Facebook, this is even more guaranteed. But what if the person you thought you knew all about actually turned out to be the unknown? This is the premise the 2008 documentary 'Catfish' (introduces the text). In a dramatic thriller with an interesting storyline likable star and an engaging story of self-discovery. The story follows a young and promising photographer and his online relationship with a little girl named Abby whom share paintings and photographs. Only adding her entire family on Facebook and getting into a relationship with her half-sister 100's of miles away. Starting to get attached to this Megan saying I love you on numerous occasions without actually knowing this person or seeing her face-to-face, and the adventure of going to Michigan to see Megan, and finding secrets that don't add up, finding secrets about Angela, Abby and Megan. This film started out as practice for young filmmakers Joost and Schulman, but as the story kept going it turned into a juicy story that at the time was unbelievable, and started their film careers. This film may seem raw in some places, but it is a credit to them as buddy filmmakers. One aspect I really enjoyed was the contrasting of the music between the beginning and the end of the movie, it's a light tune at the beginning and dark at the end Catfish was a great and wonderful thrill ride and it was a decent documentary with interesting plot lines and a great story.

Catfish follows the story of Yaniv Schulman (Nev) who agrees to be the centrepiece of a documentary for his two friends who track his online friendship with Abby, a young painter who sends him paintings. Soon however he is introduced to her family online and Nev starts to build a strong online friendship with Abby's sister Megan, only something is amiss.This documentary is something many people can relate to in this modern age of social networking. Managing and building contacts online, forming friendships and relationships and sometimes everything works out great, and sometimes there are surprises, and this 2010 film brings about many surprises for Nev and his friends.The technical marvel of this film shows the scary nature of what the average individual can accomplish online. Through searching through people's friends on Facebook to analysing people's own recorded songs to those that have been implemented from other websites, but more so the ability to simply use other people's photographs for your own personal use is something quite scary, and yet people do it for their own personal reasons, and in the essence of this picture, we are watching people's emotions tested in this marvel of online story telling.There are many boards and forums depicting the true nature of this documentary, whether it is faked, scripted etc. Whilst the realism of the whole story is quite shocking and maybe difficult to comprehend, I myself have used online dating/friendship sites and can testify that not everything is as rosy as it appears on screen.But Catfish isn't necessarily about whether it's fake or not. It's about the story and the very real aspect of our current online mastery. And this film depicts that through the use of Facebook, through the questionable phone calls and all technical aspects that make the internet such a phenomenon. And through this Catfish is a very entertaining story that depicts the technical age through some wonderful and varied editing, picking up on Google, Sat Navs, Facebook etc and is quite different from anything that's been done before.This film spurned a TV show in which Nev and his brother travel across America to meet people and to give them help in meeting their online romance, which for the record is shorter and usually more interesting than simply watching Nev and his hairy chest for over an hour.Nevertheless this is unique and if you've done the whole online thing, it makes it quite interesting to see someone else go through it to.