American Meth (2008)

Wonderful character development!

A Masterpiece!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I found this title on Hulu and not knowing much about meth and missing Val Kilmer, I decided to give it a try. It's not a documentary I can suggest for everyone, but there is definitely a crowd out there for it and for reasons that aren't portrayed in the description. Yes this is about meth, for the first half of the movie. The second half is a realistic view of what life is like struggling at the bottom. It's not pretty and it's cliché at times, but fascinating none the less. This isn't on par with a Ken Burns documentary or even anything made above the college level. But it has a deep realism to it that's lacking in today's society. It's almost sad that true reality is a thing to be appreciated, but in a culture made for ratings, it's something that comes as a surprise. This isn't really a surprise to everyone either, but it's an insight to the daily life of living in a trailer park or just the constant struggle to keep afloat that thousands of people go through every day.

This documentary is pretty bad . It does not appear to have a point other than to get a cop, a counselor, politicians some junkies on tape. The more f-ed up the junkies and the more abusive they are to the poor children they have the better . did anyone on the crew ever think of calling child services , or getting these people into rehab or something ? hell no , they were white trash gold ! i do see the merit of an attempt to show how this stuff affect families , but allowing these people to continue living like animals than people of the 21st century , all this while letting their naked children eat garbage and play outside in winter without shirts or pants, tends to turn this already shaky and irrelevant piece of documentary filmmaking into a sort of shock film that is useless to anyone except those who have a hard on for tragedy . i'm in no way saying that a filmmaker should narc on his subjects , but i do see the perversity of pointing out what is basically child abuse , while sitting in that house and drinking your latte. 2 out of 10 because it could have been much better but not much worse

What was billed as a chilling portrait into a lethal drug instead shows us a novice filmmaker who is addicted to cross dissolves. This movie is poorly conceived, poorly shot, and edited like a first year student project. The subject matter deserves much, much better. Pacing is dreadfully slow, editing is alternately clunky and sometimes nonexistent to the point that it feels like the movie forgets anyone is trying to watch it. Long, unedited interview clips try your patience as shot after shot just dissolve into the next. No artistry. No sense of storytelling. Some absolutely ridiculous ECU framing on interview subjects. Rookie mistakes, like poorly placed microphones picking up shirt noise and staging interviews next to what sound like busy highways. No connective logic between segments. The filmmaker also unnecessarily inserts himself into the project on numerous occasions, which only serves to provide the viewer with a face to blame.I'm an avid documentary watcher and believe that the meth epidemic in this country needs to be addressed. This is well intentioned but poorly executed, and I'm not sorry to say that I turned it off after 45 minutes.

The first thing that stood out was the credit "A Justin Hunt Project". ... Oh really, now. Well maybe that other commenter was correct, and this -is- a school "project". A really bad one. Basically it's yet another misinformed drug documentary that doesn't really say anything new. Meth is bad. No, really?Lots of typos, and bad information, and restating the same thing over and over and over again: -The before and after pictures. -The shocking testimony of the addicts and the LEOs. -The awful chemicals used in production.The latter always kind of amuses me. Chemistry isn't pretty. The components used for production aren't consumed, ffs! Chemistry is reaction and extraction. It's not like baking a cake Do people really think that Prilosec is made with flour and brown sugar?