Nonureva Really Surprised!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

eshanka kodituwakku This documentary came out of nowhere to me. It was quite captivating from the beginning. I have always been interested in NSA and its activities and quite fascinated by stories about NSA be it real or fictitious from good reads in Dan Brown's books to real documentaries such as Citizen Four. Now even though people living in the USA are well aware and quite up to speed with what happened in the cases of Snowden and Assange, people living in smaller countries like us do not get a lot of information on the media unless we pursue it crazily on the internet. But this documentary is a real eye opener for even a foreign national who is not in the thick of things, why? Because we use their software, their portals, their data exchanges, their email and their tunnels to communicate and browse the internet. Our whole personal lives on line are drifting through US servers. Right now it might be irrelevant. But some day when our countries are of use or are in the midst of some political agenda of US or one of its giant opponents, rest assured all those hidden away data will be mined for each and every bit of information that they can gather on us. We have no control over it and no choice. But my belief is that it is always better to be paranoid than not when you are on line. I'm no cameramen but those were some beautiful and genius camera angles matching little broken down contexts of the story as well. This documentary provoked the above thought stream in my head and certainly created some respect for the man who sacrificed his own freedom and went out of his way just to break the corrupt system. To say that humanity still comes first always.

meeza I am Punister Four. I am here to write a review of the Oscar-winning documentary "Citizenfour". But I must inform you that your pun surveillance has been activated, you have no more pun privacy. All your puns will now be recorded by the Punited States of America's NSA. OK, maybe not. But Director Laura Poitras' poignant documentary "Citizenfour" unveils NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelation of the NSA and its alleged invasion of privacy to citizens' technological interactions. Much of "Citizenfour" is played out in a Hong Kong hotel room as Snowden provides the information to journalists including Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. Poitras portraits Snowden as the real deal with his infamous revelations, since it is an objective documentary. "Citizenfour" does drag at times and I would not toot my whistle entirely on it, but it is still a very important documentary on an important true event that changed the surveillance landscape of this country. *** Average

eddie052010 Ever since films first starting being produced, many of them have had a political agenda, whether it be subtle or Leni Riefenstahl levels of obvious. However, that aspect alone shouldn't affect your judgment of the film overall, as you are reviewing the film, not the viewpoint it represents. Take Citizenfour for example, the documentary about Edward Snowden. Despite the prejudice I personally have for Snowden, I still had an open mind to the film. However, it is a badly made and boring film which lacks any structure, making it one of the most overrated films in quite some time. The documentary focuses on Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who leaked NSA's surveillance activities to the world. Here, we see his leaking of the story to The Guardian and him hiding out around the world in order not to be caught by the US government. On top of this, there is also footage of NSA building surveillance sites and worldwide governments trying to stop the NSA's spying. While it sounds compelling, the film is anything but. One main reason for this is that a lot of the film takes place inside Snowden's Hong Kong hotel room, without much happening, outside of Snowden watching TV and getting dressed. Whoopee. It also doesn't help that the film is poorly structured. Besides the initial boredom you'll experience from watching Edward Snowden in his hotel room, the film also randomly puts in the aforementioned footage of the NSA building these sites and of the foreign governments without much context besides the film's obvious message (government surveillance is bad). It's put together in a very sloppy manner, and while I understand the circumstances behind this (director Laura Poitras had the pressure of the authorities finding her), it demonstrates the lack of experience Poitras has. It just makes you wish she would have handed the footage to someone with more skill, as it would have made the film more coherent. Another problem is how overly one-sided this film is. I understand that many documentaries are biased towards a certain view, but at least they often consider the other side of the debate. For example, a good documentary like The Times Of Harvey Milk may portray people like Milk's assassin Dan White and John Briggs (of the controversial Briggs Initiative) as morally bankrupt, but also tries to explain their actions and humanise them to an extent. Not here though. Not only does the film ignore the other viewpoint, but portrays it as completely dangerous and volatile. So as you can imagine, there's no mention as to why the system was set up (in order to prevent disasters like 9/11 from repeating themselves), why the authorities are after Snowden (as he threatened national security) or the negative consequences of Snowden's actions (potentially giving terrorists a loophole to go through in order to harm innocent lives - the fact that the Boston marathon bombers are mentioned at one point makes this factor more important).It also portrays Snowden in an overtly perfect manner, almost saintly, for his exposure, as if he was a kind young man wanting to protect the American people. So factors like how he didn't even read all of the documents he leaked or how thanks to him, Al-Qaeda are now changing their communication methods in order not to get caught by the NSA don't enter the conversation. Even some things that are mentioned in the film unintentionally work against him, mainly how he has put his own family at risk, and doesn't even try to protect them. On top of this, you can't help but feel that some of the criticisms of the NSA's actions in the film are filled with hypocrisy, mainly that of the Brazilian government, a country with higher internet censorship than the United States. I wouldn't mind the politics as much if the film was good, as I have enjoyed films in the past but don't necessarily agree with their ideology. Citizenfour however is extremely dull and boring, making the questionable politics even more problematic.In conclusion, Citizenfour is a very bad documentary which is poorly structured, tedious and sloppily handled, and is a blatant Leni Riefenstahl-esque propaganda piece for Snowden, that not only glorifies one side and ignores the other, but demonizes that same side as well. It is also notable for something that is becoming a major problem in our culture as a whole: the glorification of criminals in the media. There's no problem if you think Snowden was in the right, but all too often, people are praised and martyred in the media through their behaviour, despite being dangers to society, leading to the silencing of those who criticise them, regardless of their legitimate points. Usually this applies to traitors like Snowden who are treated as heroes as well as terrorists like the IRA and many Jihadists being excused as martyrs, both of which undermine the serious consequences of their actions. On top of this, we see gangsters like the Kray Twins being made out as folk heroes and common thugs like Mark Duggan & Michael Brown being seen as innocent victims. All of this shows how criminals are portrayed as heroes, which encourages both the infliction and support of illegal behaviour through their media endorsement, meanwhile we see the constant lynching of groups like the police and the NSA for protecting a free society. This not only divides people to antagonize one another but also makes people forget who the real bad guys are, leading to a society based on lies and deceit, rather than truth and honesty. This film (along with its undeserved media acclaim and Oscar win) are a testament to this, showing that society is confused as to where our priorities lie and who are the bad guys truly are. Because of this, I suggest that you skip Citizenfour, as not only is it cruddy agitprop, but as it glorifies a potential traitor, makes it rotten to the core.

lasttimeisaw The timing couldn't be more appropriate to watch this Oscar-winning fact-based documentary about the exclusive coverage of the man behind "PRISM Door", Edward Snowden and the repercussions afterwards, simply because under the present background of rampant terrorist attacks globally, whether or not each individual's privacy can be collectively sacrificed in exchange for a possible safeguard of personal safety?It is really self-evident to see the controversy of the situation, the bare bones of the debate is principle Vs. exigency, which is all based on one presumption that we permit our governments to put surveillance on our daily activities of all the citizens, then all the terrorism can be maximally forestalled. If it is the case, how many of us is willing to do so, to forswear the civil liberty? There is a big question mark for this, since it is glaringly against the canon of democracy where all the Western countries are built upon. If we allow that to happen, it will become a huge setback in human history, more pointedly, surveillance may not be a fail-safe manoeuvre to counter terrorism at all, while its collateral damage would include many unimaginable infringements of each individual's personal interests, if all the data can be easily at a wrongdoer's disposal.So, that's why we should stand on the same page with director Laura Poitras and her allies in the film, particularly at a time when the dark cloud of probable danger is hovering above everyone's head, we cannot lose our ground of the nitty-gritty. Largely intriguing human's innate proclivity of inquisitiveness, CITIZENFOUR cunningly proffers the first-hand exposé of Snowden when he hid in Hong Kong and contacted with journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill to go through the scandalous disclosure, meanwhile simultaneously a camera is recording by Poitras on the spot. Now, since all the sensational hullabaloo has dissipated, one can be in a more poised state to watch this film, not just the big picture, we can get a preview of what's inside a man like Snowden, his entire process of "coming out". Poitras selectively and disinterestedly lays out a quite frank introduction of him, what he did is indisputably courageous, but also, as a whistle-blower, he is not "the chosen one", if it were not him, as a matter of time, sooner or later there would be another conscience-aware insider to speak out, the scheme of NSA (USA National Security Agency) is simply too massive to cover, thus more crucially, we should turn our target to them and fish out how that plan can be engineered through all the bureaucracy, yet, this is far from a perfect world, at least for now, the answer is moot.After Snowden left Hong Kong, Poitras' camera can no longer focus on him but on Greenwald and others, whom she has approach to film, what happens doesn't register the same intensity, since anyone who has a healthy common-sense knows which side we should lean on. There is a final reel of watching Snowden's life with his girlfriend in Moscow, no close-up, but medium-shot, soon the film also brings down its curtain, savours of a tad dissatisfaction.As one interviewee mentions, Snowden's whole adventure sounds like a John le Carré novel, so surreal but it is indeed a cast-iron fact, Poitras' documentary serves best as an awareness- agitating gateway to invite us to inspect our own government and resist the temptation of a pipe dream - there is no deus ex machina in solving a deep-rooted social problem. With regard to cinephiles, this film might as well serve as an inviting amuse-gueule for the upcoming Oliver Stone's adaptation, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, let's wish it will be at least remotely le Carré- esque in light of Stone's recent patchy productions.