Parker Lewis
Edward Snowdon's interview at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong was very bold, and I can imagine how would have felt whenever someone knocked on the door announcing room service. I know it's a trope in many spy/cop/detective shows, and thankfully Snowdon managed to make a run for it, or else the Oliver Stone movie later on would have taken a different direction.
room102
No real spoilers here, but I put a warning anyway.Oscar winner for Best Documentary.After watching SNOWDEN (Oliver Stone's movie) yesterday I watched a few more videos on YouTube about Snowden, which were interesting enough for me to reconsider whether I was wrong to give CITIZENFOUR a low rating. I wasn't.This documentary is terribly edited, making it extremely boring and hard to sit through. A different editing could have made wonders for this. It has very long scenes, both of Snowden talking in the hotel with the journalists and of other events - all given without any trimming. This is "a fly on the wall" in a bad way - it's like watching raw material. Why would I want to do that? There are also long scenes of voice-only (with unrelated and unedited video shown just as a filler) and text-chat exchange - this is just a terrible filmmaking.In addition, the ENTIRE filming of Snowden in the hotel was shot Hand-held. Why in hell would you do that?! It's a guy sitting in bed - not a car chase. Couldn't you just put the camera on a tripod or even on a chair/table? There was absolutely no reason to have the camera shaking the ENTIRE time.Both Snowden (while not a masterpiece) and the videos on YouTube were a lot more interesting and informative than CITIZENFOUR. The subject may be interesting, but that doesn't make a film good (whether documentary or not).The only benefit of watching the documentary was to see Snowden's real reaction to the situation (instead of watching an actor) and the short section towards the end, which isn't shown in the movie - meeting with the lawyer and planning the exit from the hotel.
grantss
Quite dull.A documentary on Edward Snowden, the NSA agent who blew the whistle on the US's surveillance of its own citizens. The movie shows how reporter Glenn Greenwald met and interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong, Snowden discussing his motivations, how the story was broken and the effects thereof.Set up like a thriller, but more tedious than thrilling.How this won the 2015 Oscar for Best Documentary, I don't know. While there was some intrigue initially, as Snowden tries to connect with Greenwald, after that it is pretty dull. Most of the movie consists of scenes of Snowden and Greenwald waffling on about nothing important. At best you get Snowden's naive motivations for doing what he did. The detailing of events as they unfurl is interesting at times, but it is really nothing you didn't already know.
nbdtc
Excellent documentary and important viewing for anyone who wants to have a more informed perspective on the extent to which we are being monitored in post-9/11 America. My only complaint has to do with the extensive text which sometimes appears on-screen. Many of these sentences convey information that is critical to the story, and yet the production team decided to use a font that is so small that it's virtually impossible to read on a television. In those passages there is no voice-over, so there's no way to get the information but to read it off the screen. I had to get up from my seat and stand right in front of the screen to read it. Given that the majority of the people who see this film will see it on TV, in my opinion the producers made a bad mistake by making the font so small.Still one of the better documentaries I've ever seen.
AD
