You won't be disappointed!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

CitizenfourI used to think the scariest moment in cinematography was the infamous scene in The Exorcist when the girl turns her head around all the way and walks like a deformed crab. Then I witnessed Citizenfour. Now that's scary! Laura Poitras directed what is unquestionably the scariest production of all time, not because of the fictional creatures it creates, but the real world horrors it depicts. Citizenfour is a documentary filmed during the Edward Snowden leaks that were famous for the exposure of NSA surveillance. The documentary begins with Snowden reaching out to the director inviting her to rendezvous in Hong Kong. From there the documentary covers the information Snowden looked toward disclosing, the process he took to get the information out and the political actions that were taken in response. The information that was discussed was absolutely stunning. I was especially blown away by the capability of the world surveillance systems, especially the British system, which is apparently capable of analyzing over 1 billion phone calls and emails at a time. The film finishes with the director and one of the lead reporters working with Snowden in his new place of refuge in Moscow and discussing how the NSA watch list now includes 1.2 million Americans. I really enjoyed how the movie did not focus solely on American surveillance system but, also on European intelligence agencies.Citizenfour was probably the best documentary I've ever seen. The film did a great job of presenting the conspiracy in an interesting yet informative manner. The film kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time even as it went through legal proceedings and technology that goes into surveillance systems. The documentary did an especially good job of building up to Edward Snowden's Reveal and the level of secrecy he maintained. The one quality of Citizenfour I didn't enjoy were the discussions that took place in foreign languages, without any subtitles. I'm aware the director was likely attempting to make the film more artsy but all this choice really did was add confusion. The one choice I really appreciated from the director was to end the documentary in such a inconclusive manner, because domestic surveillance is a struggle that is constantly being shared.In conclusion I really enjoyed Citizenfour. I think it was a Great way to explore the controversial subject of government surveillance which was more frightening than any 80's demon film. Overall I would give this documentary a 9.5/10 as its flaws were few and its quality immense.

Winner of this year's Best Documentary feature at the Academy Awards, Citizenfour is an insightful and rare glimpse into the politically charged revelations of former NSA sub-contractor Edward Snowden that has seen him become a Julian Assange like figure of the modern world and one of the wanted men on America's most hated list.Before Oliver Stone's high profile Joseph Gordon Levitt retelling of the Snowden story hits our screens sometime next year, Citizenfour offers us the best chance to get to know Snowden the "person" not the news headline and also get background as to why this clearly smart and sophisticated young man choose to unleash the National Security Agency's real dealings to the world through his touch base with the Guardian newspaper and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.Citizenfour (Snowden's code name in email contact with reporters and filmmakers) is not a documentary worth seeing for any other reason other than the fact it's an incredibly intimate and unflattering look at the week in the life of Snowden when the news was being prepped for the world at just what was going on behind closed doors. Snowden allowed filmmaker Poitras access to his hotel room as he carried out meetings with the Guardian's reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill and while watching we feel like a fly on the wall as this world changing news is gathered and the dots are joined together. In these close-nit meetings Snowden comes across as a likable and thoughtful persona that cares not for his own goals, rather the lives of his fellow citizens both at home and abroad.Snowden's recollections of what lay at the fingertips of the NSA are both revealing and frightening and he displays a clear understanding of just why this information can't be left behind closed doors. After watching Snowden talk, you'll be hard pressed to look at your phone or computer in the same way as before.With Steven Soderbergh's presence here as a producer, Citizenfour has a polished feel but really as a film making piece there's nothing to ride home about here and the true star of the show is Snowden himself. Perhaps a slightly strange choice for a Best Documentary win at the Oscars considering the film mainly consists of a camera planted solely around Snowden, Citzenfour is none the less an intriguing and honest look into one of the modern eras most explosive information leaks.3 ½ tension riddled fire alarm tests out of 5

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.