Reviews

I have to save the 10/10 for those that deserve it and this one does.

I saw this at the opening in Toronto and came into it with a critical eye, having seen Citizen Four and having a good knowledge of the events that unfolded throughout the story recounted in this film.

Understandably, some weren't sure if all the shocking events in the film actually happened in the manner they were portrayed, so it's possible the public at large will never actually know just how accurate and important this film is. It all happened. And more. A lot of content didn't make it into the film but Stone's editing choices were sound.

Oliver Stone's faithfulness to the facts is astounding. Nothing was distorted or sacrificed for entertainment value. For a filmmaker to show this constraint is rare because it puts at risk the approval of a large portion of the audience. And it shows his true intent, even if Stone claims he was not trying to inspire activism.

Snowden Portrayal: Excellent acting, understated; that's Snowden.

Greenwald Portrayal: Brilliant acting, and sometimes I got the eerie feeling I was actually watching Greenwald, though the role was perhaps a little too emotional at times when the real Greenwald would have kept his composure.

On Laura Poitras actually being in the film: It was justice that Stone actually gave her character a role in the film, since Laura herself never does, and she deserves credit for what she has done. She risked her life many times over to bring us the facts in Citizen Four.

Oliver Stone served his country in making this film and by doing justice to the bravery of Snowden. Perhaps the world will be more inclined to care about what is taking place right in front of us once this film is available to all.

This piece of work is as close as you can get to a propaganda movie. The story has been told many times over in conservative media: If you mess with the west, you will be beaten and beaten up. Just to ensure that the message has come through, this thesis is spoon-fed explicitly, over and over again.

If you were to replace the main characters with Nazis, you'd get exactly the kind of film that Hitler produced--with a higher budget. Whatever your view of this genre of film, keep this in mind as you watch. You will surely see the similarities.

In sum, this film insults our intelligence but has some great action scenes.

The film was great for soft porn because that's exactly what it was. Those who thought it "sacrilegious" (at the Sundance Festival) should probably stick to romantic comedies and those who thought the film was original should probably watch more French cinema.

You can sometimes overcome the soft porn classification with a rich storyline but this film doesn't have that. It has been made many times before—only better. The story: Protagonist, Daniela, is a girl raised in a religious Evangelical environment but wants to have sex with anything warm-blooded and human; girl finally gets a boyfriend; girl then finds a girlfriend too; girl suddenly wants to be baptized; boy finds out about same-sex encounters; boy leaves girl because boy is religious and ashamed.

Daniela spends most of her time in this movie looking for sex and resisting her Evangelical surroundings. Her boyfriend finds out about the same-sex relationship because she spends much of her time blogging about it whenever she gets a chance. He tells her mother about it and dumps Daniela, thus also causing her to part ways with her mother. Young & Wild shifts from curious promiscuity, to sexual acts, to punishment (kicked out of school, of course), then adaptation (the boyfriend her mother accepts), to eventual sex with the boyfriend, and then to a contextual red herring that detracts from any promise of a clear message: The same-sex relationship.

I didn't see that the film added anything different in terms of methodology or content, and it lacked a clear focus, starting with an implied struggle over theism, which ends quickly once we learn that the main character is not an atheist but only "afraid" to believe in God. This theme of fear, like many others, never resurfaces. We never learn how she copes with the dissociation from her family and church and never see the post-climactic dynamics between Daniela and her ex-boyfriend, or Daniela and her family.

There were many opportunities here to do something interesting with the blogging aspect of the story (privacy and the naiveté of a young blogger), and lots could have been done to explore Daniela's mysterious and unrealized decision to be baptized.

Young & Wild appears to be an indecisive agglomeration of three separate themes that the director should have narrowed down or conjoined in a more coherent manner: Soft Lolita porn, religious sexual dichotomy and bisexuality.

I'm not usually keen on blatant spoilers, but I feel a need to save you from this one: Don't put yourself through this unless you are already desensitized to genital mutilation.

Is anyone with an imagination and an ounce of empathy desensitized to genital mutilation? There are a few scenes in this film that will strike any normal brain as positively repugnant.

Is this an anti-intellectual, anti-experimental critique? Call it what you like, but good acting + Texas Chainsaw Massacre + Kathy Bates' Misery does not automatically constitute profound art. This is a gore flic and I'm perplexed by the number of positive reviews on here.

I'm disappointed in human kind right now, after having perused the number of positive reviews for this movie.

Yes, we get it. Any individual with a normal IQ sees that there is both male and female nudity and both male and female degradation and so on. Congratulations. You've reached an anti-discriminatory equality of tastelessness.

Characters: She was almost a feminist scholar and he is a therapist who sometimes oversteps his bounds. Not rocket science. A typical formula in terms of character development.

The message would have been just as clear, minus the nausea, without the genitalia mutilation.

I sat through the end only because I knew nothing could be worse in the final quarter of the movie than what I had been subject to in the third.

POSITIVES? The cinematography and light direction is often pleasant and almost works, but goes over-board and over-indulges.

The acting is acceptable, but it's perplexing that some have been so impressed by a pair of characters requiring no emotional range at all.