Name: Harmain Khalil

Registration ID: 1925151

MOVIE SUMMARY

SNOWDEN
Story begins in the year 2004 when Snowden volunteers for the U.S. Army in response to 9/11.
He is traditional who loves his country and wants to defend it, and he’s shattered into pieces
when he had an injury leaving him incapable of being a soldier. With his brains, he applies to the
CIA, where he’s engaged by Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans), and a steely recruiter who hires
Snowden because he’s a gifted computer scientist. In some cases socially awkward, Snowden
isn’t required to be a charismatic spy in the Cold War tradition; rather, he will be preventing
hackers from the United States’ future cyber enemies, China and Russia. Meanwhile, Snowden
hesitates with his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), because she dares question the
Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq.

In between Snowden’s progressing career in the CIA and his fateful interview with journalists
from The Guardian and documentarian Poitras in the year 2013 which was arranged in a Hong
Kong hotel room under suspicious fear that U.S. authorities could burst through the door at any
moment. The scenes between Snowden and his interviewers have a desperate sense of
approaching justice, as they wait for the London paper to publish Snowden’s story. Having seen
what the CIA does to whistleblowers, Snowden wants to avoid a drumhead trial and jail time; he
would prefer a fair jury trial, which he knows he won’t get. A few years earlier, Snowden
became friends with a terminally dissatisfied CIA instructor who’s been restricted to a desk job
for his own optimism. Snowden doesn’t realize how much the two were alike, until he begins to
grasp the extent to which his government is monitoring.

Gordon-Levitt’s, a tech nerd, Snowden restrains his talent saved for a few crucial moments, and
otherwise carries himself as a logical, thoughtful individual who can tolerate an unbelievable
amount of pressure. He is often seen with a Rubik’s Cube, an essential component to the story, to
keep his hands busy. His relationship with Lindsay remains essential to the film’s drama, as he’s
unable to talk about his classified job or top secret missions. They begin as elemental opposites,
but gradually, over the time in the film, he begins to understand why Lindsay remains suspicious
of the government.
Scenes exposing the scope of the U.S. government’s moral, ethical, and legal cyber-crimes
against world citizens contain a frightening reality. Snowden suddenly insisted that Lindsay
should cover her laptop’s camera, and how he demands his reporter friends to put their smart
phones in the microwave. Earlier, in the movie it was shown why: his CIA associates could
access a personal computer with a few clicks and watch or listen to anyone they want, all without
the need of a warrant or any reasonable legal authority. The film outlines Snowden’s fear that by
the time the government surveilles the second, third, or fourth-tier contacts of a target, they’re
gathering data on millions of people, specifically Americans more than any other nationality.
Snowden’s desire to act and expose these practices finally comes when his personal life is
invaded a moment with unsettling implications.
Stone’s desire to remind his audience how these events remain an essential discussion also leads
to some of his most clumsy artistic choices. Whereas Snowden’s dramaturgy guides us through
the proceedings with urgent moral fear, the ending sets aside the film’s narrative to showcase
Edward Snowden himself, which in turn removes the viewer from the film’s story and drops us
into reality. Of course, this tactic hopes to remind audiences that, at any moment, the U.S.
government could be watching, and how what Snowden did still effects us today despite ensuing
laws that do little to prevent such widespread data mining. Relevancy aside, the ending quashes a
wholly satisfying dramatic closure; then again, closure isn’t really a possibility with this story,
given how Snowden’s story remains unfinished. To this day, Snowden and Mills remain in
Moscow, exiled.
Formally, Stone’s film looks straightforward. As a result, many critics have said Snowden isn’t
paranoid enough, but the film’s subject is less about the violations of privacy employed by the
U.S. government and more about Snowden himself. The two concepts remain connected, of
course, but Stone’s primary method of generating empathy is his humanist perspective, which
remains compelling throughout this very effective piece of filmmaking. By the last scenes, the
film accomplishes what is set out to do: Stone brings to light that our disturbed and anxious
feelings about cyber-scrutiny are not paranoia, because that word suggests the menace isn’t real.
Snowden’s deeply selfless act remains the brave work of a disillusioned idealist whose rebellion
has made him a criminal to some, a hero to others.
The Founder
‘The Founder’ movie shows the story of Ray Kroc; a struggling salesman turned Founder of
McDonald’s. In 1950s, Ray Kroc met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger
operation in Southern California. Ray was impressed by the brothers' speedy system of making
the food and saw franchise potential. Ray expands the McDonald’s restaurants through
franchisees, pulls the company from the brothers and creates a multi-billion dollar empire. This
movie teaches many important business lessons, a few of them are as follows:

Explore New Ways: Just because something is not done in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be
done in the future. Innovators refuse to accept status quo and inefficiency. They explore new
ways by taking inspiration and ideas from various fields. To improve the efficiency of their
business, McDonald brothers Mac and Dick took the assembly line concept perfected by Henry
Ford for cars and applied it to hamburger business.
Solve Customer Problems: When a business provides what customers need, it doesn't have to
convince customers and look for them. Supply of the right product creates demand. Drive-
in restaurants were already popular places in America but the wait was usually long, and often
food was wrongly assembled when arrived. This was not the case at McDonald's. As compared
to many other restaurants that Ray Kroc visited, McDonald’s was able to serve the high-quality
food at lightning-fast speed and low cost without sacrificing quality. Though McDonald’s had
huge lines, customers were happy with quality and service.

Think Big: Thinking big requires stretching the boundaries of possibilities. It enables acceptance
of new challenges and creation of capabilities to overcome those challenges. McDonald brothers
innovated and mastered the efficient restaurant business model and decided to have one best in a
class restaurant instead of multiple mediocre restaurants. Ray Kroc thought big and with his
persistence, he innovated and mastered the art of business expansion through franchisee model.

Look for Next-level Innovation: Instead of falling in love with one innovation, to remain
competitive, it is important for businesses to spend time and effort in creating the next
innovation. McDonald brothers brought efficiency by innovating assembly line operations for
their restaurant. They focused on just a few high selling items such as burgers, fries and drinks,
and figured out an efficient way of order delivery. For scaling up the business, Ray Kroc
introduced standardization, automation and discipline. Later, for reducing the cost, Ray Kroc
pushed vastly cheaper powdered milk for the shakes as opposed to buying and freezing the ice
cream.

Our Brand is Crisis

In 2002, Bolivian politician Pedro Castillo (a fictionalized version of presidential

candidate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada) hires an American political consulting firm (based
on James Carville's Greenberg Carville Shrum firm) to help him win the 2002 Bolivian
presidential election. The firm brings in "Calamity" Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) to manage
Castillo's fledging campaign. The opposition's top political consultant is her nemesis, fellow
American Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton). In Bolivia, the situation is tense: Bodine learns that
the indigenous people, who are a majority in the country but lack any real political power, are
protesting for constitutional reform to get proper representation.

The American consultants, not knowing the language or the culture of Bolivia, are persuaded by
Bodine, a burned out veteran of American politics, to follow a strategy of smear campaigning to
make up for their candidate's shortcomings. However, Castillo refuses to give permission for the
team to do so. It is only after Bodine arranges for the distribution of a flyer accusing Castillo of a
long-ago affair (and blaming it on the opposition) does she finally get him to agree to smear his
opponents likewise.
In the following months, the team exercises a strategy of "declaring a crisis". They plan to
frighten the people, with the aim of persuading them to vote for the unsympathetic but known
Castillo rather than the younger opposition candidates. They even resort to publishing photos of
their enemy with Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the background, so that he has to deny being
a Nazi. Castillo's bus is stopped by a group of protesters who don't want the International
Monetary Fund in Bolivia. Castillo promises them that he will not invite the IMF without a
public referendum. Eduardo, a young volunteer of the Castillo campaign, is deeply impressed by
this show of commitment. His loyalty comes mostly from the fact that Castillo, who was
President at the time, took a young Eduardo on his arm during a rally in his town. Nevertheless,
his brothers are much more skeptical about Castillo.

During the final debate, Bodine cites a quote in a conversation with Candy (knowing that he'll
give it to rival candidate Rivera for his speech) saying that "a great man" said it. Unfortunately,
the quote is actually from Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda. Castillo wins
the vote by a small margin. As one of his first actions, he invites the IMF into Bolivia, thereby
breaking his promise. The deeply disappointed Eduardo visits Bodine in her hotel; Bodine replies
that she is not responsible for Castillo's actions. In her eyes, her job is done.
The disillusioned Eduardo joins his brothers at a demonstration of people demanding change.
The police arrive and the demonstration quickly turns into a riot. Bodine and her crew join
Candy on the way to the airport. All of them, except Bodine, have already taken jobs as political
consultants in other countries. When Bodine realizes that she brought a liar into office, she has
the car stopped and leaves to join Eduardo.