Streaming tips

The whistleblower life...

Reality

White Lotus and Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney delivers an award-worthy performance in this new HBO movie about Reality Winner, the NSA contractor imprisoned for leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The dialogue is taken verbatim from FBI transcripts. Max

The Insider

Michael Mann’s true-ish tale of a Big Tobacco shill who decides to expose the industry’s darkest secrets to 60 Minutes is edge-of-your-seat stuff, and it garnered seven Oscar nominations. Russell Crowe stars. $4 on demand

Citizenfour

Laura Poitras’ documentary brings the viewer along on a high-stakes mission as she and print journalist Glenn Greenwald travel to Hong Kong to meet Edward Snowden, the former U.S. contractor who handed the pair proof of the NSA’s surveillance abuses. Tubi

All the President’s Men

A genre landmark that holds up well. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman co-star as the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story with the help of a mysterious informant codenamed Deep Throat. Max

The Most Dangerous Man in America

Before there was Deep Throat, there was Daniel Ellsberg, who tells his story in this 2009 documentary. Ellsberg was a military analyst in 1971 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, a trove of documents revealing the U.S. government’s lies about its war in Vietnam. Kanopy

Serpico

Al Pacino was in top form in this 1973 Sidney Lumet film about Frank Serpico, an NYPD detective who risked his life to expose the police force’s widespread corruption. Prime