The House I Live In

4.5 stars... Raising pointed questions
This movie is the latest documentary from writer-director Eugene Jarecki, who has previously brought several other interesting and acclaimed documentaries, including 2006's Why We Fight and 2010's Freakonomics. Now comes Jarecki's latest.

"The House I Live In" (2012 release; 108 min.) is a detailed and critical look at "the War on Drugs", now more than 40 years on since President Nixon declared that war in 1971. The filmmaker starts at home, literally, as his revisits with his family's (black) nanny from his days growing up in suburban Connecticut and New York in the 1970s. As it turns out, the lady has lost several family members, including a son, to drugs. From there Jarecki interviews lots of different people, from jailed drug dealers to a US federal judge to a prison security guard, and on and on. One of the historians interviewed claims that the criminalization of drugs goes back to the beginning of the 20th century (when opium was outlawed to deal with the...

Required viewing for those who want to be informed about the engineered die off going on in the United States.
Economists use the term "excess population" often to describe families and individuals that, due to sudden economic change, are useless or no longer needed by society. We are living in our own version of the potato famine. This movie shows how the lower economic classes in the United States are being systematically preyed upon and wiped out by the corporate run prison system.

Eye-opening & heart-wrenching
A really stunning look at reality for those who have bought into the villainization of drug users and sellers that has been the norm of American media and entertainment for decades. This film helped me to learn about the elephant in the room when it comes to U.S. politics, justice, and economics. Here's my full endorsement: Thanks for the education!

One thing that the film doesn't explore much is solutions. However, it does tell us what and where the roots of the problem are. The roots are in floundering desperation which exists because we cause it with prejudice, bigotry, miseducation and corralled poverty. The "drug war" is one aspect of a war on the poor. Ending the drug war is the implied solution, but the film's elucidation portends just how complicated and far-reaching that end would be. Ending the drug war would mean putting a big hole in the budget of many law enforcement agencies, for one thing, and it would impoverish some rural communities where the main business...

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Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Powerful And Disturbing: Eighteen Years Later, The Harrowing True Life Case Of The West Memphis Three Continues
The plight of the infamous West Memphis Three has been the center of controversy for almost two decades now. Upon discovering three eight year old boys murdered and discarded in the Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, a subsequent investigation caused local police to target three teen outsiders for the crime. Based on the most specious of evidence and a rampant desire to see justice done for such a heinous act, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted and sentenced in 1994 despite a clear lack of physical evidence or motive. Due to Echols appearance, interest in metal music, and fascination with disturbing imagery, the deaths were chalked up to being a part of a dark occult ritual. And a frightened and justifiable mob mentality ruled the day (especially as word of Misskelley's questionable confession circulated).

But the facts never really added up and filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were on hand to document the...

The crime of the 20th - 21st centuries reaches some finality
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY (2012, 120 minutes, HBO Films) - Here is the anxiously awaited 3rd installment of the continuing sagas of Damien Wayne Echols, James Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., all convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys in 1993. It wasn't aired on HBO and I just saw it On Demand - the only place it is available right now. It had originally been scheduled to air in January.

This compelling albeit slightly muddled documentary sequel begins by retelling the story of "The West Memphis Three" - Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley - and the horrible crime of three young boys' murders. At first I thought this was retread, but I quickly realized this was a vital documentary tool to catch up a viewer who might be new to the story.

The documentary does an excellent job of stunning the viewer by explaining how the case exploded in everyone's faces in the mid-2000s. New evidence was discovered and all of it re-examined; among the evidence was DNA and a new...

The DVD has cool special features, and the film... legendary and revelatory
This "Paradise Lost" trilogy is beyond documentary film making. A better description of the films would be that they are legendary journalistic heroism that are philanthropic education for the American public, in regards to the horrors that CAN arise from the U.S. justice system when it fails.

This film was never meant to be the "final chapter" of the Berlinger and Sinofsky series on the West Memphis 3 case. When the film was practically 100% finished, a surprise hearing was called regarding the case. The hearing was prompted by the fact that the original trial judge David Burnett (who was also the judge for EVERY SINGLE APPEAL HEARING regarding this case) denied the WM3 an evidentiary hearing, despite allegations of juror misconduct in the original trial, recantations of testimony used in court, and DNA evidence that excluded the three defendants from the crime scene or the bodies AND pointed in a different direction that the police never investigated. Burnett's decision...

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Wake in Fright [HD]

A restored masterpiece
I came across a description of this film a while ago which made it sound like an overwrought B Picture, a format to accurately represent the world it depicts - melodramatic, crude and brash. It is much more than that. From the opening 360' panning shot around the tiny wooden platform of an Australian outback station, taking in two shabby and rusting buildings dwarfed by an endless vista of red sand, to the brilliant portraits of a range of characters who inhabit this barren and malevolent landscape, it constantly surprises and delights with visual power and human complexity. It is no surprise to discover that the underlying material on which the film is based, a novel by Kenneth Cook, was to have been a project for Dirk Bogarde and Joseph Losey at one point in its development. The film ended in the extremely capable hands of Ted Kotcheff and screenwriter Evan Jones and is beautifully constructed and paced. There is throughout a sense of threat and a sustained tension, but the tensions...

Awesome
This film (set in the Australian Outback) is at once an hallucinatory nightmare and intensely realistic - so bizarre and yet utterly believable. The acting is very fine - everyone disappears into their roles, and the cinematography and montage are excellent. Donald Pleasance is especially good as the crazy old doctor. The climax is unbelievably intense. If you are a member of PETA you will not be able to watch the final Kangaroo hunt sequence.

Highest recommendation!

Long overdue Masterpiece
Probably Ted Kotchef's finest film, "Wake In Fright" (aka "Outback"), shocked shamed, and enraged a substantial chunk of the Australian population. It died at the box-office, got one TV screening in the early eighties (where I saw it), and then was forgotten -- or at least given up for dead.

Almost forty years later the negative was rediscovered only days away from final destruction (in the US of all places) and a badly needed restoration was begun.

The story: an endentured school teacher in a tiny outback town heads for Sydney and six weeks holiday. But only a day into the journey he loses his money gambling, and is left at the mercy of the local townsfolk.

Like Roeg's Walkabout, Kotchef sees the Australian landscape with the fresh eye of a foreigner. He portrays a society that no domestic film maker would've dared at that time. And he makes a brilliant film doing it. But where Roeg found a desert teeming with life and energetic beauty, Kotchef...

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Falling Uphill

Wonderfully strange and inquisitive.
An offbeat story about a young 20 something searching for his place and identity. He has decided to leave San Francisco, and meets a homeless girl who becomes his sage and they end up helping each other greatly. He also has to deal with the love he has for his female roommate who is in a relationship.

Coming to terms with your own skin - and relationships in the 2010's
Rick Bosner and his cast and crew take us on an eclectic trip through the other San Francisco while giving us rare insight into the hearts and souls of some twenty-somethings in our current age.

It is a very modest budget indie film that merits your attention.

MateinMovie
Entertaining movie watch once and archive it, The storyline was too incomplete could have been better developed. Maybe I may give a once over at another time.

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Fairhaven [HD]

Loved this movie!
This is a thoughtful, inspiring Gen X movie about "who am I, who are we, and where does it go from here?" This movie will speak to anyone who has ever woken up and wondered if there is more out there than the present moment and what does it take to make the changes to get where we want to go. A deep cast performs flawed characters who win your heart. The cinematography is stunning--great shots of the eastern coastline in winter.

Don't Bother
There was no real story line or plot. The cinematography others may refer to is close ups of getting stoned. I found nothing remotely intersting or noteworthy about this film.

I really wanted to like it but....
I really wanted to like this movie and there were parts when I thought it might get good but it never did!! It lacks a story line. You just feel like you're watching someones life without any direction what so ever! There were a couple parts when I thought it was going to get good but it never did. In the end I'm glad it was only 1hr 20something minutes that I wasted of my life instead of 2 hours.

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Soul Food Junkies

Review of DVD - Both a Cultural History and a healthy food lesson
This show which aired on PBS is now (or will be next week) available on DVD. While the title sounds like one of Food Network's shows about where to find and eat the best fried chicken, blak-eyed peas, collard greens and ribs, it's really just the opposite.
Documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt grew up eating (and cooking with his mom and sister) "soul food" at home. He noted that his father was gaining a lot of weight and looking unhealthy. When his father died because of the unhealthy food he was eating, the younger Hurt set out to discover why black Americans were eating so much of it and where it all began. This 63-minute film gives a cultural history of food in the households of blacks (going back to the days of slavery and plantations). Hurt does visit some renowned soul food restaurants (but doesn't promote them) and interviews a number of "food historians" and "culinary historians". (Who knew such a designation existed???). The best-known interviewee is former comedian, now...

Great journal of history
Enjoyed the history lesson! Hopefully more people will get the opportunity to view this wonderful documentary and personal story. The facts shared through out the story were very well told!
PBS & Byron Hurt did a great job. Just in time for Black History month!!

Soul Food Junkie
Very good documentary. Clears up myths about cooking and eating soul food. Also gives examples of how to make soul food healthier.

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Harmony [HD]

Beautiful.
Harmony is worth a 5 star rating. For me it shows the Power of God.
His Beauty surrounds us. This is so calming.

Nothing special.
Don't waste your time with this. It shows about 5 different places, several of them were not even natural, such as swimming pools. I didn't get it.



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