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100The House I Live In is not a comfortable film to consider in any respect, but without discomfort it's hard to feel anger - and without anger, it's hard to imagine that anything will ever be done about it.
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80Among Jarecki's interviewees is David Simon (author of The Wire) who is incandescent with contempt for the system.
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75The House I Live In is a work of journalism, not propaganda: Jarecki has done his research and leaves it to you to decide what to make of it.
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75I'm wary of implying that it's your civic duty to see The House I Live In, but - guess what - it is. And see it with someone whose views are different from your own. We're going to need everyone to help get us out of this mess.
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91This film could serve as a potent tool for those trying to change 40 years of public policy.
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88I've heard that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that standard, the U.S. "War on Drugs" seems crazy indeed in The House I Live In.
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78The House I Live In is depressing stuff, but it sparks the fires of anger, and from that anger, possible action.
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Oct 18, 2012100Jarecki takes a highly original approach to create a compelling, thought-provoking look at a highly relevant and controversial topic.
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Oct 11, 201275Technically, The House I Live In isn't season six of "The Wire." But Eugene Jarecki's investigative documentary probing our nation's futile war on drugs is so similar in tone and intent to HBO's acclaimed series that fans of the defunct television program will want to take a look.
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88Jarecki's film makes a shattering case against the War on Drugs.
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58Jarecki's thesis is that law enforcement targets minority communities, but his analysis is far too simplistic. Since when did pushers become victims?
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60The House I Live In shows Nannie Jeter as she hopefully watches Barack Obama's 2008 electoral victory, but doesn't analyze the current president's apparent reluctance to significantly alter anti-drug policies.
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75The evidence Jarecki amasses against the drug wars in The House I Live In is more than strong enough to withstand any excess rhetorical zeal.
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80The scope of the subject is such that when Mr. Jarecki's voiceover cuts into the narrative, imposing a personal angle on the national story, it reduces the sense of significance its creator aimed for. But that's a fairly backhanded endorsement of a very potent movie.
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80It's easy to take issue with a documentary like The House I Live In, which tackles too much in too brief a time and glosses over complexities, yet this is also a model of the ambitious, vitalizing activist work that exists to stir the sleeping to wake.
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60As is, the film is more likely to impress the choir than change many minds.
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75While it's messily put together, with a sprawling and at times unfocused narrative that often gets in the way of itself, it doesn't deny the power of the facts Jarecki brings to bear on a misguided program that hasn't stopped the demand for drugs, that has disenfranchised the poor and minorities, and created an expensive prison industry.
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83A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.
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83The result is a movie that jumps all over the place, but with the ultimate intention of showing how the public's attitudes and assumptions about drugs have changed over the past half-century, guided by politicians and businessmen with a stake in misinformation.
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100David Simon, creator of "The Wire," who argues that the targeting of minorities, fused with mandatory sentencing, has turned the war on drugs into ''a holocaust in slow motion.''
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70What's riveting and attention grabbing in Jarecki's recapitulations of failed policy are some of the talking heads he has assembled, including "The Wire" creator David Simon and historian Richard Lawrence Miller.
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60Whenever the film focuses more on Jarecki's hand-wringing than deconstructing the war itself, you wish someone would have looked the filmmaker in the eye and just said no.
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Oct 1, 201270A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.
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75The mixture of different techniques and varied views results in a rich, multi-faceted look at one of America's most misguided policy initiatives.