GamerTab That was an excellent one.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Rpgcatech Disapointment

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

MartinHafer "The House I Live In" is a frustrating film to watch. This is because the first 75% or so of the film has a lot of great content and the film makes its point. Too bad they didn't STOP the film, as the last 25% actually will alienate many people who agree with the film's initial message.When the film begins, it presents a very convincing argument that the American government's so-called war on drugs is a complete failure. Important facts such as the nation leading the world in incarceration rates, the predominance of poor minorities serving time for drug possession and the violence associated with drugs are all very, very compelling arguments to say that what we are doing currently is not working. Then, instead of presenting a great argument for legalization or partial legalization, the film goes off on an argument about class warfare (sounding rather Marxist) and drawing parallels to the drug war with the holocaust (and when you start comparing ANYONE to the Nazis, then you've lost the legitimacy of the argument--which is often referred to as 'Godwin's Law'). The bottom line is that the film didn't know when to quit when it had presented a great argument. Its final overall argument is one that would alienate many libertarians and conservatives (folks who you might be able to convince that we should abandon this war on drugs and its disproportionate effect on the poor) and appeal more to a socialist and far-left crowd.While I DO agree that poor people get a bad shake and serve far, far more time than rich folks who can afford better lawyers and gain more sympathy from juries, resorting to the class warfare argument will appeal to many and alienate just about as many. And reserve the term 'Holocaust' for the Holocaust!!Overall ratings: For the first 75%--9; For the last 25%--2

Michael Vintage The Real Ongoing War On (poor) People...(no no)...I mean "Drugs". Words That Come To Mind: - Profound - Deep - Meaningful - Long Sighted - Well Rounded - Amazing Real Stories - Real People - Planned Social Injustice - Flawed Criminal Justice System (with proof) - Poverty - Immoral Prison Profits - Invisible class discrimination This is a Must See Well produced in Depth Documentary with will open your eyes not with anger but with compassion. Compassion IS the agent of change. I believe someone said "It is ones Civic duty to watch this doc" and while I found that a bit forward at first I now agree. Addicts need help not prisons however I personally believe our system is set up this way on purpose. Enslaving the poor with laws designed to target them and further more private prison systems to profit of of the enslavement. Invisible Social Injustice.Highly Recommend logging onto YouTube and watching some of Dr. Gabor's videos on addiction. He is almost mathematical about it...blew my mind. He is a credit to the community as a whole. Whatever Happened To THE WAR ON POVERTY? (now that's a war for me).

winst If you've been a student of most public schools you've learned about slavery.There's a lyric I remember that says "I hate it when they tell us how far we came to be - as if our peoples' history started with slavery." Well, the history of subjugating minorities has not ENDED with slavery either, and retrospective condemnation of racism serves the purpose to perpetuate the racism embedded and invested in our country today. The most important mistake is to confuse failure with success in regards to the apparent shortcomings of our establishment. I again use the example of public schools because the recent documentary "Waiting for Superman" did a fantastic job in addressing the "failures" of schools to educate children. It takes a book like James Lowen's Lies My Teacher Told Me to recognize the grand success of our school's indoctrination process: to teach obedience, not intelligence. It takes a documentary like The House I Live In to vocalize the airtight success of our administration in conducting the 41 years' drug war. Logic should compute. If more money has been spent (a trillion dollars since the '70s,) the prison population has skyrocketed (2.4 million people incarcerated) and no progress has been made in keeping drugs off the streets, (similarly with our schools, with reform after reform we continue to perform beneath the feet of most industrialized countries,) you have to start looking at things a little differently. It is hard to see the exit of the maze when walking within its walls. This documentary helps to see things from the outside. This film brings to light a lot of revealing facts that have been swept under the rug, like how opium wasn't an issue until Chinese started climbing the success latter in San Francisco, or how the police in border states can directly siphon the money from drug busts to reward their outfit. Mostly, it encourages a comparison between the way minorities have been apprehended with drug abuse and the apprehension of whites (who hold equal if not higher drug abuse statistics but make up a minority of the prison population.) And it encourages comparison between past, mass scale subjugation (often with eventual extermination) and, to quote the film, the slow-motion holocaust happening in our own country. It recognizes the drug epidemic as an economic issue and a medical issue, not a racial issue. It recognizes the drug WAR as the glaring rash of vibrant racism, and the brutal front of a class war in a society where profits come first, human beings second. More to this point, it eludes to the country's prime motivation, net gain and increased GDP, and the plethora of companies from Sprint Mobile to GM to privatized prisons such as CCA, all of whom depend on the drug war to maintain stock value. To quote ousted investigative journalist and ex-LAPD narcotics officer Michael Ruppert, "A snake eating its own tail is not nutritious." Though it is outside the periphery of the film's focus and beyond the pale even for a documentary of this substance, the issue of international drug trafficking, and facilitation it has received, at times, from both the financial sector and intelligence agency of our country, was never brought to light in this film. Despite whether this topic is to be written off as conspiracy theory or submitted for further analysis, a film that introduces our economy's dependence on drug dependence and the targeting of minorities in an everlasting drug war, has a duty to at least address the controversy. I suggest raising the question on discussion boards and at Q&As, as my screening was lucky enough to have. We live in a country that is infested with racism, now as much as any other time. Our economy depends on it, and the drug war has fertilized it. It is time to end it.

zippyflynn2 What's really fueling this law and order hysteria and the draconian prison sentences for relatively minor, innocuous and even non-existent "crimes" is the extraordinarily profitable Prison for Profit system. What's interesting and extremely frightening is most Americans are oblivious to it. Combine this with a large number of the public being largely uneducated and on a continual sadistic hunt for scapegoats, those who profiteer on the modern day slave trade have a willing public as unwitting accomplices.It's interesting the director, Eugene Jarecki, also did "Why We Fight", one of the best documentaries to expose the crimes being committed by the blood money Military Industrial Complex. The public is also largely oblivious to that evil profiteering monster and also happily supports it to the point it thinks murdering and dying for it is a good thing. Jarecki makes some of the most important and enlightening documentaries of today. It's an alarming shame and tragedy that the predominately ignorant and not very mentally healthy general public aren't watching them, let alone able to comprehend how it hurts everyone except the bank accounts of sociopathic "business" men and women.Perhaps the common denominator is the same fuel that's driving half of the present day voters in the Presidential election: hatred and the eternal search for scapegoats. It would make an excellent documentary to tie these core driving forces together, a task I think Mr. Jarecki is capable of doing well. It probably won't make much of an impact beyond preaching to the choir but then again none of his other fine offerings have fared much better and those are still greatly appreciated by thoughtful and humane audiences.