Blog-aversary!

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the Amblog's launch (with a review of The Trip). Time marches on, and there are many movies to see, so I won't spend a lot of time reflecting. Instead, I'd just like to point out a few highlights from Year One:

- I'm pretty proud of my 2011 Year in Review, probably my best long-form piece to date. I'm also quite fond of the Studio Ghibli edition of Jump Cuts, though I didn't know that I would also be seeing the superlative Grave of the Fireflies just a few weeks later.

- Drive remains my only "perfect" 5-star review. I wanted to see it again immediately after it was finished, and I don't have that reaction very often. The ratings, by the way, are more art than science. I'll usually go with whatever my gut says as I start to write a review. The words are far more important than the numbers, obviously. The Interrupters and Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie are a couple more of my better raves.

- The only enjoyment I derived from The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence was in panning it last October; it's still my favorite takedown. Two more of the worst that brought out my best: The Vow and Margaret.

- It's easy to forget that I did not initially intend for this blog to focus on movie reviews. For the first month, my Wide Angle posts covered topics from music to patriotism to travel. Weird stuff, but very indicative of my various preoccupations (and loads of free time!) before I started to spend my weekends at the multiplex.

- My relentless posting got me noticed by the founders of Screen Invasion, where I've cross-posted my reviews and contributed some original content. Though I enjoy being a hermit in my little corner of cyberspace, I'm also very proud to contribute to such a dynamic and diverse site with writers voracious love of pop culture matches my own.


I've been blogging (or writing an "online journal," if you remember that term) in some capacity for almost 10 years, toiling away in front of a monitor for hundreds and hundreds of unpaid hours. I'm amazed that I keep doing it! But I'm even more amazed - and humbled - to know that there are people who enjoy reading what I write. Thanks to all of you who visit this space and keep on coming back. You've made this more rewarding than I could've hoped.

Happy Blog-aversary, Ambler Amblog!

The Interrupters (2011)

The Interrupters (2011)
Dir. Steve James

4.5 out of 5

There's a fact dropped very casually at the beginning of The Interrupters, from the voice of an unseen news anchor, that the annual number of murder victims in Chicago has surpassed the annual number of American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. "War zone" is often a reductive way of describing America's most beleaguered urban communities, but it almost fits the South Side neighborhoods examined by accomplished documentarian Steve James (Hoop Dreams). Into the breach step the members of CeaseFire, the specialized "violence interrupters" that give the film its title. Putting themselves in harm's way on a daily basis, they embody what the government and many of their neighbors seem unable or unwilling to comprehend - sacrifice.

Of course, to the three interrupters profiled by James over the course of a year, sacrifice is as familiar as a brother or sister. All of them carry the burden of a past that involves gang membership, or drug dealing, or unspeakable acts of violence. CeaseFire allows them to turn this burden into a tool for change. The organization is built on the theory that the spread of violence exhibits a pattern similar to that of an infectious disease. The interrupters are the patient zeroes of a potential cure, individuals who found a way within themselves to inhibit the causes of violent behavior and who struggle to translate it for a world that enables the whims of the slighted and the vengeful. Hope is a powerful motivator, but so is guilt. The film's often-glimpsed subtext is how violence intervention is as effective in building up the interrupter as it is in assuaging the interrupted.

The Interrupters is not as bleak as you might imagine. There is great affirmation in the relationships built between the film's main subjects and the people who need their help. One mediator, a tough-as-nails activist, mother, and progeny of noted Chicago crime lord Jeff Fort, is pushed to her limits by a teenage girl who alternates between red-hot aggression and heartbreaking vulnerability. Another copes with his gangbanging past by reaching out to elementary school children - those who were born witness to a world of violence, and who are on the cusp of entering it themselves - with art therapy. He desperately wants to apologize directly to the families of those he has hurt, but fears their potential reaction. How proud he would be to see CeaseFire's influence reflected in a 17-year-old boy who does just that to his past robbery victims, standing humbled against their torrent of justifiable anguish.

Though it's ultimately affirming, The Interrupters is also exhausting. James offers plenty of telling details about how such an epidemic goes unrecognized in an era of 24-hour news coverage. He captures some of the media furor that ensues when the murder of Derrion Albert is captured on cameraphones and goes viral. For a few days, an indignant nation watches as government officials pledge anew to stop the violence in Chicago. (Several months later, some misguided souls in the Illinois legislature suggest deploying the National Guard in Chicago as a sinecure. An emotionally-charged community meeting quashes that boneheaded idea.) But neither James nor the interrupters are naive enough to expect that this will be a turning point. They, like the film, are dedicated to the long haul. The Interrupters does right by its subjects by pulling them into the limelight, even if they are all too aware that they'll quickly fade back into the shadows. It's a massively overwhelming job, but it's necessary and effective. As one client theorizes, an interrupter is like a fly that keeps landing on his face while he tries to nap. You can try to ignore it, he says, "but eventually you got to tend to that fly."