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House of Sand and Fog
House of Sand and Fog Image
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Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 41 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.8 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 75 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Starring: Ben Kingsley, Jennifer Connelly, Ron Eldard
  • Summary: A gripping exploration of the American Dream gone awry, House of Sand and Fog is the story of two people driven to desperate measures to claim ownership of a house. (DreamWorks Pictures)

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 30 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 41
  3. Negative: 1 out of 41
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    It stands with integrity and breaks our hearts.
  2. Empire
    Reviewed by: Angie Errigo
    60
    There's a desperately inevitable, powerfully tragic last reel, but getting there is absolute torture.
  3. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    30
    This is a movie that sends you out shuddering, chuckling nervously, wanting to tell the people in line for the next show, "It's the feel-bad movie of the year!"

See all 41 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 48 out of 56
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 56
  3. Negative: 8 out of 56
  1. RitaP.
    10
    Not often I consider a film a perfect 10 but there is no other score for a film of this quality.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. DeWayneP.
    10
    Brilliant! Films just don't get better than this.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. HomeReviewer
    8
    Throughout this movie, the talented Vadim Perelman uses beautiful cinematographic moments to enhance the already heavy melodrama that is 'House of Sand and Fog'. There are no better words to describe the genre of this movie than tragedy, and that's why so, so many of the reviews use it. It was exactly that, a tragedy. The talented Ben Kingsley was certainly a good choice to play the lead role here; no one can play foreign characters with as much attention to details, deliver high emotion with as much reserve as Kingsley. My last review (You Kill Me) where he was mentioned happens to have referred to this movie 'House of Sand…'; since I hadn't seen it in many years and had not watched a good tragedy for a long while ('Million Dollar Baby' comes to mind as well as 'Gran Torino') I watched it again recently. I pondered on whether or not to write a review about it; I did not have to ponder too much. Vadim Perelman, who wrote and directed the movie, has a rather short resumé, filmography wise, but the quality of his work sufficiently impresses me. He picked Jennifer Connelly to play the very very troubled Kathy, a character whose sole redeeming quality is her beauty; he could hardly have picked better for that very purpose. She is stunningly beautiful. The role is perhaps too demanding for anyone to deliver a convincing performance; Connelly did okay, and I say this with some reluctance because I don't know who could have done so much better. The supporting actors, Ron Eldard and Shohreh Aghdashloo, did very well and are convincing. The story was extremely well developed and the direction flawless in my view. The classic, ending scene used as the short beginning scene, was daring; only great movies have done this successfully. It worked splendidly here. It did not come as any surprise to me that the ratings, from all my usual sources, were so unanimously favorable. I don't tend to watch tragedies a second time, especially if they are good; it takes too much out of us, so I keep the DVDs around to lend to friends who have not seen them. Action movies and romantic comedies are more the type of films we tend to watch again, so 'House of Sand and Fog' was that good. If you have not seen it, you're missing a contemporary classic.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

See all 56 User Reviews

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