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House of Sand and Fog
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 41 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 30 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 41
  3. Negative: 1 out of 41
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    It stands with integrity and breaks our hearts.
  2. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    100
    Its step-by-step tragedy is so ruthless in its unfolding, you may find yourself wishing it were less well done, that it left you some room to breathe. But House of Sand and Fog has a story to tell and it means to tell it, no matter what the cost.
  3. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    100
    As reversible misunderstandings grow into irreversible tragedy, it slowly dawns on you that this is a superior, heartbreaking film.
  4. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    90
    Features an astonishing pair of lead performances and one of this year's most impressive directing debuts. If this movie isn't quite the contempo-Greek tragedy it wants to be, it's still a powerful, unforgettable meditation on fate, cultural collision and the morality of renovating a house that isn't really yours.
  5. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    90
    A faithful, powerful and superbly acted adaptation of Andre Dubus III's international bestseller.
  6. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    90
    The movie's intense watchability can be traced directly to superb performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.
  7. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    90
    Responsibility for the ensuing tragedy is so finely calibrated that neither can be comprehensively blamed or exculpated.
  8. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    88
    A grim, challenging movie that will amply reward audiences willing to go along with its ride into the dark depths of its characters' souls.
  9. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    88
    The clash over the house quickly escalates into a modern-day tragedy. It is a fascinating film, handsomely adapted from the book and well directed.
  10. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    This is a hard, challenging motion picture. It demands much from the audience, and repays that investment with powerful, engrossing drama that does not offer insulting, facile answers. House of Sand and Fog is gripping and unforgettable, one of the best movies of 2003.
  11. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Glenn Kenny
    88
    Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly create characters that live and seethe with absolute credibility, and Ron Eldard’s Lester is a subtle portrait of a good man who lets himself go bad, first out of boredom, then out of erotic fixation.
  12. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    88
    Perelman and Otto make auspicious, nearly flawless debuts.
  13. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    Just because a scenario turns dark doesn't mean that it's convincing. House of Sand and Fog is artful until it lunges for Art.
  14. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    80
    The performances are amazing.
  15. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Bill Gallo
    80
    This is not pleasant stuff, but it's important, and thoroughly heart-wrenching.
  16. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    80
    The nearly flawless execution of a deeply flawed premise.
  17. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    80
    Novelist Andre Dubus's plotting may be too much for a two-hour movie. But the story's details feel fresh. The vivid clarity of the images, the compressed fury of the tale, are impossible to get out of your head.
  18. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    80
    The plot that follows, including the wretched young woman who lost the house, is of interest only insofar as Kingsley supports the structure with a powerful man.
  19. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    Before it runs off course into excess, this brilliantly acted film version of the 1999 novel by Andre Dubus III moves with a stabbing urgency.
  20. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    The movie's emotional impact is undeniable. It's a devastating portrait of smart, civilized people driven to behave in uncivilized ways, until it's too late.
  21. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    75
    It's a sad, rich story, full of misunderstandings, bad bargains, odd parallels.
  22. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    Remember the name Shohreh Aghdashloo. The heartbreakingly fine Iranian actress is only a subsidiary character in House of Sand and Fog...But she is the soul of this pungent film.
  23. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    75
    There is both a sense of disappointment and relief when House of Sand and Fog crosses over into improbability, when the viewer can sit back, breathe easy again. All this trouble over the failure to open an envelope.
  24. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    75
    What makes the movie potent, though, has nothing to do with metaphor or parable. It's that the story provides Connelly, Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Kingsley's wife with all the tools they need to resurrect, flesh out, revamp and criticize outmoded male and female roles.
  25. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
    70
    The carefully laid foundation of suspense and dread, with its symmetries and crisp dialogue, is squandered in a clumsy pileup of credulity-stretching cataclysmic events.
  26. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: David Grove
    70
    Might've been a great film without Lester, the Deputy, getting in the way of the key relationship between Behrani and Kathy.
  27. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Rick Kisonak
    70
    Exceptional performances and unexpected twists of plot keep the story from descending into overwrought melodrama.
  28. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    70
    Though the film is somber, it certainly commands one's attention, and for a while one's respect.
    All this critic's reviews
  29. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marrit Ingman
    67
    A sterling example of what Hollywood can accomplish when it puts its trust into an offbeat project whose creative team has a different perspective on American life.
  30. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    63
    Exacting but disappointing thriller.
  31. Empire
    Reviewed by: Angie Errigo
    60
    There's a desperately inevitable, powerfully tragic last reel, but getting there is absolute torture.
  32. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    The first hour is excellent, spinning an ethically and emotionally compelling tale. Narrative logic fades during the second half, though, reducing the movie's impact on every level.
  33. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    50
    There's a dignity about it, and it's only later that we come to realize that this dignity is misplaced, born of a fatal reserve and a lack of complete investment.
  34. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    50
    In the end, it's just a pointless downer.
  35. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    50
    Everything about the movie seems excessive to the material. What should have been a small, independent feature without marquee casting -- the story's protagonists, after all, are meant to be the kind of people nobody ever notices.
  36. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ed Park
    50
    The clunky manipulations of plot, and the sorry fate awaiting everyone in this foggy House is less wrenching than acted.
  37. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    50
    The ineluctable downward pull of absolutely everything in this movie is more exasperating than moving. [12 January 2004, p. 86]
    All this critic's reviews
  38. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    42
    Grim, sordid and, as it progresses, increasingly dunderheaded.
  39. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    40
    Perleman has little control over his characters; they simply go to pieces in the most ludicrous ways. He has even less control over Kingsley, who soon slips into full-blown Yul Brynner mode.
  40. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    40
    Folds like a house of cards, collapsing under its own flimsy foundation.
  41. 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!"
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.8 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 75 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 48 out of 56
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 56
  3. Negative: 8 out of 56
  1. 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.… Full Review »
  2. RitaP.
    10
    Not often I consider a film a perfect 10 but there is no other score for a film of this quality.
  3. DeWayneP.
    10
    Brilliant! Films just don't get better than this.
See all user reviews »