House of Sand and Fog | | Cast : | Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard | | Director : | Vadim Perelman | | Studio : | Umvd/Dreamworks | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | December 26, 2003 | | DVD Released Date : | May 31, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 30, 2005 | | Summary | Sand and Fog=Drama and Heartfelt Despair | Content
 | House of Sand and Fog is an epic tale about several lives entertwined ultimately around one piece of property...one set of lives hangs on for sentimental reasons from a man who worked his whole life to have it...the other to gain monetarily from it so that they can build a new life in a new country.
Kingsley and Conneley are superb in this movie that explores heartache, love lost, betrayal, and ultimately death. Conneley finds herself evicted from a house her father willed to her...while she is trying to sort out the legal mess to get it back, it's sold to a man who is a former colonel from Iran. He moves his family in and quickly begins settling in, as well as re-listing it for it's real market value which is a lot more than what he paid for it.
What ensues takes us on a journey of people living out of their cars and on their last paycheck..of people trying to start a new life in America as so many have, only to have someone try to yank the carpet out from under them one more time.
A Deputy Sherrif is soon in the mix with Conneley's character and despite having a ton of problems of his own at home, thrusts himself into the situation as the white knight...only to have every move he makes backfire on him and ultimately cause his own demise...
Words are exchanged, heated confrontations run amock, and issues that deal with our social climate of greed and loss of the childhood home bear down on us with a heavy weight as the two sides clash, coincide, then clash again. In the beginning there is a house, which becomes a home. In the end is an empty shell...and in between, what good could come out of it swirls into a downward spiral, never to be seen again.
A great moving drama for all to see, House of Sand and Fog will have you feeling sympathy for ALL involved...consequences and the hard truth are tough to take sometimes, and this movie serves it with cold water. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 29, 2005 | | Summary | A Sad Tale | Content
| The House of Sand and Fog is a sad tale of an Iranian man and his wife and teenage son who relocates to America out of fear for their lives. In the process they purchase a home that was taken from a down-on-her-luck American woman whose husband has left her.
Without disclosing more of the story for those who had not read the book, the movie is a must see. The acting is wonderful, the story enthralling and the directing seamless. But be warned, there are no happy endings to this tale. Just raw humanity, and a glimpse at the mistakes we make and where they can unsuspectingly take us. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 21, 2005 | | Summary | I was actually angry I had wasted my time on this | Content
| Why such talented actors would choose to take part in such a dreadful film is beyond me. Characters are only weakly developed and so unrealistically self-centered as to beg the question of how any single human being this irrational could have possibly made it this long in the real world--and yet this film is full of them! By the time the film reaches any sort of climax one is so thoroughly fed up with everyone on screen that it hardly seems worth finishing. As if sensing its own foulness, the film attempts to recapture the audience with a shocking and tragic ending; the impulse is wrong and, worse, transparent. Having not read the book, I don't know if it's fair to put all of the blame on the shoulders of the filmmakers, but this is one movie that should definitely be avoided. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 15, 2005 | | Summary | Why not follow the book? | Content
| The actors were excellent. The book is great but this movie missed the whole concept of the book. With the right screenplay, this could have been a very good film. The movie totally missed the mark-- |
| Rating | | | Date | August 10, 2005 | | Summary | REAL ESTATE DEAL GONE BAD!! | Content
| This film is so appropriate to the real estate market in California: as Wilde says, "Life imitates Art"!
Kingsley is great as the honorable, ramrod-straight, steely military man. Connelly is beautiful and sexy, but the character she plays is a stupid, ignorant alcoholic. She's a charwoman!--so much for higher education. Eldard the cop is just too, too utterly creepy: so typical--someone who thinks he's smarter than everyone else; who's willing to abuse his authority; and who's willing to adulterate and violate his own wife and children: yecch! disgusting!!
One other point: the deleted scenes indicate an additional twist to the ending which the director apparently decided not to go with. I can't quite make up my mind if he made the right decision or not: the deleted scene is a much, much more satisfying rough-justice-done ending, though it somewhat diminishes the integrity of the Colonel. The chosen ending leaves the Colonel with most of his integrity intact, but is much less satisfying aesthetically: Perelman (the director) eschewed the catharsis to make the character seem yet even more honorable: I think it may have been an artistic mistake. But what the hey, things are rarely perfect. In fact, I think all the deleted scenes should have simply been included into the final cut of the film--in toto, they may have added :15 mins to the running lengh: big deal! The deleted scene of Connelly's character in the Mexican restaurant was especially telling... |
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