Disregards the political shifts of Brazil's history by isolating the sprawling narrative from the rest of the nation, so that nothing can distract the director from his finicky composing

| Aug 30, 2009

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2007

It all seems as bleak and empty as the desert.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 21, 2006

Both characters make gradual evolutions, but don't blame audiences if they're too dazed and dry-mouthed to notice.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 9, 2006

...a part of a classic art-house tradition, that of the starkly beautiful yet chilly movie that haunts the memory without compelling any particular attention.

Full Review | Original Score: 88/100 | Nov 3, 2006

House of Sand boasts the hypnotic power of its landscape and a pair of powerful and passionate performances by Montenegro and Torres.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 28, 2006

A devastating yet beautiful film from Brazil, House of Sand tells an epic story of love and desolation.

| Oct 27, 2006

At once allegorical and grimly naturalistic -- a contemplation of the sands of time set amid the drifting dunes of Brazil's unforgiving Maranahao desert.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 13, 2006

This beautifully photographed drama feels slow and lethargic.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 6, 2006

The dramatic and often sad lives led by the women yield surprisingly intimate dramas considering such limitless surroundings, a contrast that's played up by the excellent cinematography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 28, 2006

Cinematographer Ricardo della Rosa ... has created images of rare beauty in the midst of terrain so spectacularly strange that it sometimes seems to speak a language all its own.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 22, 2006

It is a wondrous place, almost of another planet, and more than compensation for the effort to get there.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Visually dazzling, epic in its sweep and deeply romantic in its sensibility, The House of Sand is one of those films whose images and ideas linger long after the lights come on, having been burned into the viewer's consciousness.

| Sep 15, 2006

[Waddington] is bothersomely casual with the time-jumps and never makes their long survival quite believable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 15, 2006

A visual work of art and its simple story moves as effortlessly as the sands in a forsaken desert in northern Brazil.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 15, 2006

It ends up like an impressionist painting without a subject, one we stare at longingly, waiting for its purpose to emerge.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 15, 2006

The thrill of seeing this movie is in the realization that we've seen nothing like it before.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 14, 2006

Sensual, dreamlike, both intimate and epic, The House of Sand is a cinematic tour de force.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 8, 2006

The movie has a power that's as hard to firmly grasp as the stuff on which these women build their home.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 8, 2006

Both Waddington and Soarez understand the impotence of words in this dusty setting, or the potency of just the right ones.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 8, 2006