House of Sand and Fog

If the real estate market sends shivers down your spine, step right up for this clash of the house-hunting titans. (If it doesn’t, go get yourself an apartment and lock yourself in till this thing’s out of the theaters.) When recovering alcoholic and recently dumped Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is evicted from her house by the local authorities, Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley) immediately buys it at a public auction to fix up for resale. To her credit, Kathy’s only booted because of a paperwork snafu and will stop at nothing to get it back. Not to her credit, those things include sleeping with a local police officer (a laughable Ron Eldard) and unjustifiably and violently (and repeatedly and illegally) hounding the house’s new residents. Connelly and Kingsley do all they can to sell this dump, but the foundation is weaker than 7-Eleven security. Plot holes lurk behind every twist, fatal violence erupts from the pettiest disagreements, and…well, it’s about a fucking house. Not even Connelly, flaunting the rediscovered junk in her trunk in a soft-core sex scene, can compensate for the creaky floorboards of this money pit.