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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: Geneon [Pioneer]
Salesrank: 75767
Released: March 2, 1999 |
| Our Price: $42.00 |
| Used Price: $18.39 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When Ruth Matthews finds that her young daughter has withdrawn from reality, she and a well-meaning doctor struggle to come to the aid of the child. But when conventional science appears unable to reach the little girl, Ruth embarks on a journey within herself to unlock the mysteries that hold her daughter captive in this passionate and heartrending tale of a mother's love - and a family's determination to heal. Kathleen Turner, Tommy Lee Jones
House of Cards Reviews:
Good Premise, but a bit hard to understand mechanics. 
2007-06-20 - I would say that the basics of this movie is quite good, but the mechanics of it left both my wife and me puzzled. Here, we have a little girl who not only recently lost her father, but was moved from the southern Mexican she knew back to the U.S. to a life that was strange to her. So, she withdrew into herself. To reach anyone like that, indeed to reach anyone who needs help, one must be able to reach out them on their level and within their capacity. In this case, that of supposed autism, the mother had to learn to think as an autistic child. Only then would she be able to reach her hurting daughter. The movie holds one's interest, even if you don't understand the means used by the mother to reach her daughter to help her break through her grieving to start to heal.
Juxtaposition of Mayan mythology and modern medicine 
2006-03-24 - This is not a movie about autism. Let it go.
**Spoilers!**
This is a movie about a little girl who grows up around Mayan tradition, and who is taken away from that back to the States when her father is killed. A lot of the story takes place in memories, visions and dreams, so it only makes "sense" in the context of the Mayan teachings the little girl grew up with. It doesn't translate well to the late 20th Century USA - that's the whole point of the movie. It works in spite of the fact that none of the adults around this little girl have a clue what is happening, even though it's spelled out on the tapes of Sally and the old Mayan man.
She isn't autistic - she's in a trance, on a vision quest. When she and her mother work out the grief, she comes out of it. That's a natural result of such a journey. The ending is beautiful and poetic. The problem is that if you aren't familiar with shamanic traditions, or you don't pay close attention to what the child is hearing and seeing, you won't know what's happening. No one sums it up, and the people around the little girl never pick up on the symbols involved in her healing - cards, The Tower, The Moon- nor do they understand the process they've just gone through.
The child knew enough to heal herself in spite of the adults around her, and her mother facilitates this by following her own intuition in reaching the girl. It's a powerful story - highly recommended.
This is not a movie about Autism
2005-01-09 - This is a about a child disturbed by the death of her father and who is told that she should not cry about it and also that her father is in the moon, a fantasy created in the mind of the child trying to thereafter trying to reach him there. One reviewer thought it was about autism, which it was not. It seems that autism has become a generalization for anything people don't understand. The mother of the child doesn't accept the conventional methods of psychology and uses her own intelligence to "decode" the puzzle of the child's disturbance and succeeds to help her to come out of her fantasy of her father being on the moon where he went after he died. It is a wonderful portrayal of a mother who won't give up and sets out to look at her daughter's disturbance in a new light, using what could be called modern shamanism to recreate the dilemma where the child can see the futility of her actually being able to get to the moon to see her father. This movie is a must see!
LOOKING FOR COPY TO BUY...IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE
2004-12-19 - Deal Amazon shoppers, my name is Alicia and just recently i have enjoyed the pleasure of ordering online feeling secure about my purchases. As you may know from my title, I am in the process of looking for an availiable copy of House of Cards with Tommy Lee Jones. I have scalled all across Ontario for such product and have had no liuck.. I can't even find a copy to rent...Montreal was the cloest and me being from Niagara Falls i don't see that as any use.
I know that this is spose to be used for giving reviews and i don't even know how often people actually read these things but i'm hopeing that some one out there can help me out.
My email address is amartin_717@hotmail.com and i thank you for you time
It's been about 8 years since i saw the movie, but it just happens to be one of the movies that stick in your head. I can only remeber clips of it but i know that it was good consedering i want to see it again 8 years later
If you are finish reading my novel and think you can help me out please contact me
Thanks and have a safe Holiday
The House of Cards fell down quickly 
2004-10-20 - I was confused from the start with House of Cards. Kathleen Turner stars as the widowed parent Ruth Matthews to six year-old Sally and her older brother Michael. They are somewhere in Mexico preparing to return home to North Carolina after a three year absence.
The father, Alex died while they were in Mexico while on an archealogical dig of Mayan ruins. They stayed awhile longer in Mexico after the accident that Ruth had witnessed. I did not connect with the child actress Asha Menina and felt the child was a bit off before they even arrived back in the States. The viewer was aware of her inner thoughts through her whisperings in her mind and she spoke to three weird looking dolls that were spooky. The times that House of Cards ventured into these eerie scenes reminded me of a young Sissie Spacek in Carrie, and I did not want the movie to turn in that direction.
The story was interesting, but failed on so many levels and left viewer not sure what was reality and fantasy and why autism was even suggested. Although the subject was of interest to me, this did contain poor casting choices and not enough character development.
There was such limited information concerning the father and his death and no family discussions about memories. This is where development lacked and could have been explored further. I could not even form an opinion on the father since flashbacks only showed a flashlight and legs falling down.
Ruth had a fear of heights, but it was not explained what led to this. She also did not want Sally and Michael to cry over the death of their father. I think the reason why I was not drawn to the character of Sally is the way she was presented. It was mentioned that she knew three languages, and you heard her muttering to herself in these, but they did not portray her favorably before she withdrew into herself once they were back home.
The next adult we meet is a neighbor played by Park Overall, the only perfectly suited actor in a role in House of Cards. I would have rather seen the mother portrayed by one of the actresses who starred in Designing Women, because Kathleen Turner's accent just bugs me too much.
Their house was very large with a lot of land and we only ever saw the kitchen and Sally's bedroom along with the porch. It made no sense for Sally to be sleeping in the attic with access to a window, especially after several incidents where she got out and climbed on the roof.
The first few scenes upon their arrival back home showed Sally in this crouching position, she resembled a china doll when was picked up and returned to the same form. I thought it was very weird until they showed her mother in the same position a few times. Nothing really made sense in House of Cards and many loose ends were left hanging for this viewer.
I felt the scenes where they showed students working at the school with therapists was decent, although they did push in the wrong direction when trying to get an echolaic child to ask for water, when clearly the child wanted to drink. I do not agree with the concept of withholding something from a child when they cannot communicate that need.
I did choose to view House of Cards because of the mention of autistic traits, and glad that the cover of the video did not mention autism since that was not the basis of the character or show. The parent/child bond lacked structure, was hard to follow that a child missed a parent so much when there were no flashbacks hinting to a relationship.
