RResende The great things about this film make me forget the obvious concessions to box office: the uselessness of Tommy Lee's over dramatic character, or the cheesy ending.The beauty of this is all in the multiple structures presented to us, both physically and metaphorically, and how they are layered in such a way that moving one affects all the others, like a house of cards. How they are put together is flawed, and it lacks the subtleties and hooks of any Medem script. But it's a glorious try, a world of connections of all sorts.The first gate to this world are the Maya pyramids, so carefully photographed in the clever initial sequence in Mexico. There we are given key concepts to interpret the whole thing: The ascending dynamic of this (highly spiritual) shape, the tragedy of the father's death, which triggers the whole plot, and the moon – introduced in a clumsy way, as the cosmic witness to the tragedy and as some old folk Indian tale.Later we fold the idea of the abstract structure that is the "key" to our girl's mind into the idea of a physical shape, that of a spiral, conceptually close to the conception of a Maya pyramid. The girl actually builds the thing, using common cards and some Tarot cards, providing us another key to another abstract structured cosmic world: metaphorical links between cards and several realities; a whole cosmology of its own.In between you get hints at other parallel, strong structures: 1 – before becoming an autist the girl spoke three languages; 2 – trees… she climbs them, repeating the ascending movement, and she disguises herself as one… she becomes it!; 3 – the construction site and the crane, an obvious reference, as it is the fact that the mother is an engineer, a designer of structures (the 3d stuff does sound middle- aged to our BIM days…)The spiral is replicated in a greater scale by the mother, she actually builds her own gate to her daughter (building up for the obvious climax). What you get is the beautiful idea of a physical structure as the metaphor for a spiritual link, and the act of building as a symbol of reaching for someone. This is underscored by the seemingly shared dream between our girls, which i found pretty lame. So the result is a sort of maternal built love. You have to love it!

Rich Wright Watching this film was akin to taking a flight you've taken dozens of times before. Familiar route. Decent meal. Comfortable seat, if a bit lumpy. Slight gust of wind in the air, but nothing to sweat about. Then, all of a sudden... one of the engine breaks down. EMERGENCY. PEOPLE RUNNING EVERYWHERE. YOU'RE HURTLING TO EARTH AT 1000 MILES AN HOUR. SCREAMING. KIDS CRYING. WE'RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT. SAY YOUR PRAYERS. IT'S THE MOTHER OF ALL NOSEDIVES... Yep, you get the picture.I shall now describe the scene in intricate detail. Kathleen Turner plays the mother of a girl who recently, following the death of her father and Turner's husband, has gone mute, unresponsive to human contact and has taken to climbing tall structures. She's already had a couple of close shaves involving a tree and the roof back home... So what does her Oh-So-Intelligent caregiver do? Why, takes her to work with her. Turner plays a head ARCHITECT. She's in the middle of a HUGE project. There are cranes, unfinished buildings and dangers everywhere. Hmm... My spidey sense is picking up something here...And, guess who Turner leaves her extremely vulnerable daughter with, during this unwise little jaunt? Why, no other than her dozy brother... Who we've already established is as thick as two short planks. Despite KNOWING his sibling is in a bad way, and cannot be left unattended for any length of time... What does he do? Why, COMPLETELY ignore her for the duration while she's able to get out of the back seat, climb a nearby ladder and walk along a narrow platform 500 feet in the air. It's only when one of the workers spots her, she's able to be saved.MY. GOD. This is worse parenting than those idiots you read about in the paper who go on holiday... Leaving their kids alone for a week in an empty house. At least they're not at any immediate risk... In this film, Turner TAKES HER DAUGHTER to THE WORST POSSIBLE PLACE for someone in her condition, then compounds the error by having her useless son babysit her.At the inevitable custody meeting afterwards, she has the cheek to think she has a leg to stand on... And, almost unbelievably, she manages to AVOID getting her child taken away... By doormat doctor Tommy Lee Jones who's only proviso is that he see her once a day.The final nail in the coffin here is that Turner DOES NOT FEEL RESPONSIBLE for making such a grievous error and her dumb, dumb son DOES NOT GET PUNISHED OR EXPRESS ANY REGRET FOR HIS HUGE LAPSE IN CONCENTRATION... And even tries to beat up Jones when he arrives to collect his sister. Instead of saying "Nice right hook" to the little punk, he should have pressed charges... There and then.Are we supposed to like these people? This little girl is quite clearly living in a hazardous environment and should be removed post haste. But, nope... Rather than ask questions about Turner's dubious suitability to be a parent, or whether her son really WAS dropped on his head as a baby, it prefers to bore us senseless with endless scenes of the little girl during pointless cr*p which is supposed to be meaningful. After the umpteenth moment of her screaming or staring blankly at the camera, I came to the conclusion that ANY kid could play this role. No wonder 'Asha Menina' didn't star in another movie for 17 years. She doesn't exactly strike you as the next Shirley Temple...Oh yes, of course the 'cards' in the title. The girl constructs a huge tower of cards around her one morning, and Turner takes lots of pictures of it before it collapses. SOMEWHERE in that diagram there is a clue behind her vegetative state. So she uploads the photos to her computer, makes a 3D model of them, strolls around it using a VERY old virtual reality helmet, and eventually, builds an exact replica made of a wood of it in her back garden.Instead of being moving, charming, or poignant, it is instead utterly ridiculous and stupid. And never so much as in the finale, where I can't even BEGIN to describe what goes down. All that I can tell you is it is one half unashameable cornball sentimentality, the other incoherent unwatchable mayhem. My conclusion: Everyone knew they had a turkey on their hands, and just gave up as this juncture.And it all started off so well. Comparably speaking... The mediocre first 50 minutes is a godsend compared to what unfolds afterwards. There are no survivors, the debris is scattered over the whole continent... And somewhere, two hours of your life are weeping at your squandering of them. YOU'LL NEVER GET THEM BACK... 2/10

Morgaine Swann House of Cards is a really unusual story, and you have to really pay attention to understand what is going on. It juxtaposes modern medicine with Mayan ritual, but you have to listen to the conversations with the Mayan man and Sally (Asha Menina) to understand what she's going through. I'll try not to give too much away, but I have to talk about the ending because that is what is confusing people. The movie begins with the father dying from a fall at an archaeological dig in South America. The little girl is only about 5, but she's multilingual, speaking Spanish and a native Mayan dialect fluently as well as English. We hear Sally's memories as narration, the Mayan man that she spent so much time with telling her how to become very quiet, how to deal with her grief, and that her father now lives on the moon. The family leaves for the States shortly after the father's death, so this little girl who has only really known the people at the site is taken from an extended support system to a rural American setting. Her mother and brother are so caught up in the move and their grief that they don't really notice Sally has stopped talking. As she begins to exhibit extraordinary powers like climbing and throwing or catching a ball with freakish ability, the brother notices but doesn't really tell their mom.Sally's "symptoms" create concern in the local authorities when she climbs up building equipment trying to reach the moon, where she's been told her father is now. They only manage to get her down because the worker that goes after her is Native American and she trusts him. No one ever mentions this in the movie, but he's the only one she responds to during her mourning spell. A therapist who is assigned to deal with Sally and her family struggles to define the problems and the extreme gifts demonstrated by Sally. He's using modern techniques that are unable to reach the girl. Her behavior becomes more bizarre, and more beautiful, leaving him to struggle with the idea of whether we enter or withdraw from the world through creativity. In the end, the mother, played by Kathleen Turner, follows her instinct and builds a tower based on the design of Sally's house of cards. No one connects the fact that Sally's structure ended with a Major Arcana Tarot card, The Moon, and that the tower appears to be directly under the moon, as in the card. The Native man from the construction site helps the mother, as do friends and family, though they don't understand what she's doing. When the tower nears completion, the mother falls asleep on it, and she connects with Sally in a dream. She's awakened by the doctor coming across the field, where he found Sally headed for the tower. This is where most people get lost. Sally and her mother work the problem out on an inner plane. From the outside, they appear to just be staring at each other. On the inside, Sally is expressing her grief, says good bye to her daddy, and comes back to her mom. Once Sally lets go of her dad, she is back to normal. She has no memory of her "quiet" time.Sally's journey is a vision quest, and her mother intuitively reaches her with a ritual based on the symbols Sally has been taught. No one in the movie understands how it happens or why, so if you aren't familiar with Native American spirituality, it won't make sense - though it is still poetic and beautiful, if you let go of trying to make it fit your expectations. I highly recommend the movie, especially for family viewing.

przgzr If anyone wants to know medical facts about any disease, he/she should read medical literature, ask a doctor, watch educational program on TV. This is a movie, so the authors have their freedom. Of course, they have certain responsibilities. They shouldn't show obvious mistakes and let us believe they're medical facts (or any other scientific facts) when the movie ends. I can understand upset parents who have to live with their own private horror and know it will last whole life through (without miracles after waking up), but in the end it is clearly shown this was not a case of autism. Traumas can cause extremely different pictures. In adults you can spend months and years searching for somatic cause for headaches, cardiac disorders, or even blindness before it becomes apparent there isn't any. Schizophrenic catatonia is an extreme example, showing neurological symptoms. In children one can find regression (behaving like a younger child) - like enuresis after even many years of successful urinary control. But behavior like autism is also possible. (I don't remember anyone objecting "Tommy", by the way, maybe because it's much more symbolic than the realistic "House of cards".) And traumas for children are often also trauma for adults (parents) who sometimes don't let the physician know the whole truth. Sometimes they're ashamed, sometimes feel guilty, sometimes diminish the cause or even have problems to deal with it themselves, so they deny it can have reflection on health of their child. These parents can also be expected to change doctors or institutions or the way of treatment. Especially in modern world when media give a great space to non-medical treatments, because they sell newspapers (or TV shows) more than real science and completely educated professionals. That can confuse parents, already shocked by disease and afraid of future, progressively with the seriousness of the diagnosis. The way media treat "official medicine" is also important. If their glorify different kinds of magicians and a real doctor can never be heard, let alone become a hero, you can expect parents with lack of belief and very much ready to try another approach, no matter how useless, unsuccessful and even harmful (at least because it means losing precious time). So however unrealistic and hard to watch for real autistic children's parents, this film is honest, even realistic (parents who believe their doctors must understand that there really exist parents who don't!) - and (last but not least) this film is good as a film. It is meant to enjoy it and not to teach medicine. And if you ask yourself some questions it can even upset you (but try "Lorenzo's Oil" if you want it deeper than your skin).Also, some comments (and mine too) could be more adequate in Message boards, so I suggest for any more comments like this Message board to be used, and this place left to viewers who want to give opinions about the movie.