Beautifully nuanced, passionately performed, and terrifically realized piece of work.
The Ice Storm (1997)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:54
Fresh:44
Rotten:10
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: Director Ang Lee revisits the ennui-laden decadence of 1970s suburban America with deft humor and gripping pathos.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Director Ang Lee's main concern is a subtle examination of family life that he began with THE WEDDING BANQUET and EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN. With THE ICE STORM, Lee creates a truly American period film... Director Ang Lee's main concern is a subtle examination of family life that he began with THE WEDDING BANQUET and EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN. With THE ICE STORM, Lee creates a truly American period film that is equally concerned with family relationships, set in 1970s New England. It is Thanksgiving, 1973, and the Carvers and the Hoods are two prototypical suburban families seemingly living the good life in New Canaan, Connecticut. Behind their New Age philosophies and polyester fashions, however, lies deep discontent. One husband carries on an unsatisfying affair with the other family's wife, while his teenage daughter experiments sexually with both of the neighbor's boys. When a winter storm descends upon their upper middle class neighborhood, buried resentments bubble over, leading to a tragedy neither family will ever forget. An intense, well-acted drama based on the novel by Rick Moody, THE ICE STORM is a masterly depiction of the frigid emotional life of suburbia. Great care was taken to accurately recreate the fashion, philosophy, and music of the 1970s without devolving into camp. Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, and Joan Allen all excel in their roles, but it is the younger actors (Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, Adam Hann-Byrd) who steal the show. [More]
Starring: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire
Starring: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Henry Czerny, Courtney Peldon, Adam Hann-Byrd, David Krumholtz, Jamey Sheridan, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes, Michael Cumpsty, Allison Janney
Director: Ang Lee
Director: Ang Lee
Screenwriter: James Schamus
Producer: James Schamus, Ted Hope, Ang Lee
Composer: Mychael Danna
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Reviews for The Ice Storm
Beautifully acted, refreshingly un-camp in its take on wide lapels and progressive rock and occasionally coolly moving. It's just that ultimately, there's less here than meets the eye.
A well-observed and deftly performed examination of upper-middle-class emotional deep freeze...
What impressively begins as a gentle social satire gradually becomes a conventional family melodrama, one that lacks a clear moral center and in which the parents are just as confused as their children
...a black comedy ... that ultimately acquires Hitchcockian levels of suspense.
Ang Lee is a terrific filmmaker, but his usually upbeat directing style is stilted by the angst It's a well crafted, but, ultimately, negative-feeling movie.
It's concerned with the differences between the culture we profess and the lifestyles we actually indulge. Even more, it's about the consequences of betrayal.
A quarter of a century ago, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver dealt with the same issues more successfully.
This is a cold and calculating film that will temporarily dampen those fond memories of everything we cherish from two decades back.
Rather than being moved or transfixed, you feel frozen and impartial, almost as disengaged as the characters themselves.
A remarkable film that takes us straight into John Updike territory, duplicating on screen exactly what the writer achieves on the page.
The best film about family so far this year. Just don't think Disney.
Lee infuses the film with just enough humor to keep it from becoming unremittingly bleak, but the overall impact is harsh and caustic.
It's unfortunate that as capable a team as director Lee and screenwriter-producer Schamus should have become fascinated with such unpromising material.
Latest News for The Ice Storm
July 29, 2005:
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Saturday Night Live joker Seth Meyers has sold a comedy pitch entitled "Key Party" to Paramount, which Lorne Michaels will (of course) produce.The story deals with... More...
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