The Ice Storm (1997)
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Reviews Counted: 58
Fresh: 48 | Rotten: 10
Director Ang Lee revisits the ennui-laden decadence of 1970s suburban America with deft humor and gripping pathos.
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 3
Director Ang Lee revisits the ennui-laden decadence of 1970s suburban America with deft humor and gripping pathos.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 33,230
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Movie Info
Set on Thanksgiving weekend of 1973, The Ice Storm looks into the lives of a wealthy Connecticut family who are calm and civil on the outside, but whose lives are quietly falling into chaos. Sixteen-year-old Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) is home for the holidays from prep school; he'd just as soon have stayed at school, given the usual level of tension around the house and his desire to win the affections of Casey (Katie Holmes), a girl living in Manhattan. His 14-year-old sister, Wendy (Christina
Sep 26, 1997 Wide
May 13, 1998
20th Century Fox
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Cast
-
Kevin Kline
Ben Hood -
Joan Allen
Elena Hood -
Sigourney Weaver
Janey Carver -
Tobey Maguire
Paul Hood -
Christina Ricci
Wendy Hood -
Elijah Wood
Mikey Carver -
Henry Czerny
George Clair -
Jamey Sheridan
Jim Carver -
Katie Holmes
Libbets Casey -
Michael Cumpsty
Philip Edwards -
Adam Hann-Byrd
Sandy Carver -
David Krumholtz
Francis Davenport -
Allison Janney
Dot Halford -
Glenn Fitzgerald
Neil Conrad
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All Critics (59) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (55) | Rotten (10) | DVD (24)
A well-observed and deftly performed examination of upper-middle-class emotional deep freeze...
Top CriticA thoroughly enjoyable blend of comedy and melodrama...
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.
It's unfortunate that as capable a team as director Lee and screenwriter-producer Schamus should have become fascinated with such unpromising material.
Despite its mordant undertones, the film is often satirical and frequently very funny, and quietly observant in its performances.
Beautifully nuanced, passionately performed, and terrifically realized piece of work.
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.
Arguably Lee's first truly essential film.
Change, or the struggle to make change fit into the established system, is Lee's most familiar chord. He struck it loudest in The Ice Storm.
As in any joke, destiny is a major character.
Lee's chilly recreation of a stormy Thanksgiving weekend captures a culture in snapshot...
Marking its 10th anniversary, the 2-disc Criterion Collection contains commentary from director Ang Lee who depicts his satire as a "disaster" film, and new interviews with actors like Elijah Wood, who feels the movie lingers with you and is uncomfortable
A rich and elegant drama.
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.
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Foreign Titles
- Der Eissturm (DE)
