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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
54
Battle in Seattle
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
67
Black Balloon, The
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
63
Changeling
47
Choke
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Extreme Movie
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Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
73
Frost/Nixon
82
Frozen River
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
31
Hounddog
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
68
Hunger
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
78
I've Loved You So Long
63
JCVD
27
Lake City
82
Let the Right One In
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
89
Man on Wire
84
Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
34
My Name Is Bruce
xx
Nobel Son
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Frost/Nixon
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Black Balloon, The
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Ice Storm, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for sexuality and drug use, including scenes involving children, and for language
Starring
Kevin Kline,
Joan Allen,
Sigourney Weaver,
Henry Czerny,
Tobey Maguire,
Christina Ricci,
Elijah Wood,
and
Adam Hann-Byrd
It's November 1973 in New Canaan, Connecticut. Watergate has caught up with Richard Nixon. The Beatles are recording solo albums. Wife-swapping has come to the suburbs. And, the Hood family is skidding out of control. (Fox Searchlight)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
James Schamus
Rick Moody (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Ang Lee
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 17, 2002
Video: April 2, 2002
Theatrical: September 26, 1997
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
112 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Best Screenplay, 1997 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
What we sense after the film is that the natural sources of pleasure have been replaced with higher-octane substitutes, which have burnt out the ability to feel joy.

100
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Provocative, entertaining, and impeccably crafted.

100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
This emotional climax of the film, with its warring glints of despair and hope, typifies the stunning achievement of The Ice Storm and confirms Lee as a director of the first rank.

100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
This remarkable analysis of a decade when
American society lost its moral compass is both brutally honest and lyrically compassionate.

90
The New York Times
Elvis Mitchell
Elegant and deeply disquieting drama.

90
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
A harsh (though slightly toned down from Moody's book), deeply moving, emotionally rich and intelligent film about the difficulty of rebelling against social restrictions--and the inescapable consequences of such attempts when they do succeed--The Ice Storm should not be missed.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Kevin Kline is sweetly befuddled as a good man caught between worlds, and Sigourney Weaver, as a hard, sexy adulteress, makes her wit sting.

80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A well-observed and deftly performed examination of upper-middle-class emotional deep freeze, The Ice Storm is an intelligent, adult American film.

80
Empire
Angie Errigo
The dazzling ensemble perfectly captures every nuance in one of the finest acting showcases you could hope for.

80
Newsweek
David Ansen
Unlike many dramas of middle-class family wreckage, which tilt toward soapoperatic revelations, The Ice Storm is told from an ironic, almost meditative distance that gives the movie its paradoxical power.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
Never becomes the thoroughly satisfying psychological drama that it promises to be. There's also a problem with the central metaphor of ice -- a literary device that turns repetitive and obvious.

75
USA Today
Mike Clark
This time, he (Ang Lee) has Kevin Kline, Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver trudging through ice both emotional and literal -- an omnipresent metaphor but not one unduly sledgehammered. [26 September 1997, pg. 1 D}
70
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Ricci's Wendy captures the volatile combination of aggressiveness and uncertainty in a young woman trying to come to terms with her sexuality like no performance since Emily Lloyd's in "Wish You Were Here." It's a very different performance, quieter, harder and yet more vulnerable.

70
Slate
David Edelstein
Lee views these mortal fools with a sorrowful detachment. He's a sort of clinical humanist, editorializing only by what he leaves out. The downside of this method is its impersonality, which limits our involvement. The upside is its lack of cheap sentiment, and its clarity.

70
Dallas Observer
Andy Klein
It's during the shift to seriousness that The Ice Storm makes its missteps. The intrusion of tragedy, while altogether believable, still seems like a device, a calculated tug at the heart strings. It is, in short, a once-effective ploy that now feels like a cliche. A near-miss might have been more effective.

70
Washington Post
Rita Kempley
The decade has been fondly spoofed in capers like "The Brady Bunch," but Lee's film takes a much more searing, if initially hilarious look at the sexual revolution's migration to a New England suburb and the community's subsequent meltdown. [17 October 1997, p.D6]
63
San Francisco Examiner
Barbara Shulgasser
Leaves the audience on such a devastatingly dramatic ledge.

60
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
As frigid as its name. Burdened with a story of some of the world's least interesting people going through a holiday crisis, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus get as close as any creative team could to making matters involving, but the task is finally too much for them.

60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
An honorable film, 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.

60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The tragic and highly "symbolic" death toward the end, which is supposed to illustrate the sins of the parents being visited upon their children, barely resonates at all, because most of the insights are strictly incidental. The film elicits guilty, lascivious chuckles, not analysis.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Directed by Ang Lee, whose exposure of middle-class hypocrisy would be more effective if it weren't rigged to provide evidence for the story's take on contemporary values.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
With The Ice Storm, Lee seems to have emphasized the details of cultural accuracy over the rudiments of telling a gripping drama.

30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Unfortunately, the drama operates on a see-through, easily shatterable metaphor: the frigidity of the WASP soul.
[17 October 1997, p.N32]

The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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