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Ice Storm, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures


8.6

based on 23 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

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.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Elegant and deeply disquieting drama.

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.

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.

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.

Empire Angie Errigo

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

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.

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.

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}

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.

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.

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.

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]

San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser

Leaves the audience on such a devastatingly dramatic ledge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bob D. gave it a0:
The most depressing, pointless movie I have ever seen. Pure crap. I must say, the acting is fairly good, but at the end I wanted to stick my head in an oven. One of the hallmarks of good dramas is that there is conflict and also resolution...there is plenty of conflict but not one good, happy, or decent thing happens. This was a movie written and directed for critics, typical Hollywood elitism. It was so awful I am shocked that it didn't win an Oscar!

Bryan H. gave it a10:
By far the best film ever, not to have been nominated for best film. It was Kevin Kline's best work to date and Ang Lee established himself as the most sensitive director alive. The entire cast was flawless. The cinematography and soundtrack left me yearning for more, though the catharsis brought to bear was complete! It captures a glimpse of the disco era (minus the disco) that you will never see again. The warmth of its meaning made up for the sometimes cold Connecticut bourgeoisie. Despite it's icy backdrop, it heats the screen with a humanity and reality I have rarely seen on or off the screen.

Leonardo F gave it a10:
Absolutely brilliant.

S. Gold gave it a9:
Can't name one bad thing about this film.

Joe A. gave it a10:
Excellent movie that lingers with you.

Aida A. gave it a10:
This is a great movie!!! it talks about unhappiness inside the families who seemingly has it all. I love the character of Paul Hood, whos our guide about these problems who struggle these families, and the forces of nature can unleash it and get it out of hiding it.

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Ice Storm, The Fox Searchlight Pictures

Ice Storm, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures