Rating: 
Summary: WORTH WATCHING THE ICE STORM!!
Review: Confess it. The odds of you watching this movie before is probably low. And by the majority of that, I bet you haven't heard of this movie either. Do you know why? Because I hadn't till I saw it right on the videotape shelf. It's like a surprise. There are only few movies that made a "surprise". Such example is The Shawkshank Redemption. You got this movie instinct that you know this one is going to be a good catch. You'll know know what I am talking about if you're an avid movie watcher, like a meterologist on the weather.While watching the movie, you'll appreciate its sense of scripting. I think it's well-scripted. You'll see why the title is appropriate for this movie. I'll close this up short for you. If you are looking for another reminiscence to American Beauty, this is the one.
Rating: 
Summary: COLD
Review: The cast of this unusual and beautifully directed film about two families in suburban, 1970s Connecticut is excellent. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen are a married couple with two children (Tobey Maguire, who is away at boarding school lusting after Libbits, a classmate played by Katie Holmes, and Christina Ricci, who is exploring her budding sexuality with the neighbours' kids). Sigourney Weaver plays the neighbour (she is married but I cannot think of what actor plays her husband). Weaver and Kline are having an affair, and only in the end does their infidelity become obvious. The film illustrates the divisions and emotions that come between people and how time changes relationships. The film also expertly captures the time frame and its "search for self" attitudes. Ang Lee (before his masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) directs this supple and subtle picture with a deft hand, allowing the actors the freedom to explore their characters' shortcomings and inadequacies. The end of the film is tragic and unexpected.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant master piece and yes superior to American Beauty
Review: First of all, I must agree with carolyn5000 for her comment on The Ice storm's influence on American Beauty. In my opinion Alan Ball simply did a bad rip off of The Ice Storm for the American Beauty script. "Storm"'s scrip is masterfully written by James Scamus whose delicate and yet skillfully brutal handling of the subject matter was simply revitting. The characters are carefully laced together in a way that makes them seem to belong to the same world of New Caan, CT and yet give each of them his or her own very private world. So full of life and vigor and yet so faithful to the cold rigid subject matter. Schaemus never loses a moment and there was never a second to allow me to leave my seat in the theater to go get popcorn or do anything. This is what good scripts are made of. The Cannes film festival used to give screenwriting awards on a discretionary basis and The Ice Storm was the first screenplay to receive that award in over 15 years. Ball's Script? Well, I teared up at the end of my reading Scahmus' screenplay. This is rather strange considering how screenplays are written. On the otherhand, I wanted my money back at the end of American beauty and had no interest in reading the script. A rip off is a rip-off no matter how you dress it up. Everyone of the actors is brilliant. Watching Joan Allen's gut-wrenching chill of a performance is monumental compared to that slush-lug-lug overstated overacted performance so failingly delivered by Anette Bening in American Beauty. Kevin Kline easily gave one of his and that year's finest performances. He takes his own talents over the edge playing Benjamin Hood. The film's last moment between these two will live forever in my mind. Segorney Weaver gives a performance that is reborn with every line. I can only imagine how tough a time this film editors had with editting her performance for the screen. The rest: Christina Ricci, Elija Wood, Jimmy Sheridan, Tobey Maguire, Adam Hanabyrd and Alison Janney are all at their absolute best. I would be more detailed about them if I had the space because everyone of them is bringing many diminsions to the story through their actting. Lee is a masterful long underrated director who should have been getting nominated for oscars for years. I am glad that this director's immense versatility and screen vision are finally receiving due recognition. I can't say this enough, but this film is easily one of the greatest family dramas ever made. Too bad it was released in the year of the Titanic or else it would have had so much more of an impact. My true concilation lies in the fact that it had it's impact on myself and a host of other fortunate souls and in today's movie world of the generic bland movie spectacle being looked upon as art by the masses, that's the best once can hope for.
Rating: 
Summary: Sex! Sex! Sex!
Review: But no plot. All of the characters were having !SEX! with everyone else. It was pretty dumb, a throw back to the !SEXY! seventies and it made no sense. But the people were having !SEX! Dependeing on whether you like watching people have !SEX! or not, will determine whether you will like this !SEXY! film.
Rating:
Summary: entrancing movie
Review: you know those films that you watch, then have to watch again straight afterwards. this is one of those films. the atmosphere and era are impecably captured, and the performances are universally excellent. the story is original, intriging, bittersweet, and then tragic. a highly recommended film, not a barrel of laffs though.
Rating:
Summary: an unabashed fan...
Review: I have seen this movie countless times (must be over 30 times now). I caught it on video as a rental once and was hooked (can anyone remember this movie being promoted very much while it graced the silver screen?). This is one of the most spectacular movies of the decade, and one which I most surprisingly (and against all trends) must say was SUPERIOR to the novel that predates it. James Schamus' screenplay, coupled with Ang Lee's directorial ability (see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for an altogether different application of his talent, also Sense and Sensibility) makes a beautiful and purified adaptation of this novel: the cultural and emotional fallout stemming from American catastrophes like Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the broken and aimless aftermath of the political protest era of the Hippies. Set in a wealthy Western Connecticut rural suburb, The Ice Storm is the story of two affluent families whose lives intertwine over a Thanksgiving weekend. The culmination of the story tells of the fractionalizing of a nuclear family; the last step in the gradual deconstruction of institutional religion that took place in America after the Second World War. Gen Xers, Existentialists, deconstructionists, and film buffs, rejoice!
Rating:
Summary: It's like American Beauty but good
Review: I didn't grow up the 70's, but the characters in this film are as true to real life as today, and more believable than so many other movies about suburbia and the destruction of families, etc. Kevin Kline's character reminds me of Kevin Spacey's dilemma in American Beauty, but Kline thinks and acts like someone in his position really would. He keeps it just as interesting as Spaceys, without completely going insane. I think I liked this movie so much better than American Beauty because Ang Lee doesn't need to sensationalize what's obvious, but still keeps it extremely gripping the whole time.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best films of the 90s
Review: Pay no attention to the Wizard of Blahs, Leonard Maltin. This film is way too smart for him! Ang Lee's adaptation of Rick Moody's novel has everything: a tight script; talented, subtle acting; beautiful photography; wonderful period costumes and music. The story of upper-middle class white America in crisis in 1973 is really the story of how the turmoil of the 60s threw the moral certainty of the American family into question. But more than that, the film brilliantly illustrates Lee's most powerful theme: how the failure to communicate -- to really speak our thoughts, feelings, and desires -- becomes the downfall of his characters. The ice storm of the film's title is the physical manifestation of their crisis, and its effects on the climactic night results in death for one of the characters -- and a thawing for the others. A beautiful, elegant, superb film; one that everyone should see! I can't recommend it more strongly.
Rating: 
Summary: No real story - just moody decadence
Review: Ang Lee's extraordinary glimpse into an era and a culture not of his own (?) does not cease to amaze. But this eroding family and its various sexual hangups are not terribly engaging on their own. I found myself wondering WHO CARES? through most of the movie, yet I had to see how it ended. Lee keeps you hanging on despite the banality and embarrassment (namely sex party ideas of the '70's that even nice upper middle class people dabbled in). In the end it was less about sex and more about the preciousness of life itself - and that family is family no matter how miserable or dysfunctional it might be. Lee leaves a steady trickle of nostalgia throughout the film which seems deliberately crafted to ensnare the attention of people otherwise bored with art films. (People like me.) HEY, I REMEMBER THAT SONG! AND WHAT'S THAT ON THE T.V. THERE - "TIME TUNNEL"?! These tidbits of trivia hold your attention much the way commercials do - so it is hard to say that the story of "The Ice Storm" is compelling enough on its own merits. You have to remember the era to really get anything out of this flick.
Rating:
Summary: Why things may be wrong now.
Review: If you grew up in the 70s as I did, this film presents camera shots of your past, providing you were a white, middle class suburban. Products of 50s parents, these 70s people struggled for sexual freedom but with the birth of their children, found themselves confused as to the direction of that freedom now that they are role models (and their children are copying their behaviors.) It provides one reason why the 90s produced parents detached from their children: no wives waiting for their husbands at the end of a workday and sending their kids off with fresh lunches in the morning. The ice storm represents both the physical storm in the film and the one that stifles everyone's emotions.
| 
