Rating: 
Summary: This is a great movie, the other side of suburbia...........
Review: This is a powerful movie. I was able to really get into this movie. Its setting is the 1970s with the ending of the Nixon white house, post woodstock rock, drugs, alcohol, experimentation, sexuality. What I found really gripping is that the social-strata class depicted are caucasin, uppper-middle class, well to do families. Of course this is the cosmetics or what is seen from the outside. The fathers are too busy to spend time with their wives and children. Bonding is not part of the family fabric. The children are not nutured and emotionally taken into account. It is all about the big dollars, wife swapping, kids gone off to some prep school in which one of the kids father played by Kevin Kline is clueless as to how his son is really doing in school. He doesn't even know how to approach the topic of sex with his son. This movie is gripping; it is powerful; it held my complete and undivided attention. I give this movie 5 stars........ The producers and directors did an outstanding job. This movie is one of those few that a great deal of energy was put into the structure and unfolding story. It has substance. Mr. Diego Rodriguez
Chicago, Illinois
Rating: 
Summary: ALEXS CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS
Review: Highlights: All of the performances, especially Kevin Kline's and Christina Ricci's; heartbreaking subject matter; effective cinematography that unmistakably presages the coming of the storm; use of storm as a metaphorical force to bring about the story's culmination; director Ang Lee's sense of space and time is impeccable (film takes place in the 1970s.) Lowpoints: Exaggerated at times, thus distancing itself from unmitigated genuineness; stretched out a little too long for two hours, could have been a tighter script; ending is slightly too clichéd. Conclusion: A thoughtful period drama with a remarkable cast that won't stay with you for too long, but will unquestionably entertain and stimulate contemplation. The feeling of been-there, done-that is potent at times, yet And Lee's masterful direction prevents The Ice Storm from depending solely on the performances. SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED: Breaking the Waves, Regarding Henry, American Beauty.
DON'T SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED: Happy Gilmore, Notting Hill, Marci X.
Rating:
Summary: Frozen Hearts
Review: Director Ang Lee provides one of the most accurate and yet disturbing accounts of early 1970's suburban American life to date. Set in one evening of an "ice storm" (a combination of winter rain freezing everything into crystalline stillness) used as an overly strong metaphor, it encompasses the lives of several couples and their children. The topics include unhappy marriages, teen confusion, middle-aged boredom and open infidelity (there is a regular wife swapping party). Given these unpleasant topics, the film succeeds on Ang's direction and the incredible performances by the actors (Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Christina Ricci and Tobey McGuire). Some of the individual revelations are a welcome sight and many of the teen drug and sex scenes are humorous, although naïve and mildly tragic. It isn't until the end that one finds the ultimate price paid for a lifestyle that seems to have everything in style and nothing in substance and a complete and devastating loss of innocence. The extras are minimal and include the theatrical trailer and a nice featurette.
Rating:
Summary: ice cold
Review: a great movie sometimes has a great cast and this one does. its shocking, powerful, disturbing and dramatic. its about messed up familes living in the 70's. the cast includes Sigourney Weaver(CopCat), whos having an affair with Kevin Kline(Life As A House) whos married to Joan Allen(The Contender) who the two have 2 kids Christian Ricci(Pecker) and Tobey Maguire(Ride With The Devil). Ricci likes to experiment sexually. Maguire goes off and has a party with Kaite Holmes(GO) and David Krumholtz(The Mexican), and Maguire has a thing for Holmes. Elijah Wood(North) plays the son of Weaver and Jamey Sheridan(tvs Law and Order:Criminal Intent). disturbing moments include Ricci and Weaver's son played by Adam Hynn Byrd(Hallowen:H20) in bed...
Rating:
Summary: Ang Lee's best film, hands down
Review: "The Ice Storm" is a gorgeous adaptation of Rick Moody's novel of the same name. It is expertly acted, with a stellar cast: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Elijah Wood, Tobey MacGuire, Christina Ricci--to name just a few. Without going into too much detail about the film's plot, I will say that it is set in the 1970's, is very much a critique of that era in middle America; it is a story that addresses bleak issues, is told within a bleak setting--a winter ice storm, and pretty much functions as a study of moral ambiguity carried through two generations: we see the parents struggle with life-decisions, just as we see their children do this, as well. It is a beautifully told story that, despite its tragedy, never falls into sentimentality. And remarkably, I think it is a story that is mostly about redemption and forgiveness. Not a light film by any means, but an absolutely rewarding one in every sense of the word. Why this didn't win Best Picture I couldn't say, except perhaps that it's *too* smart for the Academy to digest.
Rating:
Summary: Recipe for an easy 4 star film
Review: First start with about 15 consenting adults, add 5-6 sexually active adolescent, throw in a great soundtrack full of mellow tranquillity. Stir that constantly. Now add uptight yet interesting characters who drink like fish and smoke like chimneys. O.K. sprinkle on a couple of unresponsive parents and a freak accident. Just sit for nearly 2 hours and your done. Ang Lee directs a bunch of wonderful characters that are not such wonderful people. Speaking of which check out this superior cast: Kevin Kline (Grand Canyon), Joan Allen (The Crucible), Sigourney Weaver ('Alien' series), Christina Ricci (Sleepy Hollow), Tobey Maguire (Spiderman), & Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings). Here is a recap.. "The Ice Storm" is a stylish looking film with a great soundtrack and an even better cast of characters. Alright here is your warning, if you need one. This film is not an action film about a bunch of people running from a tragic ice storm. In fact the storm is just in the background. This is a drama about two troublesome families. Marriage issues, adultry, problem teens coming of age. ENJOY!
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Summary: Best ordinary people movie since, well, Ordinary People
Review: Often made to stand alongside American Beauty or the evergreen Ordinary people in its depiction of ordinary people with extraordinary idiosynchrasies, Ice Storm clearly got drowned out by the Spacey/Benning combination in the late 90s. Which is a tad unjust. While it is anyone's guess which Kevin I'd go for on a regular day (Spacey, that is, instead of Kline) this movie also has Ang Lee at the top of his game turning in quite a captivating film. I know little about Connecticut, and even lesser about the town of New Cannan (where the movie is based), but the appeal of the movie, the nonchalant realism of its characters, and the theme of our daily facades with the simple human quirks behind them are all strikingly universal. This is an insight into the lives of married couples in small towns coping with adultery, drinking, wife swapping and indifferent children. As almost any other of Lee's works (with the possible exception of Crouching Tiger) the narrative is subdued. The characters, too, are rather darker than typical Lee, bordering on murky almost. Some comedic moments, with varying success I might add, don't do much to take from a dour overall tone. You may be left feeling you eavesdropped into a suburban home, listening to actual tete-a-tetes among its inhabitants. I noted that this has led some other reviewers to think of the performances/direction as "wooden", or Sigourney Weaver to have been "wasted", etc. But people with isseues - such as most of the characters in Ice Storm - have a way of becoming cold, pretentious, nervous in their attitudes. I appreciated that Lee does not make any effort to masquerade their emotions into some sort of heroic Hollywoodesque melodrama. Real people behave this way, I did not find it wooden at all. The "1973-era nostalgia" may be a bit lost on me (has the world really changed that much?) but I'd say this is a marvellous movie nevertheless and definitely worth at least the rental dollar. Doesn't matter whether its characters were based in Connecticut, Cairns or Calcutta, the saga of human foibles is all the same. Highly recommended for the discerning eye.
Rating: 
Summary: All atmosphere and no content
Review: The Ice Storm is one of Alison's favourite movies. It is, I've been told, a masterpiece. This, however, seems to come more from the seventies atmosphere that the movie immerges itself in than any merit of the story. Tobie McGuire is as far as we get as a binding force : I say this because he opens and closes the movie, much like good High Dramas do. In fact, it has all the trappings of a High Drama : voice-overs that purport to enlighten, characters who mingle in dramatic ways, children with unusual views on life, and so on. What it has to say - family is the only stable thing in our lives, while proceeding to completely destroy this addle-brained premise, and that existentialism consists of doing whatever one wants, whenever good or evil - is insane, and so is the happenings. All the adults are immature, cheating ..., and all the children are typical rebellious, drug-addled brats. The story ? There is no story, only stereotypes which evolve in a context of growing doom, and then an ice storm (which provides us with the best thing in the movie - the visuals of ice and icicles), and then... a cheap resolution. The credits were in alphabetical order, and we can understand that. No one was necessary at all.
Rating:
Summary: Chilly
Review: I, personally, was not alive in 1973. But the immensely underrated Ang Lee (who gave us such wonderful movies as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Eat Drink Man Woman") gave me a view into a part of the seventies, when society went through a dramatic shift. A good thing? Don't be so sure. The Carvers and the Hoods live next door to each other in an affluent suburban neighborhood, and on the surface all is well. But self-absorbed Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is having an affair with the icy Janie Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Similarly, his precocious daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) is "experimenting" with Janey's two sons, especially the spacey, slightly unearthly Mikey (Elijah Wood). To make things worse, Ben's wife Elena (Joan Allen) is experiencing a bit of a crisis herself -- she suspects her husband is cheating on her, and she longs for the freedom and lack of care she had before her marriage. After Ben finds Wendy and Mikey in a compromising position (one of THE most bizarre scenes I've ever watched), and Elena clues in about Janey, the parents venture to what turns out to be a wife-swapping key party (the women take men's car keys out of a bowl and go home with covers New Canaan, their relationships will reach boiling point... and a tragedy will unfold. I don't know how common these attitudes were in the 1970s, but undoubtedly they were a lot more common than people would like to remember. Such things as key parties seem almost alien now to many people my age that I've spoken to. A movie like "Sense and Sensibility" ended up feeling more normal because of the attitudes of the people in it. Tobey Maguire's Paul Hood serves as a good lens into the 70s -- he's very normal, not into any sort of transitional weirdness (Okay, he smokes pot, but it doesn't seem to be a huge thing for him) Lee did a good job not just with the direction (which is gorgeous) and the camerawork (flawless). He also did a good job of showing why... well, as Weaver puts it in the featurette: "Suddenly there's FREE LOVE and there's DRUGS..." Lee does a good job of showing why such things are unsatisfying and will only leave a person lonely and isolated. The families here (except for a few moments of honesty) talk a lot, but they don't speak. Even a simple question like "How's school?" or "What are you doing?" is enough to weird out the kids -- that's how far they are from their parents. (Wood's only statement in the "making of" sums this up: "The parenting is just... it's all WHACKED!") There are a lot of "seventies" things sprinkled through the movie, from the makeup to the toe socks (toe socks?), the TV shows, the hair, the clothes (Weaver's zippered jumpsuit, Allen's pants and smock, and Wood's horrible patterned sweater). But Lee doesn't really smack you in the face with it. There's a sort of wry humor to some scenes, like when Janey coldly tells Ben that she doesn't need another husband, or Mikey's comical confusion when Wendy dons a Nixon mask and offers to have dry sex with him. (The sexual content of this movie is not really on an R-level, but it's always rather disturbing -- the Nixon mask is the weirdest touch) Kevin Kline is as good a serious actor as he is a comic one, and even though Ben is a jerk, he is a somewhat likeable one. (When a partygoer leers that he wishes some people had brought their young daughters to the key party, Kline's expression is worth a thousand words) Weaver is always outstanding as a very cold woman who still has some affection for her kids; Allen is excellent as a woman whose feelings are bubbling past her icy exterior. Ricci mixes sophistication and vulnerability as the Nixon-obsessed Wendy. And Wood gives off a sort of ethereal feel as the spacey but sweet Mikey, a boy obsessed by molecules. The DVD doesn't have much in the way of extras. There is the theatrical trailer. And there is a featurette about the "making of," with commentary from Ang Lee, author Rick Moody, the scriptwriter, and then from Kline, Allen, Weaver, and (don't blink or you might miss it) from Ricci and Wood. And a few tips on synthesizing an ice storm. Not spectacular, but good enough. This is far from a feel-good movie, but it gives some undefined views into human nature, what is good for us and what isn't. Ang Lee took what could have been a disaster, and made it as cold and beautiful as an ice storm.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully twisted nostalgia flick
Review: The Ice Storm has a distinct atmosphere and tone to it. The family is so disfunctional and weird that it's like watching a train wreck, only they appear normal enough that you don't feel guilty for doing so. It's a unique viewing experience. The sense of familiarity in the family, and calm Autumn surroundings make it feel warm and welcoming, yet the characters are so disturbing that you feel uneasy. Wonderful imagery. My only warning is this: Don't watch it if you're not prepared to feel weird afterwards, because it's a mood changer, and will stick with you for a while. I recommend it.
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