The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm
by Ang Lee

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DVD details

Actor: Henry Czerny, Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire
Director: Ang Lee
Brand: Storm
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-03-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox

DVD Reviews of The Ice Storm

DVD Review: Twisted tale.
Summary: 3 Stars

The Ice Storm directed Ang Lee is a strange and provocative film about swingers and families on the brink of chaos. An all-star helps which include Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, and Christina Ricci. The characters are mainly lost and self-absorbed so don't expect strong and kind people here. Ricci's character is pretty sick and vile but she nails the performance. The ending is a bit of a letdown, this film is a mixed bag for me.

DVD Review: Behind closed doors
Summary: 5 Stars

Two neighboring families experience a long and ultimately life-changing Thanksgiving weekend. The story moves from one house to the other where the adults are all bored with their spouses (but not with their neighbor's spouse) and the kids are restless and curious about sex. Everyone feels misunderstood and a big ice storm is coming.

This adult drama is full of outstanding performances: Kevin Kline and a luminously lovely Joan Allen play husband and wife who are both filled with pain and longing. Sigourney Weaver is great as the self-absorbed and callous neighbor wife who hooks up with Kline's character. The kids include a young, sensitive Tobey Maguire who lusts after classmate Katie Holmes, while younger siblings Christina Ricci and Elijah Woods suffer the pangs of adolescence. It's played very low-key with no sentimentality to show what self-indulgent and disconnected lives they lead. They're all miserable and the warnings about the coming ice storm intensify the feeling of impending doom.

This sobering look at middle-class woes is definitely not a feel-good movie, but it's very well-made. Recommended.

DVD Review: Lesser known actors in this.
Summary: 5 Stars

They mention Tobey Maguire, Spiderman, who is the narrater but there is also Christina Ricci who is very sexually active in this gets to at least second base a couple times and uses the line, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine" which back fires on her. She also does many things with Elijah Wood. He is caught by her father, who is having an affair with Elijah's movie mom. Elijah being on top of Christina, without nudity. Christina goes to bed with Elijah's brother, whom she wanted all along. During the Ice Storm someone I mentioned dies, very sad. Tobey was about 15 or 16, Christina I would guess about 13, and the same for Elijah. The boy that played Elijah's brother was someone I had never heard of before Adam Hahn (or Hann) Byrd who looks about 12 or 13 and the character is played with a mental age of about 9 or 10.

DVD Review: Well done Criterion
Summary: 5 Stars

The transfer is excellent, the extras are incredible, I especially liked the commentary track which made me appreciate this film even more. Well worth buying. Also, this is one of the rare occasions when a film based on a novel is actually better than the novel itself. While Rick Moody's The Ice Storm is an ok book, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm is a classic movie!

DVD Review: A tale of two families
Summary: 4 Stars

Thanksgiving 1973, the Hoods and the Carvers live next door to each other in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut. The Watergate scandal is reaching its height, and the country is experiencing its own breakdown via open marriages, teen sexual experimentation and drugs. As the weather gets colder, the action among the characters heats up near to the boiling point.

Elena Hood (Joan Allen) is shoplifting cosmetics in the local pharmacy while her husband Ben (Kevin Kline) is having an affair with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Poor Ben, in some ways, all he may need to do is have someone to talk to, but when he opens up afterward to Janey, she says:

"Ben, you're boring me. I have a husband. I don't have a need for another one."

Despite his own philanderings, Ben can barely talk to his sixteen year old son Paul about self abuse. "If you have any questions, we can look it up." Or, his daughter Wendy (Ricci) about making out with the boy next door.

"Sometimes the shepherd needs the company of the sheep," Rev. Phillips (Michael Cumpsty) answers Elena when she encounters him at a key party.

This film is much more than just a tell-all sexy account of a bygone era. "The Ice Storm" is not that kind of an easy watch. It's a bitter coming of age tale for both generations.

Rebecca Kyle, June 2008

Description of The Ice Storm

When a self-centered husband's relationship with his wife and mistress grow cold, it takes a wife-swapping "key party" and a freak ice storm to clear the air and change their lives forever. Director Ang Lee offers a compelling look at a controversial era.

Asian American director Ang Lee sums up America in the early 1970s by focusing on the arrival of the sexual revolution in the 'burbs. Isolationism within a family, consumerism, and selfishness are personified by a cast that captures the self-obsession within two New England families. As the children struggle awkwardly with adolescence, their parents stumble through sexual experimentation. In the days of Watergate and Vietnam, society is breaking boundaries and ignoring convention. Following suit, these families are eschewing polite barriers and social taboos, with disastrous results. The "ice storm" of the title refers not only to a natural phenomenon but is a (rather heavy-handed) metaphor for a pervasive emotional temperament. The entire cast delivers textured, finely nuanced performances. This movie lingers in the psyche not only for the scope of the tragedy at its conclusion, but for Lee's often humorous and stingingly accurate assessment of pop culture. Based on Rick Moody's novel, this won the best-screenplay award at Cannes in 1997. --Rochelle O'Gorman

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