The Ice Storm

1997 Directed by Ang Lee

It was 1973, and the climate was changing.

In the weekend after thanksgiving 1973 the Hood family is skidding out of control. Then an ice storm hits, the worst in a century.

Kevin Kline Joan Allen Sigourney Weaver Henry Czerny Tobey Maguire Christina Ricci Elijah Wood Adam Hann-Byrd David Krumholtz Jamey Sheridan Kate Burton William Cain Michael Cumpsty Maia Danziger Katie Holmes Michael Egerman Christine Farrell Glenn Fitzgerald Allison Janney Jonathan Freeman Barbara Garrick Dennis Gagomiros John Benjamin Hickey Tom Flagg Byron Jennings Miles Marek Colette Kilroy Ivan Kronenfeld Daniel McDonald Show All…

Alternative Titles

Η παγοθύελλα, La tormenta de hielo

drama

112 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Nick ★★★½ 4

The Ice Storm belongs to Ang Lee's more under-the-radar works, and for all the right reasons.
As a novel adaptation, The Ice Storm is unfortunately handicapped by the limitations of the script, or the book, considering I haven't read it to tell the difference, itself, despite its undeniable excellence from the acting department, as well as some admirable style demonstrations from Lee.
The story is a multi-threaded take on the effects of the sexual liberation on the traditional American family structures in the 1970s. We follow two suburban families, whose lives are intertwined by their sexual explorations, both from the teenage and the adult members. The teenage storyline ultimately feels less developed and involving compared to the adult one, and…
Review by David Sims ★★★★★ 1

p much the saddest movie ever made but also ALL THE TEEN ACTORS HAVE SUCH CUTE LIL CHUBBY CHEEKS
Review by eely ★★

why does any change in the weather make white people lose their fucking minds
Review by Auteur ★★★★★ 17

Ang Lee is simply one of the greatest directors alive. Last year's Life Of Pi solidified that for me. I would compare him to Stanley Kubrick in the way he is able to adapt to many different genres, and master them. Examining any three of his films in a row, in this case 1997's The Ice Storm, an atmospheric, fatalist drama of 1970's New England suburbanite family dysfunction, sandwiched between 1995's Jane Austen period comedy Sense And Sensibility, and 1999's civil war drama Ride With The Devil, shows an artist unwilling to settle into a comfort zone.
When I first saw The Ice Storm, during its theatrical release in 1997, I knew it would become one of the best films…
Review by Jizzmonkey ★★★★★ 2

Perfection. And one of the greatest endings in movie history.
Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★ 2

The Ice Storm, based on Rick Moody’s 1994 novel, possesses a disposition which comprises very little positivity and observes director Ang Lee establishing an appropriately frosty world for two small-town households in emotional descent. The screenplay, by James Schamus (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) incorporates events which adopts increasing levels of bleak despair, and Mark Friedberg’s art direction is extraordinary in its execution. Ang Lee accomplishes a terrific job of orchestrating a succession of moody and atmospheric scenes as well as managing to provoke outstanding performances from the films cast. This movie is a lovely adaptation of the novel along with it being a portion of isolated reality that is disquieting and unsettling.
Review by Brian Tallerico ★★★★★ 3

An elegy for the end of an era that feels more mournful because of how much Lee refuses to mock these characters for their flaws, embracing their insecurities instead. The tragedy of the final act resonates so much more than the average suburbanites-behaving-badly genre entry because we can feel the sadness throughout the film. And his work with ensemble was arguably never better. Everyone here strikes just the right chord. It's a great film.
Review by chavel ★★★★★ 4

I always considered Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm a great film, yet I stayed away from revisiting it for many years only to now feel like… yeah, I have been underestimating it. I do believe it is a key film about the bourgeois 1970’s, with Lee and screenwriter James Schamus literally transporting into the intimate feels and hungers of the ’70’s counterculture; key absorption into a time of precarious sexual liberation and all its clumsiness; key examination of how parents’ selfish mistakes can set-up their children to make the same mistakes. All of the hiccups, the slip-ups, the embarrassments take place over Thanksgiving 1973 in Connecticut, as based on the Ron Moody novel.
The main married couple is Kevin Kline…
Review by Nolio ★★★½

February seemed like the perfect time to finally watch The Ice Storm, considering the snow and ice can be absolutely bonkers during the wintertime where I live.
Though, the physical ice storm isn't the main facet of the movie - the characters are. This is a family drama at its core, and one that works fairly well as far as I'm concerned. Whether Tobey Maguire is philosophizing about Fantastic Four comics or Elijah Wood is talking about molecules constantly, there's consistently a looming atmosphere very quietly exposing itself to the audience. In a way, its unexpected whats going to happen at any given moment. The dramatic arc is somewhat predictable, but the characters in here are accentuated by some delightful…
Review by Scott Tobias ★★★★ 1

Holds up ever-so-slightly less well now than in 1997, if only for underlying its themes with too heavy a hand, between the Fantastic Four framing device and the many, many shots of ice cracking, freezing, melting, etc. Superb in many respects, though, with Kevin Kline the stand-out as a man who's utterly out of sorts as a father and a husband.
Review by Larry ★★★★½ 3

Your family is the void you emerge from, and the place you return to when you die. And that's the paradox - the closer you're drawn back in, the deeper into the void you go.
Ang Lee is a director that I really need to see more of.
Well, to be more specific, I think Ang Lee needs to make more films like The Ice Storm.
I think as a director, Ang Lee possesses a very rare trait in that he finds an amazing balance between impressive visual prowess and immense human emotion. His latest, Life of Pi I'll admit made me groan at first, but I found the film to be one of the very best of last year;…
Review by Catherine Stebbins ★★★★★ 2

there is something so sad & pathetic about the adults in The Ice Storm. their disconnect & isolation, esp in the adults. kevin kline having an affair with the sexy neighbor? of course he is! but she bores of him & *flees from her own house*, leaving him to sit around in his boxers. joan allen's frigid wife starts stealing? of course she does! and is immediately caught! these people are so miserably ill-equipped to even function, let alone flourish, within the cliches they have become. not sure how this worked when it came out, or how it still does through 20+ years of white suburbia in crisis movies & period pieces like Mad Men (diff era i know). but it's top-tier. actors at the top of their game playing lost & isolated characters. that final scene is gutting. the unresolved silence & quiet sobs of the final scene. nobody communicates. as kline's ben says, they are always "on the verge".

Recent reviews

Review by J. F. ★★★★

“To find yourself in the negative zone, as the Fantastic Four often do, means all every day assumptions are inverted.“
In the midst of political unrest and the backdrop of the Sexual Revolution, The Ice Storm goes for the small-town blues. A nuanced portrait of 1970s America in the wake of Watergate where a newfound liberation and re-alignment in lifestyle is sorted out between two families. Ang Lee does not shy away from the delicate subject matter - if anything, his subtle direction makes this independent darling an even more fascinating tale of generational divide. A troubled culture with no borders on the surface, innocence lost. The storm is primarily an inner one.
Review by Brawlkowski ★★★★★

A film that builds and builds to an emotional gut punch that really knocked the wind out of me. It hits even harder because the film is well edited, shot, and acted. It also perfectly captures the look and feel of an ice storm.
Review by profondo robbo ★★½

Scavenger Hunt #71
- A Suburban Gothic film
I was hoping Ang Lee would put a decent spin on the tiresome sub-genre that is suburban malaise (and period suburban malaise at that with its many 1970s signifiers being played for humour or pathos or both) but he never quite manages to pull it off. Attempts at being climactic prove less satisfying than its more deliberate anticlimaxes and, though it's not terrible or anything, it's not surprising to see how this has long since been overshadowed by better (and even worse) films dealing in similar subject matter.
Review by Tate Gibbs ★★★★½

Watching this right after my home state of Texas had its power grid kneecapped made me glad it didn’t happen while I was stuck with my family.
Review by Lukas ★★★½ 1

wow everyone is going hornymode
Review by shay ★★★★

nunca vi tantas pessoas infelizes em um mesmo lugar
Review by Tink Edwards ★★½

I would say this movie was SLICK because that would be a pretty good joke, but honestly it's just OK. It's like American Beauty but not quite as creepy. Also it gave Kevin Kline work, so that's a positive.
Review by mikejh ★★★★★

Heavy, upsetting, mundane, astonishing. Ang Lee is a real motherfucker. Wow. Layer after layer, and his first English-language film. Barely a foot put wrong from anyone. A film that didn’t move me significantly but the final 10 minutes legit brought me to tears.
Review by Matt McLoughlin ★

Hm quite bad. Just a bunch a horny suburban rags stuck in a house and fuckin and then a kid dies. Umm ok? And?? But also kinda gross like I just don’t care and I don’t wanna see it. Also there was wayyy too much kiddie porn like we really didn’t need any of that 14 yr old Christina Ricci stuff. Overall just icky and LOUSY
Review by Cow Shea 2

**barges into The Discourse, not reading the room**
"Hahaha, wow, this movie was so funny, Kevin Kline was HYSTERICAL, lil spaced out Elijah Wood was busting us up, Allison Janney is the queen of being lightly insane? Like, she's comes off pretty normal but you look into her eyes and you KNOW she is barely hanging on, haha. Cracked me UP when lil baby Tobey Maguire gets ... uh .... "
**realizing that everybody else in the room is still crying and this has been consistently winning "One of The Saddest Movies Ever" in the polls run by Normal People Magazine for 20 years**
"Oh, right! Also the sadness! Boy howdy, what a tragedy. You gotta admit that loneliness and…
Review by timurshah ★★★½

Okay... what?
Review by Austin Henton ★★★★★

Still one of the best films of the 90’s. Such a haunting score that sounds like a wood flute moving through dead trees. My favorite Ang Lee