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The Ice Storm [DVD] [1998] starring: Kevin Kline, Katie Holmes, Courtney Peldon, David Krumholtz, Michael Cumpsty

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Rating: - Good 70's soundscape

Apart from the first two tracks which are Mychael Danna's score, the rest of the soundtrack is what you'd exepct; the songs played as source music in the film. They invoke the period, as well as binging back images from the film. It isn't a case of it being a guide to the decade, more something of a small compilation. My favourite is Dirty Love by Germaine Greer's favourite, Frank Zappa.

As for the score, the first track "Shoplift" is the track taken from the scene where Joan Allen and Christina Ricci cycle to town, and of course the actual shoplift. "Finale" on the other hand, is my outstanding favourite. It is basically the last 10 minutes of the film. Running over 9min 30, it is classic Mychael Danna work. I just find it a shame that more score wasn't included in the album, especially the opening credits cue. But, "Finale" is better than nothing frankly.

Worth a buy if you're a fan of the film, not for those who haven't I reckon.

Rating: - Icicles

It's ironic that the warmest and most humane of movie directors, Ang Lee ("Sense and Sensibility," "Brokeback Mountain") is the director of the icy-cold (weather, of course and tone) and surgically precise "The Ice Storm."
Lee's innate humanity makes itself known in his handling of the characters here: he never judges, he never points a finger...he shows, he doesn't tell. It is a slippery slope though as the Rick Moody source material veers towards condemnation of this particularly randy and supposedly "swinging" group of mid 1970's couples and their children.
The wasp adults: a cold, cold, man-eating Sigourney Weaver as Janey Carver, a trying to be hip but lacking the wherewithal to pull it off, Joan Allen as Elena Hood and a "not-there" Jamey Sheridan and pseudo-hip but really just horny Kevin Kline as their respective husbands Jim Carver and Ben Hood...form the odd quartet of 30 somethings, probably used-to-be 60's hippies either in deed but most likely just in thought. Both couples have two children: also in various stages of rebellion and angst.
The signature scene in "The Ice Storm" is the Key Party: a ritual party in which the husbands put their keys in a bowl and at the party's close, the women pick a set of keys thereby picking the man with whom they will have sex that night.
Lee's camera swoops and swirls around all the guests as we catch snippets of conversations: affairs are concluded, gossip is exchanged, discrete and not so discrete flirting happens, much liquor is consumed and gallons of white lipstick is applied...Lee let's us in on all of it. And he does it without rancor, without an agenda and always with his patented warmth and love.
Arguably the best film of 1997 ("The Sweet Hereafter" is it's equal that year also), "The Ice Storm" is ultimately a tragedy of Classical Greek proportions: the world of this film is icy cold as are many of its inhabitants but Ang Lee's blazing humanity warms and soothes revealing an open wound of despair, indecision and loneliness.

Rating: - Cold and stark

I, personally, was not alive in 1973. But the immensely underrated Ang Lee gives a glimpse into the 1970s suburbia when society went through a dramatic shift. A good thing? Don't be so sure. Lee strips away the illusions to reveal the loneliness and coldness in the wake of the sexual revolution.

The Carvers and the Hoods live next door to each other in an affluent suburban neighborhood. 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 sons, the spacey 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 with a Nixon mask, 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. Tobey Maguire's Paul Hood serves a vital function in this movie -- he's very normal, not into any sort of transitional weirdness (except pot smoking) and so can serve as an alter ego for the viewers.

Lee did a good job not just with the exquisite direction and the camerawork. He also doesn't overemphasize the sudden shifts in what was allowed and what wasn't -- in one scene, the adults calmly discuss watching "Deep Throat." As they speak, there's the nervous awareness that it was unacceptable for upper-middle-class suburbanite not long ago. They have drugs, free love, self-seeking... and they don't have the slightest clue what to do with it.

Lee overdoes it a little with the ice metaphors. The dead leaves and trees were a lot better. But he does do an expert job showing why loveless sex and distant families will only leave a person lonely. The families here 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!"

He tempers all this heavy stuff with humor, such as Janey coldly telling Ben that she doesn't need "another husband" prattling golf stories at her, or Mikey's comical confusion when Wendy offers to get intimate while wearing a Nixon mask. 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, for example). But Lee doesn't really smack you in the face with it.

Kevin Kline is as good a serious actor as he is a comic one. When someone leers that he wishes 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.

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: - Charms, moves and treats the senses...an honest delight

A beautiful, existential melancholy malaise is created in a wonderfully realised 70s white middle class US suburban town where adolescent and middle aged "friends and neighbours" explore fulfilment within their daily lives amid a changing social and political landscape.

The great ensemble cast deliver a sharp script in a perfectly paced and superbly shot melancholy story. And as autumn drifts into winter their struggle for something pure, untainted and lasting reaches a tragic climax on the night of an almost ethereal "ice storm".

A charming and moving treat for the senses that lingers...

Rating: - "A family...like your own anti-matter."

It's hard to believe that this film was made in 1997. Every aspect of it, from the haircuts, dress styles, architecture, and furnishings to the attitudes and angst exhibited by the characters reeks of the 1970s. Directed by Ang Lee, the film captures the free-wheeling, introspective, and self-indulgent era in which parents absolve themselves of responsibility for guiding their children while they themselves explore free love and key parties. No one is happy. Everyone is trying to "connect."

Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen), parents of Paul (Tobey Maguire) and Wendy (Christina Ricci) have lost touch with their "inner selves." Ben is trying to find it with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver). Elena, disillusioned, looks toward Rev. Philip Edwards (Michael Cumpsty) for revelation. Their children explore sexuality at young ages, with Wendy being very bold in asking for what she wants from younger kids who have not even entered puberty. Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver), the mother of Mikey and Sandy, is the unfettered wife of Jim (Jamie Sheridan), who never seems to be part of her life. All experiment with sex, drugs, and alcohol, kids and adults alike, as all also try to find meaning in life. When a dangerous ice storm hits on the night of a major party for the adults (while the kids have their own plans), lives are permanently changed.

Set in New Canaan, CT, the film offers a close-up view of suburbanites and their children as they try to negotiate their way through the minefields of self-indulgence in their search for identity and "meaning." Everyone takes chances--shoplifting, taking drugs, sexual experimenting, daring of convention--and no one expects to be caught. The cinematography highlights the attitudes of the times and the relationships of the characters. Like the setting, it reflects the 1970s, the camera angles and lighting emphasizing the shallowness of the times. Developed from the novel by Rick Moody, this film showcases the era, from Watergate to Vietnam and the alienation of the suburban gentry.

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