The Ice Storm 1997

     This film is adapted from a novel by Rick Moody.  The story takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday of 1973 in Connecticut.  The Hood parents are having trouble with their marriage.  Benjamin is drinking and seeing neighbor Janey.  Their sixteen-year-old son Paul is going to school in New York and he comes home for the school break.  Their fourteen-year-old daughter Wendy roams the neighborhood and steals from the pharmacy.  The Carver parents are also having problems.  Janey is seeing Benjamin. Their son Mikey is seeing Wendy and his brother Sandy likes to blow up his plane models.  There is a lot of tension inside these homes and a dangerous blanket of ice from freezing rain begins to coat the outside.

     The characters are trapped by their lives and then trapped by the environment too.  Carefully composed exteriors cracking from stress as the trees crack outside from the weight of the ice.  Both the parents and the children escape by using booze and pot plus liaisons.  Slightly dated and seems long but it is interesting to see the actors as younger.  3* (This movie is OK)

112 min, Drama directed by Ang Lee with 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.

Note:  Imdb 7.5 out of 10, 84% critic 82% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 4*. 

Special Note:  Ang Lee directed five films prior to this project.  I Wish I was by that Dim Lake (short), Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility.