The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm (1997)

69%
738votes
5popularity
113min

"It was 1973, and the climate was changing."
Budget:$18,000,000
Revenue:$16,000,000
Release:9/27/1997
Genres:Drama
Original language:English
Spoken languages:English
Countries:United States of America

Overview:

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

Production companies:

Canal+ Droits Audiovisuels
France
Fox Searchlight Pictures
United States of America
Good Machine
United States of America

Cast

Cast

Videos

Original Trailer
1/28/2021Trailer

Videos

Recommendations

Movie
2008
70%
Revolutionary Road
Movie
1995
77%
The Bridges of Madison County
Movie
2006
71%
Little Children
Movie
2018
61%
On Chesil Beach
Movie
2002
67%
Unfaithful
Movie
2016
62%
American Pastoral
Movie
1979
77%
Manhattan
Movie
2013
74%
Stuck in Love
Movie
1986
75%
Hannah and Her Sisters
Movie
1995
66%
To Die For
Movie
2022
58%
Deep Water
Movie
2021
61%
The Humans
Movie
2019
66%
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Movie
1997
63%
Inventing the Abbotts
Movie
2016
74%
Nocturnal Animals
Movie
2025
64%
Friendship
Movie
2015
75%
Carol
Movie
2018
67%
Fifty Shades Freed
Movie
2017
66%
Rebel in the Rye
Movie
2005
63%
The Family Stone

Recommendations

Reviews

70%
CinemaSerf
Geronimo1967
- Created:12/19/2025
- Updated:12/19/2025
With both Thanksgiving and an ice storm approaching their early 70s Connecticut town, the “Hood” and “Carver” families are congregating for their celebrations in which you sense you might actually be safer if you were the turkey. We first meet the former family where dad “Ben” (Kevin Kline) is pretty much only going through the motions in his marriage to “Elena” (Joan Chen). Their loved up teenage son “Paul” (Tobey Maguire) has arrived from college in New York, and then there is daughter “Wendy” (Christina Ricci). The latter lot appear just as messy as “Jim” (Jamey Sheridan) and “Janey” (Sigourney Weaver) have their two kids “Mikey” (Elijah Wood) and “Sandy” (Adam Hann-Byrd) and both are replete with all the usual familial dysfunction you’d expect from small town America (or anywhere else). What we learn fairly swiftly is that “Ben” is having a long-term affair with “Janey”; “Wendy” is engaged in something embryonic with “Mikey” - to the chagrin of “Sandy” and with tempers raising as exponentially as the temperatures outside are dropping, things begin to come to a long-awaited head. Though the scenarios are somewhat exaggerated here, this is one of the best character studies I’ve seen on screen as it deals with adult issues of ennui, betrayal and tragedy, but also of adolescence and growing up - and virtually all of that is done with as little sentiment as possible. There’s sex, lust, infatuation on display here - but is there actually any love? Or respect? Is age in any way an arbiter of maturity, or of being “grown up”? Kline, Chen and Weaver offer us quite a solid masterclass on just how to portray characters with virtually no self-awareness, nor sense of anything except themselves. Hypocrisy rules amidst a “do as I say not as I do” mentality that is best exemplified by “Ben” and his rapport with the sexually adventurous “Wendy” and by “Elena” as her patience finally begins to evaporate. Meantime, a solid series of efforts from the younger cast remind us all of the joys and pitfalls of puberty and the years immediately following our own sexual awakening. The whole thing is written with toxicity in mind, and with the external photography of this equally chilling environmental phenomena taking hold outside their centrally heated igloos, there develops a distinctly claustrophobic feel to the whole thing. Hopefully, most family life won’t be like this…!?… Expand

Filmoteka

The Ice Storm (1997)

Cast

Cast

Videos

Videos

Recommendations

Recommendations

Reviews

Reviews

Videos

Recommendations

Reviews