Best movie ever!

Am I Missing Something?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

First of all, this movie is based on a book written by Rick Moody, who was an raised in an upper middle class Connecticut suburb in the 70s. I watched the movie first and read the book after, and for me both are masterpieces.He (Rick Moody) wrote a fictional story, but we can see and feel that he is talking about the environment where he grew up and the the book depicts the hypocrisies and contradictions of society at the time, who was very traditional and conventional on the outside (men are breadwinners, women are attractive housewives, everybody celebrate thanksgiving, everybody aims to be part of the corporate world), but on the inside, the adults are insecure and irrational just like their children, despite their respectable looks and sophisticated language.The beauty of the film, is that the director Ang Lee invested a lot on the aesthetic factor ,casting perfect actors and making the audience nostalgic for a time when most of us were not even born. There are plenty of cultural references of topics that most generations today are not even aware of(like Richard Nixon, Poseidon Adventure, Jonathan Livingston Seagull).The movie was hardly watched because it was release together with Titanic, so bad timing contributed to the obscurity of " the ice storm"The story is very intense. Two prosperous families who are the typical role models for the American Dream are having a typical thanksgiving weekend. What all members have in common is that they are all horny, and are trying to have some sex (adultery for the adults, first experienced for the youth) and it appears that getting some of it is not making them any happier. They are normally miserable and frustrated despite their successes in bed, in their studies and professions.There is a very moving scene in the end when a wife gives some affection to her sobbing husband , and then we realize that this is the missing element in their lives. Despite their constant desire for more sex, they don't realize that they were actually were deprived of love.When I watch this movie, it always makes me feel like hugging the people I love.

This is how you do Thanksgiving. This is a really good movie about a very specific time period in a very specific type of people's lives. Great actors, great acting, great pacing. It's all about the selfish "me" generation of the 70's, neglecting their kids and swinging and cheating and me me me. I think. And also about what those kids learn from the mistakes of their parents. It's a generations movie and there's a Fantastic Four analogy that keeps happening. Something about saving the world while a kid is in danger but if any one person gets too much power they all suffer (Me, is the downfall of the family unit). A really good and involving film.

The Ice Storm, set in 1973 during the era of the sexual revolution, is much more disturbing and eye-opening than its simple cover and title make it appear. Not only does it star some amazing actors/actresses, but despite the dated and nostalgic setting it has a timeless message: when parents forget their kids are there, well, kids still see, hear - and pick up on - everything adults do. Everyone was a kid at some point, and many of us can recall times when our parents acted more like teenagers than caregivers. The difference is, in The Ice Storm, the carelessness of the fictional parents leads to the horrible death of a little boy.Discos, key parties, drugs, booze, free love, it's all the thing in 1973 as the latest trend. The problem is, that kind of thing spreads to a middle-class community and starts messing up families and friendships. The true sufferers though are the kids. Wendy (Christina Ricci) is only fourteen but enjoys copying her parents' lifestyle, leading to her getting sort of a bad reputation. Libbits is just a kid but left home alone by her parents in a house filled with drugs. Sandy is obsessed with violence, Mikey is hardly noticed and Francis is always getting high.One night during a key party in the neighborhood, every one of the characters learns something shocking about the way the swinger lifestyle is; the sexual revolution isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just when it looks like things might change, one of the younger neighborhood children has gone outside into a deadly ice storm... and it was because, to the parents, he hardly existed until it mattered most of all.The Ice Storm really hits you at the very ending, when one of the parents breaks down crying at the wheel of his car in front of his family. He realizes that their own negligence caused the death of a child, all over a key party, a stupid game for adults who don't want to grow up. Wendy suddenly realizes how childish her behavior has been, and the parents realize that the whole time they were getting after their children for perverse behavior it was all being learned from the parents themselves. Kids pick things up. The Ice Storm is just a lesson for us all, a worst-case-scenario of sorts, set in a time not so long ago.The soundtrack was beautiful, the acting was excellent and the plot was very original (it was adapted into an episode of the show Cold Case titled "The Key"). And while the sexual revolution was several decades ago, today is the tech revolution. Adults are using phones more and more without communicating in anything but texts. Maybe The Ice Storm's message is more universal than meets the eye, because it's true, kids do pick up on their parents' behavior, and it's not always a good thing.

Frigidity Notwithstanding, there is Something About this Cold and Hard Look-In on Sexual Behaviors, Circa 1973. People's Personal Beliefs and Peccadilloes about Said Subject are Never that Interesting and Almost Always Embarrassing to Watch Unless the Observer is a Certified Voyeur.In this Movie Sex is the Thing in all Things and the Discovering of and Experimenting with are Laid Out for all to Intimately and Intensely View as the Cringe Factor Creeps in and Seeking a Place to Hide becomes a Way to Escape this Uncomfortable and Pointless Display of Less than Insightful and More than Common Knowledge about Carnal Knowledge is Presented as Profound and Artsy Cinema.Sure the Early Seventies was an Era that the Free Form and Uninhibited Behavior of the Baby Boomers Counter Culture Revolution was Finding its Way into the Shagged Living Rooms of Middle Aged Neurotics and into the Lives of Youngsters who hadn't come of Age in the Mid to Late Sixties. But......all this Seems more Interesting in the Mind and on Paper than in a Movie. An Ultimately Boring Movie that is Downbeat and Dull with a Septic Sensuality that didn't need an Ice Storm to stop the Molecules from Moving. They were already Stationary to Begin with and this is Like Staring at a Wall Void of some Really-Cool Posters.