I've been on something of an Ang Lee retrospective lately. He made this film before Ride with the Devil and Crouching Tiger, films where he really let the camera dance.Since the camera can't dance here (it's purely a kitchen sink drama - all interiors for the most part), something else has to serve as the reflexive action for the viewer.The film is rooted in Christina Ricci's performance. Her character is a liar, and she lies through the entire movie except at the end where she comforts the other brother.The framework is the 70s and Watergate. As Watergate teaches us, it's the lie that gets you. Every character in this movie is lying to everyone else.

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.

Yeah yeah, so Americans are desperate for the rest of the world to believe that they lead terrible depressing meaningless lives. It is so boring when all the systems work well. It is so terrible to live in beautiful neighborhoods with no squalor and slums. Boo hoo! Christina RICCI was a volcanic talent back then. Jeez! It is a shame that great young actresses like RICCI and BIRCH did not hit big time in Hollywood. Sigourney Weaver was smoking hot. This film had the creamy layer of all the actors who would later go on to become big stars in Hollywood. It is not a bad film overall. But I had a hard time accepting that these people were sad and dysfunctional.(6/10)

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.