The Ice Storm (1997)

★ 6.9 1h 53m 739 votes IMDb
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In the weekend after thanksgiving 1973 the Hood family is skidding out of control. Then an ice storm hits, the worst in a century.

The Ice Storm

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Cast

Kevin Kline
Kevin Kline as Ben Hood Age 78 · St. Louis, Missouri, USA Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an American actor and singer. He is regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation and has enjoyed a successful career in both film and theater....
Joan Allen
Joan Allen as Elena Hood Age 69 · Rochelle, Illinois, USA Joan Allen (born August 20, 1956) is an American actress. She worked in theatre, television and film during her early career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a To...
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver as Janey Carver Age 76 · Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver (born October 8, 1949) is an American actress. Weaver is considered to be a pioneer of action heroines in science fiction films. She is known for her role as Ellen R...
Jamey Sheridan
Jamey Sheridan as Jim Carver Age 74 · Pasadena, California, U.S. Jamey Sheridan (born July 12, 1951) is an American actor. He has had a prolific acting career in theater, television, and feature film productions. He earned a Tony nomination in 1987 for his perform...
Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci as Wendy Hood Age 46 · Santa Monica, California, USA Christina Ricci (born February 12, 1980) is an American actress. She is known for playing unconventional characters with a dark edge. Ricci is the recipient of several accolades, including a National...
Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire as Paul Hood Age 50 · Santa Monica, California, USA Tobias "Tobey" Vincent Maguire (born June 27, 1975) is an American actor and film producer. He began his career in supporting roles before gaining international recognition and critical acclaim for hi...

Audience Reviews

CinemaSerf 7/10 Dec 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…!?

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