I’m about to watch THE ICE STORM (1997) for the first time

No.

Tobey McGuire dies at the end.

You’re such a cunt, R2, that I assume you are a straight woman.

I like Ang Lee. He’s a cool and distancing director which seems counterproductive with romantic and sexual stories but it works.

That whole East Coast scene of patrician scene of actors who came of age in the late 70s and early 80s Kevin Kline and Joan Allen were my least favourite members, but Sigourney Weaver and Kate Burton gives me hope.

Opening scene, Katie Holmes seems to be doing her Wonder Boys bit.

Already I can see why she fell for Tom Cruise’s cult and every other starlet in Hollywood turned him down, she is incredibly pretty and stupid.

Seriously, DLers of the 70s, how many key parties did you come across in suburbia?

Pop culture indicates there were out and proud swingers on every cul-de-sac but how true could that be?

Sigourney is great as usual but overall it's a very annoying movie. It's like watching television with somebody else holding the remote and every several minutes they keep switching back and forth between two networks.

The one season series Swingtown followed the same format.

I have never bought Joan Allen as a great actor. I think she got great reviews because she has those severe WASPy good looks that people confuse with class.

I really liked it. But I also hated living in CT (while I was in grad school) with the same fervor I now have for Trump and DeSatan. So there's that.

[quote]You’re such a cunt, [R2], that I assume you are a straight woman.

OP? A straight woman probably wouldn't do that. A bitchy queen, OTOH... But then again, you already knew that.

And BTW, I came of age in the 70s and did the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll thing, and never even heard of a "key party" until I saw this movie. My guess would be that it was confined to members of a certain social class not my own. Just a guess.

Some people find this movie ultimately rather conservative because they feel like it's saying sexual experimentation leads to horror.

I love it when the Hobbit slides down the road on his face.

This was my parents’ age group. I was a kid in CT in the 70s and though we were solidly middle class v New Canaan wealthy, their parties were tipsy handsy affairs iirc. Never saw a key bowl but kids were shuffled off to bed at 7pm on party night.

The movie got the look feel and vibe of the time/place perfectly.

Perhaps you meant envious, OP? We are not. Have fun, though.

Sigourney is gorgeous

R2 you're [bold]such[/bold] a cunt.

Sigourney Weaver in the purple animal print zippered jumpsuit with hoops and chain belt is perfection. In fact the way she looks in all her outfits is the Platonic ideal. This is how women dreamed they look in fur trim coats and knee high boots.

Sigourney looked stunning R14.

Elijah Wood’s Rory Culkin-looking brother looks like a future school shooter

She just has IT r15

The Tobery Maguire character is 16?! I thought he was like 20.

With Elijah Wood dry humping a Richard Nixon mask-wearing Christina Ricci, this movie has passed on to a whole new point of literary preciousness.

I have a “thing” for the 1970s and am blindly nostalgic about the decade. Captures the era to a T.

I love this movie.

^ did hear about key parties in the neighbourhood r20?

I heard of a woman who was banned from neighborhood key parties as she was caught rigging the selection to get the hot guy

R2 is lying or misremembering, not sure which.

OP are you posting on DL as you watch? If so that invalidates any opinions you might share about its cinematic merit.

Siggy was denied an Oscar nomination

I would love to have wild sex with hot daddy Jamey Sheridan in a Cadillac that's slid off the road in the ice storm. So hot, yet so cold!

R21, no, I did not grow up in the upper middle class, and I believe that key parties were probably found there.

Yes OP I am jealous because I never saw The Ice Storm. I've heard of key parties, but I know they weren't happening in my "white trash' part of East Falls in Philly. Maybe in Lower and Upper Merion (where they were wealthy people). Back from Myrtle Beach (lots of drinking and men). Making $$$ for my wealthy clients(and me). Work hard-play harder, now I need to clean out my liver& kidneys.

The fake forced hedomism in the neo-puritan seventies has an echo today in Portland, which is odd for Portland used to be The refuge of choice for the white working class, like Youngstown had never had a serious recession. Girls wanted to be strippers and boys poets. So it's odd that the same values that ionce nformed New Canaan, before ex-Mexican presidents made it the refuge of money laundering, are now making Portlandia a schizo place, equal parts upper middle class suburban competition and an entirely fake forced hedonism.

Play with the whip.

Is it a spoiler to say that the alleged spoiler is wrong?

R28 I think you have it in one with the faux-hedonism. The puritan/trash angle is why Roger Ebert, sensualist who did get as much hot debasing sex as he wanted, of course loved this frigid film.

I Don’t Care Who Dies In a Movie As Long As the Dog Lives!

To R32, I agree with your post-as long as the dog, dogs or cat (and other animals Live).

SW: Kitten with a Whip!

R2 No, no, no What really happened was everyone dies at the end. There's an ice storm and they get into a 10 car pileup in a gorge after leaving their sex party.

The teens are sealed shut inside their homes from the winter storm and face death from starvation. They resort to eating the pet cat, and finally their weakest friend. One by one they still all die.

The final scene is everyone reuniting in heaven, holding hands in unison and walking into the light.

[quote] I Don’t Care Who Dies In a Movie As Long As the Dog Lives!

Yes, unfortunately Christina Ricci lives.

And OP, Tobey Maguire does not die in this film. R2 is wrong, as usual (I assume).

I remember going to see this at the Cineplex Odeon Chelsea Cinemas. I was walking home from work late-ish on a Thursday night and I walked past the theater, and on an impulse, checked to see what was playing. The late show for The Ice Storm was starting in 10 min. I used my DGA card to get in for free. (Those were the days. Everyone wanted to go to the movies with you during awards season in NYC.) There were maybe a dozen people in the theater, tops. I let that movie just wash over me and it was a fabulous experience.

Enjoy, OP!

R36 did you get much cock in the 90s NYC?

Has anyone read the novel by Rick Moody?

Is Elijah Wood’s character supposed to be mentally challenged?

R37, I got my share. But growing up the specter of AIDS made me a little more reticent. When I got to NYC at age 16, it had been drummed into my brain that sex=death. Plus, I was always looking for a boyfriend, which was a huge waste of time, because I didn't realize until much, much later that I'm not built for a relationship. Nothing to do with fidelity, I'm just too selfish to compromise on certain things. Had I known that 30 years ago, I'd have had a lot more fun, I think. Or at least a lot less angst.

R39 hope you've managed to make a happy life for yourself

Wendy Hood: Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.

Ben Hood: Jesus! Enough, alright? Paul… roll?

So does Tobey die or not?

No

I kind of think he does.

Then you'd be wrong.

Doesn't matter what happened to Toby. The teen B story was a total waste of time robbing half the film's running length from Kevin and Sigourney.

Oh, I checked—it was Elijah Wood who is killed. I knew someone died.

It really was a shock that this film got completely shut out at the Oscars. I thought Joan Allen deserved a Lead Actress nom, and Sigourney (and maybe even Ricci) deserved a supporting nom. It definitely deserved an Adapted Screenplay nomination, and several tech noms such as cinematography, production design, costume design and score, even possibly editing. I don't get it.

Don't forget, 1997 was the year the Academy voted Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets as the Best Actress and Kim Basinger Best Supporting for LA con

I was really only interested in hot Jamey Sheridan and once I got tired of the rotating plots I checked out on the whole thing.

Oh, well maybe smart movies aren't for you, R50.

R41 see, if The Ice Storm was released today DL would be full of people screeching about how Christina Ricci’s Thanksgiving speech is irredeemably woke.

It is generally understood among Oscar nerds that Sigourney was a snub. The Academy hated this type of thing until they suddenly loved the grotesque American Beauty.

I found it obvious, tedious and overrated.

I think Ricci was more snubbed than Siggy. Her character felt more real. Sig's performance felt a bit deliberate to me. Lighting cigarette's like a Golden Age actress, strutting around openly like a horny suburban wife and never having a real "moment". The Ricci character's curiosity and experimentation interest spoke better on the subject. Like she was acting out what she could see among the adults in a way.

I grew up on Long Island in the 70s, and I remember seeing this movie as a teen and thinking they got the coldness and alienation just right. It's perfect..

I love the post-coital scene with Kevin and Sig on the waterbed. Kevin starts yammering about some boring situation at his boring advertising job. Sig says in a very dry tone "I already have a husband." She's like a 70's suburban Emma Bovary.

Sig’s character was less dramatic than Joan Allen’s put upon, noble wife, but she was all the more real.

Mary Alert!

I saw The Ice Storm in a theater and was engrossed. When it ended and we got up to leave I was walking carefully — as if it were icy. Talk about transported by the illusion…

I just watched this. What was the point of the movie to show married hetero life is sad?

There was something moralising about it.

You mean like if you go to a sex party, your son will be electrocuted, R61?

What is the point of this well-made movie?

The director made another 'woebegone' movie called Brokeback Mountain where all the characters are doomed because they're poor, uneducated and living in the wrong generation.

Yet this 'doomsville' movie has rich, well-educated characters living in one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. But they are all doomed. The starry cast wear unflattering clothes, make-up and are desperately unhappy.

I praise the director for making a well-made movie but I blame the original author who it seems has made a successful career in the now-fashionable syndrome of wallowing in victimhood.

There was no rhyme or reason to anything in this film.

What was the morality of Christina Ricci going for the younger brother when she was fooling around with the older?

Ricci wanted to know which "brothers cum" tasted better& who was better at Fucking her senseless.

[quote] Don't forget, 1997 was the year the Academy voted Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets as the Best Actress and Kim Basinger Best Supporting

Ouch.

Everybody dies at the end.

For what it’s worth, I was in Junior High during this era and I don’t think key parties were that much of a thing. I even grew up next to a wildly hip, liberal neighborhood and was friends with many of the kids from that neighborhood, and the parents seemed to be like any others, just wore cooler clothes and had a lot of Marrimekko (sp?) influenced textiles in their homes.

It’s a great 😌 book.

I quite like the film, and the performances, less Kevin Kline who really should never have attained any fame.

Everyone hates Tobey McGuire and Katy Holmes but they featured in some of my favorite films from that period. Cristina Ricci, too, is perfect as her role. Sigourney Weaver was perfect. Joan Allen very good.

I think it captures the general mood of teen/young adult children of the time and suburban parents, wavering between mild disgust and mild amusement.

The party scene is exceptionally good: both the party at Katy Holmes NYC apartment but especially the suburban key party in the midst of a most dangerous storm.

It is a film that does very well by its particular time period