Review of The Ice Storm (1997) by Chris Z — 17 Nov 2009

This was neat, kind of suburban distopia movie which I'm getting a little bit tired of. If I have to sit through another American Beauty, I'm gonna crack. But this, thankfully, was NOT American Beauty.

Bleak but well-done, and I thought it was handled very maturely by Ang Lee. I kind of thought the one character who dies towards the end (don't want to spoil it) was sort of unnecessary and felt contrived.

But comparing the kind of harsh reality portrayed in a film like Ballast to this which is kind of a stark bunch of depressed middle-class white people bitching about their lives and emptiness or whatever, it just pales in comparison.

But then again, it is Ang Lee, who does a great job with generic stories, so if that's your thing this is done quite well, but that's just not really my thing. There's nothing new or surprising about it.

I did think that Sigourney Weaver was excellent in it though.