The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm (1997) is an Ang Lee drama you can watch online on iFILM. It unfolds over one weekend after Thanksgiving in 1973, in an affluent Connecticut suburb where two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Carvers, are quietly coming apart while the grown-ups pretend otherwise.

Ben Hood is sleeping with the woman next door and lying to his wife Elena out of habit. Their teenage daughter Wendy drifts into clumsy games with the boys across the street, and their older son comes home from boarding school carrying his own secrets. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen play the parents, Sigourney Weaver the neighbor, and a very young Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood and Katie Holmes fill out the houses. Then the ice storm closes in, and the frozen wires will settle things no one dared to.

Ang Lee adapted Rick Moody's novel into a cold, exact portrait of an era, the one where the sexual revolution reached the suburbs in the form of "key parties." It's a film about parents losing their children without noticing the moment it happened. Stream The Ice Storm (1997) online on iFILM.