FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: The Ice Harvest [DVD] [2005]

The Ice Harvest [DVD] [2005]
enlarge	Director: Harold Ramis Actors: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Randy Quaid, Ned Bellamy Studio: Universal Pictures UK Category: DVD List Price: ~~£12.99~~ Buy New: £1.26 as of 24/11/2009 00:38 GMT details You Save: £11.73 (90%) New (20) Used (12) from £0.74 Seller: mearcat1333 Rating: 5 reviews Sales Rank: 11786 Format: PAL Languages: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 85 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5050582429190 ASIN: B000HWXQA2 Theatrical Release Date: 2005 Release Date: October 23, 2006 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review Holiday movies don't get much darker, or more darkly humourous, than iThe Ice Harvest/i, an offbeat comedy that defies expectations. The involvement of director Harold Ramis might lead some to expect a straight-up comedy like iGroundhog Day/i or iAnalyze This/i, but despite Ramis's fine and atypically subdued work here, it's the writers (Robert Benton and Richard Russo) who put a stronger stamp on their adaptation of the novel by Scott Phillips. Benton and Russo previously collaborated on iNobody's Fool/i and iTwilight/i (with Benton also directing), and those films are similar in tone and spirit to this quirky, modern-day film noir, set on a freezing Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas, where mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) has a lot on his mind. He's just stolen $2 million from his boss (Randy Quaid), he can't trust his partner Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), he's secretly in love with the manager (Connie Nielsen) of the strip bar he owns, and his best friend (Oliver Platt, giving yet another terrific performance) is married to his ex-wife. Before the night's over, several murders will complicate matters even further, and throughout it all, iThe Ice Harvest/i is anchored by Cusack's good-natured presence in a bad-natured story that dares to combine double-crosses and bloodshed with elusive yuletide cheer. It's a strange but oddly appealing combination, not for all tastes but refreshing for that very same reason. --iJeff Shannon/i

Customer Reviews: Bloody Christmas October 27, 2009 Liam O'Shea I was skeptical about buying this, due to the reviews i had seen. br / br /When i watched it, it made me think all those reviewers obviously have some chemical imbalance. br / br /The plot to this film is so clever and intricate, that you will notice something new everytime you watch it. And the fact that it takes place on one Christmas Eve night, in snowy Wichita, adds something of beauty to the film. br / br /Dialogue is hillarious and never without wit, Acting is supurb all around the board, particularly Billy Bob Thornton, who is at his deadpan best - John Cusack, kind of does that Grosse Pointe Blank thing, and i'd never heard of Connie prior to this, but i think we will be hearing and seeing more of her in the future. As for Oliver Platt, the drunk village idiot, he is hillarious and has some of the best dialogue in the film, example is when he is trying to chat up a young bartender "in my dream you'll be wearing that little fish necklace and...that's it!" br / br /All in all this is my favourite christmas film (beat Bad Santa to the top spot) and indeed one of my all time favourites. You really can not go wrong with this, if you have even a degree of intelligence or a observing eye, this will be a real treat. I'm definetley getting it out this Christmas Eve...the DVD i mean. br / br / Black comedy February 29, 2008 Brendan O. Clarke (Edinburgh) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful Good acting and cinematography combine in a stylish crime noir tale set on Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas during an ice storm. John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton star in this excellent sleeper about a couple of guys who rip off two mil plus (the "ice harvest") from a mobster but then have to wait out the storm before catching a plane to someplace warmer and far away. The perfect crime? Or a very, very bad idea? It starts seeming to be a bad idea pretty quickly and then bobsleds downhill in a hurry on the winter ice. In THE ICE HARVEST you are treated to nice performances from the entire cast which includes Randy Quaid. Director Harold Ramis does a good job keeping things moving and he is working with a tight script. Throughout THE ICE HARVEST you are wonderfully reminded of the cold, dark, icy night of the story that helps sustain that noir feeling. Notable is the excellent photography, costumes and visually pleasing sets, elements not always appreciated enough in good movie-making. Well done and worth seeing. a slow film and a plain tedious film November 6, 2007 dan the fan (england,uk) 0 out of 1 found this review helpful If you like a film with very dark but not too funny humour where people are constantly nasty to one another and the story plods along very slowly, br /you'll like the Ice Harvest.I should also add that the dialogue is unexciting and the locations and sets the movie was made on were a visual bore.The worst film I have seen John Cusack or Billy Thornton star in. John Cusack does his best June 29, 2008 crystalfrog (Wales) A tedious, plodding film, that tries to be a quirky noirish thriller, but just isn't very good. Little cheer in sight... December 1, 2008 least toughest in the infants (here there and everywhere) I bought this film second-hand on the off-chance: director Ramis has, of course, done the fantastic Groundhog Day, and having read the brief synopsis, it sounded like a darkly comic 'christmas crime noir' (and there's a genre we need more of!) br / br /The problem this film has is a lack of ANY sympathetic characters. Even John Cusak's character - who is obviously meant to be the (very weak) moral centre of things just isn't generating enough on-screen empathy: he is, at best, neutral, and that's not enough. br / br /The black humour is fleeting and largely flat, but most of all there's no SPARK: the setting and set-up ought to deliver great moment after great moment, but sadly not. br /I didn't expect to see Santa every two minutes or a Capra-esque ending, but a big part of the pitch for this was the festive setting which is hardly referenced at all. Also, and this is a rare one for me to moan about: I didn't like the general tone towards women in the story as a whole. Usually, I'm your standard ignorant-bloke on this type of thing, but even I became a little tired of the uniformaly negative and/or weak role-call of female characters - it only really hit me when I was pondering it all in the days following. br / br /I can't fault the DVD package (commentary, alternate endings - proper ones too, not the usual attempts at that where someone says or does something slightly differently, so as to just meet the dictionary deinition of 'alternative') so perhaps in the end it wasn't my cup of tea. John Cusak is always worth a watch, but I think here everyone is struggling to find their places in the story, and so much seems to happen off-screen or be simply referred to by characters rather than shown, it all came off very flat. br / br /NO ho ho!

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