Series/Festivals

Cinema in the City. Webster University sponsors once-a-month Wednesday screenings in Beatnik Bob's Cafe. This month features Val Guest's The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957), in which two men, one good, one not so good, seek the elusive Yeti. Plays at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 9 at Beatnik Bob's Cafe, City Museum, 15th and Lucas streets. NR

Ford Free Friday Nights. The St. Louis Art Museum presents music and movies the first Friday of each month. This month's film is Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). Without trivializing the confusion and the consequences of the personal and political disillusionment of 1973 America, The Ice Storm effects an unnerving experience appropriate to its characters' malaise. The external turmoil of Watergate and Vietnam and a lying President Richard Nixon glimpsed on television serves as an informative backdrop for the increasing unrest of two well-to-do, New Canaan, Conn., families over the 1973 Thanksgiving holiday. The sexual experimentation and substance abuse by the younger generation mirror the adultery and alcohol overindulgence of parents struggling with estrangement from their children, each other and themselves. The Ice Storm doesn't waste a detail in revealing the overwhelming dislocation of its characters. With Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver and Joan Allen delivering brilliantly subtle, multidimensional performances, The Ice Storm establishes a delicate balance between repression and promiscuity, between vulnerability and insensitivity. Long before the title storm hits, this film chills its audience to the bone. Plays at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 4 at the St. Louis Art Museum auditorium. (DC)