The Details

I rarely write reviews but this movie was like a breath of fresh air! Why aren't there movies with the kind of play and irony and humor of this one? It kept me on the edge of my seat and was constantly changing in pacing, in story, in tone. I love this movie! Laura Linney should win an award for her performance and Ray Liotta has never been given a chance to be so good. Tobey Maguire finally has grown up and moved into a whole new level as an actor. I love this film. I wish there were more like this because most of what I see is so canned or boring or both. How does one go about recommending a film for an award? If anyone has any idea, please post it here. Ms Linney has to be put up for one. Love it!

When I think of dark comedies, I think of everything from Dr. Strangelove to Harold and Maude. Dark, but comic. This film has all the humor and charm of getting hit by a garbage truck. Each one of the characters we see is singularly unlikable to the extreme, beginning with the married couple who stay together even though they can't stand each other, don't want to sleep with each other (the wife, anyway), but feel free to sleep with anybody else they can get their hands on. People called Gone Girl the "date night movie for people who never want to marry." This garbage is the "date night movie for people who never want to date." The two, morally bankrupt creeps married to each other in this film deserve each other, and everybody else we see on the screen deserves to be avoided at all costs. I guess I've seen worse films than this, but I can't think of a film in recent memory that's made me so incredibly angry as this infuriating mess. View at your own risk. Ick!

Tobey Maguire (miscast, got no business playing opposite anybody as hot as Elizabeth Banks, but still it sort of works) is a doctor who gets himself in what appears to be a minus five sit-com. The absurdity had me wanting to get up and leave 4 or 5 times, but just when I thought all was beyond hope, Toby uses his Prius to commit the murder of an errant raccoon, and confesses everything including complicity in a murder, to his wife. It is an absolutely outstanding scene, and lifted me up out of the muck I'd been wallowing in. Suffice it to say that his troubles are initiated by the continuing irritant of excessive bureaucratic government regulations and social pressures (he lives in Seattle and the Prius has an Obama sticker on the bumper, and he's even afraid to hose a raccoon much less shoot it. Guns...ick.) After reciting the litany of his transgressions and betrayals to her in the car, he says, "OK, so far that's the good news". The last 10-15 minutes are priceless and worth the muck to get there. Elizabeth Banks is superb in that scene, and Laura Linney is great throughout as the neurotic, obnoxious next door neighbor. There is also a good scene with Ray Liotta that sort of sets up Maguire's catharsis. Could also be titled, "The Devil is in the Details", "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished", "The Truth Shall Set You Free--Sort Of", or "Wherefore Absolution?". The philosophical and moral issues it raises could start at least half a dozen arguments all by themselves. EDIT ADD: I watched this a second time and, knowing what happens makes the first part not seem so sit-com....ish. The excellent scene with Liotta on the Skagit R. Bridge starts the second half of the movie which justifies the first. I don't know what could be done to fix it, except maybe make sure people watch the preview first, which I hadn't. Whatever, just watch it! This could actually become a cult classic, something we haven't had many worthwhile examples of for a good while.

GREAT MOVIE! Outstanding Performances all around! Toby Maguire really brings this character to life. What begins as a quirky stroll into the lives of a thirty something married couple dealing with some invasive raccoons's,becomes a spider web tapestry of life's bizarre struggles and the harrowing results of our choices. In excellent supporting roles, Ray Liotta and Laura Linney shake up every frame they are in. This story is equally filled with moments of laughter and pain! The best aspect of this film is how it starts out one way, seemingly simple, and then takes you on a wild ride with its characters revealing more and more about their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This is what indie film-making is all about.

Dejavu... that's the word that comes to my mind when I finished this movie... this movie reminded me a great deal of 'American Beauty' due to its technique and dramatization... American Beauty has a way different story, but both of those movies get to you in a similar manner... how one event of least importance can turn your whole world up-side-down in time to comes, the details tells you about that very convincingly... The acting has been tremendous... Other than the spiderman series I have known Tobey Mcguire from the cider house rules, in which his acting was commendable... but the details has a different character for him to tackle and he did it quite well... Laura Linney and Elizabeth Banks are veterans and I do not recall them throwing away their character every before... but the best thing about this movie is the screenplay... hats off to the writer who knows how to whirl the story through the time streams gently... every act was calculated and didn't feel like unnecessary or miscalculated at all... My recommendations... do see it!

In King County, Washington, Dr. Jeff Lang (Tobey Maguire) has been married for ten years with Nealy Lang (Elizabeth Banks) and they have a little boy. Their best friends are Rebecca Mazzoni (Kerry Washington), who has studied with Jeff in the medical school, and her husband Peter Mazzoni (Ray Liotta). Jeff decides to sod his backyard, but the grass comes with worms underneath and raccoons destroy his sod during the night. Jeff wants also build another room in the house for his planned second son, but the City Hall blocks the project. Jeff decides to build the room without the approval and he gives a beautiful plant for his next door neighbor, the unstable Lila (Laura Linney) that lives with her cat Matthew, expecting that she does not denounce his construction work to the authorities. Jeff also likes to play basketball with his friend Lincoln (Dennis Haysbert), who has kidney problem and needs hemodialysis. However, the raccoons disturb Jeff and Nealy has not had sex with him for six months. Jeff decides to poison the raccoon and he meets Rebecca to drink and relief his bitterness about his dried up of sex marriage and they end the day having sex in Rebecca's home. Jeff finds a better work for Lincoln as a coach at a school and he learns that his friend will die soon. Jeff gets close to a breakdown when Peter discovers that his wife betrayed him with Jeff; Matthew is accidentally poisoned by Jeff and Lila seduces him and they have sex. Jeff decides to donate one kidney to save the life of his friend, but when he is recovering from the surgery, he learns that Lila is pregnant and he comments his life with Lincoln. Will Jeff find redemption in his journey to hell? "The Details" is a love or hate movie, with dark humor, drama and amoral story. Jeff Lang is a family man and doctor that begins his descent to hell when raccoons destroy his expensive sod. The turmoil of his life is funny since the bad things sequentially happen to Jeff. The scene when Lila tells to Jeff that she is pregnant is hilarious. Tobey Maguire is a great actor but his baby face does not fit well to his role. But Laura Linney "steals" the movie with a top-notch performance. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): Not Available

Like the best film noir, "The Details" forces us to recognize and engage with our darker natures, the often cruel vagaries of fate, and the fact that happy endings are often neither happy, nor endings. It is also incredibly funny. Tobey Maguire is excellent as a philandering Doctor named Jeff Lange, led inexorably down a path of mayhem and bad behavior in his efforts to conceal his impropriety from his sexually aloof wife, played by an equally excellent Elizabeth Banks. The rest of the cast is also quite strong, particularly Dennis Haysbert, whose turn as Jeff's wizened friend/charity case, and seeming moral conscience, is played to brilliant effect. (The "seeming" is very important here, as writer-director Jacob Estes offers a surprising turn in Haysbert's character, that consists of a brilliant excoriation of the tired Hollywood character trope which Spike Lee terms "The Magical Negro.") With large performances (including Laura Linney as a Blowsy seductress!), bold visuals, and masterfully satirical sound design, "The Details" is stupendously entertaining, a Brechtian meditation on questions moral, social and existential. Estes' film is by turns hilarious and horrifying, often in the same moment. Not to be missed!!!

The only reason this movie is getting 2 stars is for Elizabeth Banks and Ray Liotta. They both make comedies so it wasn't as pathetic for them to be in this as Laura Linney and Tobey Maguire. Maguire as the main character was unbelievable as a man that beautiful women throw themselves at. He has zero personality and let's face it, he's not a real looker. The first 45 min. to and hour were about nothing but raccoons in his yard, or it seemed like it anyway. It was slow, stupid and boring. My husband fell asleep and I was glad when it was over. Don't waste your time because of names in this piece of fluff.

Perhaps I lack the misanthropy to find humor in this movie, but aside from everything seeming to have spun from a battle with raccoons I didn't see anything humorous about it. I have to wonder at the type of person that would find the events in this movie even darkly comedic. Maybe it was my present mindset, yet I cringed through the entire movie. Unless you find coerced adultery with a batsh-t crazy woman and murder funny I wouldn't go in to this movie expecting laughs. It lacked even the vengefully humorous relationships of ..say "War of the Roses" something that I would consider darkly comedic. This merely plunged you deeper and deeper into despair. I'm NOT saying it was a BAD movie....just terribly misrepresented.

My favorite movie genre is the dark comedy. In the best of them characters do two things: they say the unsay-able and do the undo-able, but in a naturalistic way that turns everyday events into a journey to that feral, hidden nature that dwells in all of us but is usually only realized in dreams or fantasies. The film that kept coming to my mind while watching THE DETAILS was FARGO , the heavyweight champion of the genre. Clearly, writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes has given the Coen Brothers a run for their money in his latest cinematic effort; the story of a young doctor (played by Tobey Maguire in a career changing performance), who is living a story book existence, with a seemingly perfect home, family and circle of friends. That is, until a series of increasingly impulsive decisions thrusts him into a downward spiral that turns his innocuous existence into a living, hilarious hell. To me, there is nothing funnier than humor that makes me laugh and wince at the same time, and THE DETAILS does that in spades. The ensemble acting by an all-star cast is something to behold, with possible supporting Oscar nods to Laura Linney, Dennis Hasbert and Ray Liotta. Linney especially rises to another acting plane in her ability to turn a garishly eccentric neighbor into a believable seductress. A scene involving Liotta and Maguire on a bridge is one that I believe will still be talked about years from now. All of this is tied together seamlessly by the mature, confident writing and direction of Mr. Estes, who manages to accelerate the mundane to the horrifyingly surreal without a hint of the cinematic self-consciousness many directors have succumbed to while trying their hands at this most difficult kind of humor. Finally, I was really impressed with the way the set design, photography and soundtrack all blend together to create a sense of eerie whimsicality that eased me into a sense of anticipation—indeed participation—to the point where I was immediately rationalizing the shocking climax, as if I were the unfortunate Doctor himself. To sum up, THE DETAILS is hilarious and horrifying in a unique, naturalistic way, an example of independent filmmaking at its best.