The Details (2012)

The first must-see film of the year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Yesterday I saw this movie, I would describe this movie with 1 word "Masterpiece", It's an intense black comedy movie, where you laugh and cry at the same time.This movie will touch you, and as time passes you'll be more immersed in the story because this kind of drama happens in our world today, and that's what make it interesting, because we humans are so curious and inconsistent in what we want, sometimes our reality it's too dam hard that make us lose our consciousness and we fall and commit bad desires, desires that you will enjoy at the moment, but you will pay for it. Another important thing about this movie is that you will find the purest sense of misunderstanding that will land into distort in most of the characters.I will never going to understand why there is such a bad reviews about it,maybe because this movie is hard to digest, or maybe some people don't get the massage behind. By the way I suggest everyone to watch this movie you won't regret it.

I felt compelled to write this review because no one else mentioned what i saw. First of all i thought Tobey's character presented as a kind of vacant person with little sense of self. He cheated in medical school, gets addicted to internet porn, and just sort of falls into having sex with his mentally neighbor (the fabulous LauraLinney). he is a man with no real sense of agency, and without intending to be, is morally bankrupt. He meets Lincoln and sees a chance to redeem himself which he does except it is just one more thing that doesn't really represent true change, like its more of an easy way out of his dilemma. Lincoln ultimately commits an immoral act of his own to express his gratitude to Tobey.When Tobey admits all to his wife, she is then relieved of the guilt of her affair, and they are caught in another moral dilemma, whether to turn Lincoln in or not. In the end they decide life as usual and finally have a beautiful new garden and a second child. Like another reviewer it reminded me of a Cohen brothers movie.

When you read the official movie synopsis you will be thrown off course; it's not much of a comedy per say, so it's been labeled a dark comedy but it's more than that. As most labeled dark comedies don't fare all that well with the general public and indeed with some critics, the ratings tend to throw you off as well, but let's dig a little deeper and try to see what writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes has concocted here. The main protagonist in the movie, Jeff Lang, played by Tobey Maguire, is a OBGYN ten years into a marriage that is… well, on the fritz and his life turns to hell temporarily before the movie ends very surprisingly on a high note.The movie opens with Jeff and Nealy Lang, played oh so well by the beautiful Elizabeth Banks, celebrating their ten year wedding anniversary with a toast from Peter and Rebecca Mazzoni, played respectively by Ray Liotta and Kerry Washington. But all is not well in the marriage as that evening Jeff can't even get lucky; we'll only discover later that this anomaly is simply due to the fact that his lovely wife has been having an affair (but we don't get to know with whom) for the past six months. Furthermore, Nealy is upset with Jeff as he chose the cheaper sodding over seeding of their backyard. Now the big deal with the racoons and that sodded lawn is really where the idea of "DETAILS", on which Estes based his title and perhaps found the key to juxtapose the story's main storyline, finds the mark.There's a commonly known problem with racoons and sodded lawns; they will dig your lawn to no end and turn the sod over for grub. This leads to Jeff trying to poison the critters and in the process he kills the neighbor's cat. The neighbor Lila, played superbly by Laura Linney, is, to put it mildly, a cookoo person. Blaming Jeff for the death of her precious cat she manipulates him into a wild (that bit is really funny) session of impromptu sex. It was not Jeff's first transgression that week as he did have himself a good romp with earlier mentioned Rebecca Mazzoni, his long time friend from college; she was merely commiserating with him and I cannot think of a better person to feel for one's pain than Kerry Washington.Jeff's basketball playing friend Lincoln, played wonderfully by Dennis Haysbert, has been dealt a bad hand by faith; they bonded over the years and Jeff's friend is blessed suddenly by his buddy doctor's beyond kind gestures, one of which has him donating a kidney to him. That gesture ingratiates Jeff to Nealy, but as Jeff confides in Lincoln his newest tribulation with crazy neighbor Lila, who he got pregnant, the grateful Lincoln misinterprets Jeff's rambling, and kills Lila to repay Jeff for what he did for him. The moment Jeff decides to share with his wife his transgressions and the awful turn of events is where the audience gets that this is not a comedy. The choices about what to do under the circumstances are not great, but going over the details of those choices, they find a way through it.Estes lacked good material in the sub-plot dealing with Ray Liotta's revenge against Jeff for cheating with his wife, but other than that, I found the movie a nice piece of work. The cast had led me to believe I could expect nothing less than good performances and I was not disappointed. Tobey Maguire's character reminded me in some way of his role as Homer in The Cider House Rules, perhaps due to the OBGYN bit, while Laura Linney's play had somewhat of the same effect for me as that with a passage of her role as Eleanor in Man of the Year. In short, I liked it and I trust those who like this movie genre will get to see it before it is forgotten.

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!