CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Merolliv
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
NateWatchesCoolMovies
It's anybody's guess how ones like 13 Moons slip through the cracks, but in this case it was probably a case of nonexistent marketing and no effort put into a proper release. Despite having a cast that's speckled with all kinds of big names, character actors and cameos, it has the appearance of barest of bones indie digs, and looks suspiciously like it was filmed bootleg/guerrilla style. I've not a clue what the story behind it's conception is, but it's a brilliant little flick that you won't find anywhere these days, but deserves a look. It's one of those moody, nocturnal L.A. set ensemble pieces in which a group of eclectic characters wander about, intersecting in various subplots until it finally comes together in the third act. This motif is overdone these days, and I just have to throw a jab at Paul Haggis's Crash, which has aged like Kraft Dinner left for a week in the Florida sun, but my point is that they either work or topple over like a jenga tower buckling under the weight of each character and scenario. This one is so low budget it looks like it was shot on an etch a sketch, but thankfully the story is powerful, emotional, hilarious and strange enough to make a lasting impression. Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage are two sad-sack clowns who wander the nightscape, and in fact the image of absurdly out of place clowns roaming the lonely streets of NYC, getting caught up in a raucous night out involving a man (David Proval, an underused talent in the industry) and his young son who is dying of cancer and desperately seeks an organ donor, while his mom (Jennifer Beals) looks for them. Meanwhile there's an insane clown played by Peter Stormare who's running about, and when I say insane I do mean it. Stormare is always a little zany and flamboyant, but his work here takes the cake and whips it at the wall. It's easy for actors to be uninhibited in indie fare like this, free from the prudence of studio chaperones, and he knows this, his character eventually playing a key role but most of the time careening around like a bat out of hell set loose in New York. The cameos are fleeting and fascinating, and one wonders who was buddies with who and pulled what favours to swing their appearances, but it's nice to see them irregardless. Sam Rockwell and Michael Parks are fun as two bartenders, real life ex-hoodlums Danny Trejo and Edward Bunker show up briefly as.. hoodlums, and watch for quick turns from Pruitt Taylor Vince, Michael Badalucco and others. The film is thoroughly indie that no one has, or probably will ever see it, and my review probably adds to the scant half dozen or so write ups that are out there. Sadly many little treasures like this exist, unbeknownst to most. 13 Moons is a sweet, scrappy, somewhat star studded little piece that is well worth anyone's time, if they love a good story in an oddball of a package.
Boba_Fett1138
To me it's pretty obvious what this movie tries to attempt. It tries to put together many different story lines, featuring different characters, that all come together pretty fast into the movie. A storytelling technique that later got much better used and done by for instance director Alejandro González Iñárritu.The movie is basically being presented as one big adventure movie, in which a whole bunch of characters go on a quest to safe a little boy's life. Only thing is, this 'adventure' is done as a drama. It has a s serious story, which just doesn't connect to well with the movie its quirky characters and all of the unlikely events happening in this movie. The way all of these characters get thrown together in this movie is pretty weak. Basically they have absolutely nothing to do with each other but still for some odd reason they all stay together throughout the entire movie. At times the movie desperately tries to connect all of their stories together and weave them in with each other but it's all really thin. Everything that seems to happen in this movie seems as a coincidence and the movie is really hanging together from its coincidences.And the characters aren't much good either really, despite the fact that they are being played by some well known actors. So they basically all have their issues but you just never get to care enough about any of the characters to to care or to feel attached to any of them. Their problems also aren't too 'deep' and the way everything gets resolved is again also hanging together from its coincidences and comes across as some lazy writing. It's almost as if its writing and its directing don't connect at all with each other, as if the director had a totally different movie in mind than the writer had, which is strange, considering that both were the same person.For most part I still liked watching this movie but toward the end things really got worse, when the movie seemed to run out of ideas and everything just became less and less interesting and more and more of a pointless dragging movie that was heading towards an ending that wasn't much satisfying either. Once you start thinking about this movie, nothing gets really explained or resolved, so watching this movie is a very unsatisfying experience.Still the entire idea behind this movie must have been good, not in the least because all of these great actors seemingly showed up for free to appear in this movie. Because it just didn't seemed as if this movie had an actual budget to work with. It's also a really cheap looking movie, that has a sort of TV look, or as if it got done by a couple of friends shooting a movie in their weekends.You could say that the movie still have plenty of redeeming qualities, that still keep the movie somewhat watchable, such as its acting for instance but overall, in the end this is a very unrewarding movie, that is literally hanging together from its coincidences and some highly unlikely events, which all comes across as some weak and lazy writing.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
pebsdad
Proof positive that just the presence of a great indie cast doesn't guarantee you a great indie film.The story revolves around the relationship of a number of people in need of a bailbondsman ("Sopranos" David Proval) during one wild night in L.A. The story switches about mid-point to the search for a manic runaway Santa who was supposed to be an kidney donor for his son. Sounds full of possibilities, huh? With a flat, uninvolving and very unfunny script and a cast who looked like the were lost, wandering from scene to scene, making it through the screening of this film was a grueling experience for me. Major plot motivations are lame and unplausable. For example, three of the characters in the film are priests who wander into a strip club. One priest gets arrested...for what, were not sure, except that he didn't run fast enough when one of his friends causes a fight (hey...it got the priests to the bailbondsman...won't that be funny!). But then the young son is diagnosed (in about 5 minutes, without any diagnostic tests being done) that he only has one kidney and needs another THAT NIGHT, and hey, there just happens to be a donor in the e.r. right now (the manic Santa), well...there were just so many things wrong with the scene that I lost all hope that the film could ever redeem itself.The full house at the Seattle Film Fest. screening sat quiet and emotionless throughout the film with a few scattered walk outs and tepid applause following the film (this is a rabid group of moviegoers who are usually supportive of the films here, especially when the director and two stars are in attendance). I couldn't stay for the Q&A afterwards...the carnage had already been brutal enough.What's the secret of the 13 moons? I'm not sure, I don't care and you won't either.
rubempre
13 Moons, surprisingly, is one of the most lucid and hopeful flicks to emerge from the muddled dreams and frequently vengeful psyches of Los Angeles in years. A quest film every bit as compelling and complex-- and considerably less tricked out-- than Lord of the Rings, it's Alexandre Rockwell's valedictory to a city which may have little use for the independent filmmaker, but which offered him a way back to his own larger, more magnanimous instincts as an artist. An ever greater number of characters, from a clown Steve Buscemi to a bail bondsman and dead beat dad (David Proval) to a remarkably bad and self aware rapper/singer/ho (the extraordinary Rose Rollins), find themselves inhabiting, momentarily, a similar platform, a little piece of Los Angeles in the dead of the night. Like most of us, their dreams only bubble rarely to the surface of their lives, jostling there with their disappointments until they're submerged again under the monotony of their day jobs. But unlike most of us, these 7 people, in spite of themselves, find purpose in their movement. They go from a downtown bar to a bail bureau, from a cop station to a memorable moment in the zoo; and in their sojourn, they intersect with real need…an 8 year old, whose kidney is failing, whom dialysis only momentarily helps, who's thrown on the mercy of a city whose larger, social impulses seem deadened…and yet. A strong ensemble cast, energetically directed and brilliantly shot by Phil Parmet, makes 13 Moons that rare independent LA flick: one whose ambitions are so much greater than an audition for a studio picture. 13 Moons wants to give us a different way of imagining ourselves and the city we inhabit but so little know.
