13 Moons

13 Moons is an ambitious, unusual film that works really well. It has beautiful imagery, great music and fantastic acting. And it manages to feel spontaneous and free in a way that big-budget studio films never quite do. In fact, it's exactly the kind of movie a big studio would never attempt. It features a huge, eclectic ensemble cast in a wild series of events that are, at first glance, pretty far-fetched. But the result is surprisingly smooth and genuine. First of all, the cast is fantastic. In addition to Steve Buscemi and Jennifer Beals, I recognized many of the actors from television and other (mostly independent) movies: David Proval from The Sopranos, Karyn Parsons from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Daryl Mitchell and Sam Rockwell from GalaxyQuest, and Peter Dinklage from Living in Oblivion. The plot doesn't exactly ramble, but there are definitely points where it's unclear where the story is moving. It's hard, with so many interesting characters, to maintain a perfect narrative balance. But the great thing about 13 Moons is that it is a little off-balance. It's basically a collection of strange little moments, but they all feel so sincere that it's easy to lose yourself in them. And in the end, everything and everyone comes together. In fact, it's one of the most satisfying movie endings I've seen in a long time. It's a shame 13 Moons wasn't released to the public the way it deserved to be. I hope more people can find a way to see this movie.

Writers Alexandre Rockwell and Brandon Cole managed to do the impossible: combine ten misfit characters into a storyline that gives each individual characterization bona fide arc and dimension.

The combination of Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage as an out of work clown and his loyal sidekick is priceless. Peter Stormare uses his entire acting arsenal to bring his homeless drunk to life and Sam Rockwell is terrific in his smaller part as an enterprising strip club bartender. Daryl Mitchell and newcomer Rose Rollins nearly steal the show as a P Diddy-esque record mogul and his tone deaf girlfriend, respectively, and Karyn Parsons is a long way from Bel Air as the stripper who is the object of Steve Buscemi's affection. Jennifer Beals is effective and stunning as ever as Buscemi's wronged wife. Austin Wolfe is touching and believable as the little boy who brings them all together and David Proval does a great turn as the kid's absentee father.

After a night of unparalleled shenanigans, in the end, the message is simple as delivered by Elizabeth Bracco as the little boy's mother. Having been told that this group of strangers has risked life and limb to help her son, she asks innocently, "Why would they want to help Timmy? They don't even know him." And therein lies the question that in a more compassionate world none of us would be compelled to ask.

TV clown Bananas (Steve Buscemi) has problems everywhere. His show hasn't got the same success it once had, his wife is discovered with another woman and tried to run him over, and with his partner Binky (Peter Dinklage) they have to help a sickly young boy left in care of a bail bondsman. Along the way they will meet drug addict Slovo (Peter Stormare) who after accidentally saving the kid wants to get rid of his habit of wandering the streets, two priests that got into a fight with the owner of a strip club (Sam Rockwell, the brother of the movie's director) and a few others.

Despite 13 MOONS is quite forgotten today, has a direct to video look and according to NateWatchesCoolMovies it wasn't even marketed properly back then, I found it unique. Now this doesn't mean it's a bad movie, but that you have to follow the movie really carefully for understanding the all point of the situations. At times I could relate for the characters because they were played by actors that are used to play normal guys and this was probably the most important thing in the movie for me.

Not an outstanding movie by all means, but if you are in the right mindset for it, you might probably understand the hidden meanings.

I don't want to waste too much more of my time regarding this movie so I'll keep this short. I haven't finished the movie yet (it's playing as I type this) but I had high expectations for this film and they weren't met. A great cast working with one of the worst scripts in recent history. Basically, just a boring movie with little to like. I 'm curious if the cast found the script promising or if they worked on the movie as a kind gesture to someone; not sure what there could have been in the script that they would think was worth it. I hope there are better movies to come from all who were involved. Disappointing.

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.

5/10

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