13 Moons (2002) User Reviews

About 10 characters with a full moon in L.A.

[jotix100 · 6/10 · 2 January 2005]

This indie was shown recently on cable. Alexandre Rockwell (any relation to Sam?) directs this strange account of a night in L.A. While the film is interesting there are a lot of things that make absolute no sense in the way the director, working with Brandon Cole in the screen play, presents the story and then proceeds to solve it in the next 90 minutes.

Mr. Rockwell has to be congratulated in employing these young talent. Given the choice between a studio film and and independent one, I will always choose the latter one. That said, there are a lot of unanswered questions in the film.

We have no inkling at the beginning of the film that Timmy is a sick boy, he is suddenly in the hospital where a donor has been matched and will undergo a kidney transplant. The donor is Slovo, a man who was hit by the boy's father, and it's an obnoxious man. The quest for the search of this man, who disappeared from the hospital, is at the core of the action. It gives the writers an excuse for bringing the assorted characters into the picture.

Another thing that doesn't make sense is how can anyone be arrested for attending a T&A club? Evidently it can only happen in the city of Angels! There is the rapper with the gorgeous girlfriend who can't carry a tune who come to help the boy and his father and in the process take us into the streets of a seedy section of town and end up in the rapper's mansion where everyone jumps in the pool.

There are a lot things that don't make sense, but we go along the ride because the director, at times, shows signs of brilliant film making, but ultimate, the movie leaves us questioning a lot of things as to why they happen.

The cast is wonderful. Daryl Mitchell and Rose Collins are perfect as the rapper and his girlfriend. Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage as the clowns, don't get a lot to do. Pruitt Taylor Vince, an actor's actor makes an incredible Owen, the man who will eventually save the boy. David Proval and Elizabeth Bracco are the estranged parents of the sick young boy, Timmy, who is portrayed with an uncanny maturity by Austin Wolff. Jennifer Beals and Sam Rockwell have only limited time in front of the camera.

While we wished "13 Moons" would have been better, it shows a great team of writers as well as an excellent director.

Weird but sweet.

[alexakis39 · 6/10 · 3 May 2010]

First off, this movie has a great cast. Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Bracco. I've seen either several or a few films from each of them, and I enjoy watching them. So that's what made me most interested in this film. I am also a big fan of Alex Rockwells movie In the Soup. I liked it. Some part didn't seem to fit or it was just confusing, which is why I gave it a 6. Maybe if I watched it again I will feel differently about it. Was it unusual? Yes. Was it heartwarming. Yes. This probably isn't a movie I would go out and buy on my own. I would watch it again though. I'm glad I had the chance to see this. How cliché is the name Timmy though?

Some sort of metaphor about the human condition

[bellino-angelo2014 · 7/10 · 4 December 2021]

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.

A complex film with a deceptively simple message

[SplitRights · 28 July 2004]

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.

Terrific indie cast in gawd-awful movie

[pebsdad · 2/10 · 8 June 2002]

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.

A movie that is hanging together from its coincidences.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 5/10 · 29 October 2010]

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

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

How did this one slip through the cracks?

[lraff · 9/10 · 8 January 2003]

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.

Deliberately bizarre story, strong acting, chaotic

[fivedimensionalmanifold · 5/10 · 17 March 2006]

This movie is definitely unusual, but it doesn't seem to believe in itself or in the worth of its story, so by the end it falls flat and can only really be evaluated as a farce. We start out with Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage as a couple of clowns struggling through their jobs on some cable-access kids' show. Eventually we are introduced to a number of other characters whose lives all intersect over the course of one night (a la Magnolia/ Short Cuts/ Crash).

Buscemi is always a solid character actor, but here he seems somewhat confused about his motivation and I can't really blame him. Rockwell is known as a very hands-off director, and I have to say that this movie seems to have just derailed on him, despite some touching visual concepts and decent, potentially explosive backstories. The scene in the swimming pool in which a priest who is going through a crisis of faith teams with Steve Buscemi to teach a sickly young boy how to swim is just so overstuffed with tropes as to completely destroy the viewer's attentiveness to any throughline or narrative thrust. The subplots are all individually interesting and are handled with at least a fair amount of investment and decent performance by nearly everyone involved. But they only intersect in odd ways that seem to desire to make some sort of larger statement but only end up in chaos, and perhaps a vague statement about everyone coming together to help solve their shared problems. But really it seems that Rockwell's strength is in showing people who are insane or in the absolute gutter, and so any kind of humanist impulse that he has is only articulated vaguely and without enough buildup to be moving. That being said, there are a number of intriguing minor characters in the film, and as I've mentioned it is filled with acting talent.

It's almost like this is a movie where you want to extract assorted moments and enjoy them as if they were short films so that you don't have to cringe painfully at their inability to flow in the overall storyline. The brief moment where Ernie Lee Banks, as a zoo's night watchman, argues honestly with the bail bondsman and his son is touching, almost like something out of Magnolia. The character played by David Proval is taken almost directly out of the bail bondsman character in Jackie Brown, a film by Rockwell's friend Quentin Tarantino. That being said, Proval does a decent job with the muddled and cut-rate character he is assigned by the screenplay.

I tried hard to like this movie but in the end it is so riddled with head-scratching loopholes and mistakes and poor transitions that I could only call it gutsy at best. I wouldn't call it great, and not even "good". Rockwell's use of hand-held video cameras didn't bother me, and if anything it was visually interesting. I guess the ending of this movie, without giving it entirely away, made me wonder if Rockwell was merely trying to "make up for" the dark comic sense or atmosphere of decay that permeates the rising action of the film. In any case, it just does not seem to flow and it does not fit organically with the rest of the bizarre story.

I knew them all

[vic-232 · 10/10 · 7 July 2008]

I knew every character in this movie as a real person. I knew the depressive clown and the hard-boiled midget and the drug addicted drag queen and even the self-doubting priests. While "13 Moons" was not set in New York City in the seventies, it might as well have been. Granted, I've been out of that crazy, all-night life for a long time, but I'm sure it hasn't gone away. People don't change, and the same kinds of tormented souls have to be there, pursuing their crazy odysseys, all night long. Perhaps you've missed them if you've been cocooned in the enclaves of the middle class, but if you're brave enough to go out and find them, you can.

I was totally engaged by "13 Moons." The ensemble acting was first-rate, so the characterizations were virtually perfect. The plot may be slightly less than believable, but if you tossed that particular batch of odd characters together under the right circumstances, something like it just MIGHT have happened.

Many reviewers refer to this film as "quirky." Well, LIFE is quirky, children -- and if you don't think Bananas and Binky and Lenny and Slovo and Mo and Lily and Suzi are real enough, you haven't been drinking in the right bars.

See "13 Moons." Believe in it. It's a close approximation of a world you may not have encountered, but which certainly is real.

Tiresome with Under-used Actors

[mzmorpheus09 · 3/10 · 16 January 2005]

This is yet another jerky, hackneyed "indie" film. The director sounds like a nice guy, at least he comes across that way in the multiple "behind the scenes" stories floating around on DVD and the Internet (www.nobodywantsyourfilm.com).

Why Buscemi (and the extremely talented Dinklage) made this is beyond me, maybe they lost a bet? The film had an O.K. start and was set up for some interesting twists. Instead the filmmaker threw so many secondary characters into this (Stormare's crazy Santa, the priests, etc.) the plot just wanders around L.A. in the wee hours. But ending it with the cute kid getting a kidney (oh, please!) and a tearful ending just killed it dead.

Nobody wants this film, damn straight.

Quirky, consistently surprising, with a seemingly effortlessstructure!

[lapsus53 · 10/10 · 13 June 2002]

Thank the cinema gods that movies like this are still being made - personal, inimitable, expressive visions you'll never see in a studio boutique division's wildest dreams!

Doing his best work since the very funny "In The Soup," Alexandre Rockwell again works with a large ensemble cast of fine but often under-used actors to tell the niftily interwoven stories of an unlikely set of characters all of whose paths cross because of a marital spat and a life-weary bailbondsman getting saddled with his waifish son - who's in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Problem is, it seems the only good match is sloshing about in the innards of the bedrugged, drunken, wacked-out Peter Stormare (in a Santa suit, continuing Rockwell's ongoing leitmotiv in several films). The movie, beautifully shot on hi-def video by the estimable Phil Parmet, with an insinuating score, all takes place in one night, an extended but befuddled chase after the wayward, reluctant kidney donor.

Among an as entertaining group of actors as you're likely to find, Daryl Mitchell, Rose Rollins, and Peter Dinklage are especially sharp and funny. Keep an ear peeled for Rollins's perfectly pitched horribly bad rap song!

Lots of incidental pleasures along the way, and, typical in the Rockwellian oeuvre, an uplifting moment at the end - literally and figuratively. All in all, a shaggy-dog delight.

Order out of Chaos, and a Happy Ending

[mongo46538 · 8/10 · 24 January 2006]

At first glance the initial scenery was enough to make me change the channel until I saw that Steve Buschemi was one of the leading characters.

The dull grainy cinematography in combination with sad clowns performing poorly before a local TV station child audience, was enough to make me think, OK this is just weird.

But even during those first few scenes I saw a dark humor typical of today's attitude towards the unfailing reality of life, so given that, I decided to watch on. What I witnessed was a film about one of those strange nights when the Moon is full, the mystical powers are strong in the air and the lives of strangers will cross.

The relationships of these strangers center around the Bail bondsman "Mo" (David Proval) but the events of the night surround his estranged son "Timmy", whose mother comes to the father in a babysitting emergency.

Unbeknownst to the father his son has only one kidney that is barely functioning and he is waiting a beeper call from the hospital for a donor. While this is happening most of the other characters also need Mo for Bail at the very same time, sort of a convergence of need all at one moment. After going to the Jailhouse to perform his duties, the child wanders out in the parking lot and almost gets hit by a car. At this very moment the story changes from a group of quirky adults trying to solve their own problems to a group of adults realizing that all of their selfish desires are nothing compared to the needs of this child.

From this point forward the scene changes are chaotic and bizarre in a Pulp Fiction type fashion, but the message remains clear, even while whining about their pathetic lives these adults keep their focus and do all that they can do to help the boy and find his Kidney donor who has wandered out of the hospital.

There are defining moments that will remain with the boy, the scene in the hospital, the trip his father takes after hours to the zoo to see the monkeys and when everyone jumps into the pool, giving the child a sense of joy you feel he has had yet to feel in his pitiful little life. There are several epiphanies amongst the cast of characters. One of my favorites is when the night watchman from the Zoo tells Mo "shooting me with that gun isn't going to make you a better father". In the end the child is saved by the supreme sacrifice of the priest "Owen", who had been suffering from doubts about his priesthood and searching for the meaning of his life.

This Movie has genuine moments of dark humor and a very meaningful and happy ending. If your looking for something a little different that doesn't leave you feeling haunted, you will enjoy this movie.

Finding your way in(to) LA

[rubempre · 9/10 · 6 June 2002]

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.

Great Film !!!

[unclebootz · 10/10 · 21 January 2006]

One of the BEST films I've seen in a long, long time! Interesting characters & storyline! The film manages to follow it's multiple sub-plots in a skillful & stylistic manner. Steve B. & Peter D. prove to be a winning pair on camera. Overall this film was well cast.

I've seen allot of negative reviews for this film and I must say that I am at a loss to understand why. Perhaps these reviewers were expecting a more predictable film. The usual Hollywood tripe! This film conforms to no such standard! In summary: I really enjoyed the quirky characters, Clever dialogue, Touching storyline and the overall style of this film. I Highly recommend it!! :)

Indie comedy that doesn't skimp on intelligence, laughs or heart.

[nototis · 8/10 · 7 June 2002]

SLAMDANCE pulled a major coup by opening with a quality film by one of the directors who gave SUNDANCE such a sterling reputation for indie films. One of the great things about film festivals is on rare occasions you get bragging rights to having seen a quality film before the rest of the world gets a look at it Steve Buscemi is always killer, and here he's given material to match his talents. He's probably the last guy you'd pick to play a clown (he's seems a crying on the inside AND outside actor), but the counterintuitive comic casting works like a dream. Hard to p*** and moan and be funny at the same time, but Buscemi and the writers pull it off. Karyn Parsons, who was so good on THE JOB with Denis Leary and was so much better than the material in such crap as MAJOR PAYNE and THE LADIES' MAN -- is killer, and hot to boot. A smart, genuinely funny comedy for adults that doesn't suck. Rarer than a perfect spring day and just as welcome.

Impressive, wonderfully told indie with all star cast

[NateWatchesCoolMovies · 8/10 · 10 June 2017]

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.

blew me away

[strange_anya · 10/10 · 18 December 2005]

I rented 13 Moons because I love Steve Buscemi. It was an amazing movie- full of twists and turns, humor, and reality. It was a touching film without being sappy. Its just one of those must sees, I think. The basic premise is that a little boy needs a new kidney. A cousin of his happens to be in the hospital, but said cousin is a drunken santa dude who escapes and tries to have one last night of mayhem. Strangers become involved in his pursuit, including a clown who has lost his humor, a priest who has lost his god, a stripper, a rapper, a mother to be who isn't anymore, a midget, and others. The cinematography was very different- kind of like American beauty.

bottom line- this movie gave me hope.

Lost Characters

[tedg · 3 December 2005]

What we have here is an attempt to shape a movie by simply defining interesting characters. These aren't radical characters like, say you would get with "Hitchhiker's Guide" inspired projects.

You have a few choices when sitting down to write a story. One of these is to decide what sort of agency your characters have. To my mind, the best storytellers start with a world, a notion of sweeps within that world that creates situations or drives or needs. Within all those gusts you place characters, or perhaps (depending on the world) your characters are secreted by other forces.

Noir, the great invention of cinematic storytelling has this character. Cinematic storytelling is different than writing because you see the world with the people. With the written world you can separate them and the world always comes through some voice.

This is to say that starting with characters is risky in film. I think it never works, ever, by itself. These aren't particularly interesting characters. But if they were, you would need something else to season them: some dialog or situations.

It didn't work here.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

So very weird, yet so very wonderful

[I_Ailurophile · 9/10 · 13 December 2022]

Truly independent or not, nothing says "indie" quite like cinematography and production values that hover somewhere around "reality TV," "found footage," and bottom of the barrel, low-budget dreck, more closely approximating 2020 than 2002, from the likes of Uncork'd Entertainment. The plot here vaguely resembles the sort of ensemble picture we've seen in 'Love, actually,' or 2004's Crash,' where the lives of many characters somehow intersect - and that slant is rather emphasized by the large cast here with several big stars. Meanwhile, the story concocted between filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell and co-writer and producer Brandon Cole is a wonderfully weird blend of earnestly funny but very dry comedy, and stunningly dire drama that by all reason shouldn't be paired with comedy. To all this add experienced direction that is nevertheless deliberately sluggish and stilted, reflected in both the acting and the pacing of each scene, and light but slightly downcast music that mostly seems totally out of sorts with the content it accompanies. Suffice to say that '13 moons' is a strange, inventive viewing experience - but it's also far better and more entertaining than I could have hoped!

All the many characters and story threads are laid out quite separate from one another, but all gradually converging in the curiously uplifting downward spiral (or should I say, a curiously downbeat upward spiral?) of this one outlandish evening. As they do, the incredible cast are given a chance to inhabit far-flung characters with disparate, preposterous energy that scarcely seems like it could even all fit in one movie; among everyone else on hand, I swear I've never seen Peter Stormare have this much fun, and for others like Jennifer Beals and Pruitt Taylor Vince, I don't think I've ever seen them in a title this peculiar and outrageous. I'm less familiar with Karyn Parsons or Rose Rollins than the likes of Steve Buscemi or Peter Dinklage, but they give fabulously strong performances that tell me I need to acquaint myself with their body of work. Yet most unbelievable of all may be that for all the odd flavors the film swirls together - all these wild characterizations, the twisted scene writing and biting dialogue, the zigzagging corkscrew of the narrative - it's also more coherent and cohesive, and sincere, heartfelt, and touching, than many other features that are much more straightforward.

What is this movie? I can safely say I had no idea what to anticipate when I first sat to watch; '13 moons' has taken me completely by surprise. Consider any two elements of this production side by side, also including costume design, visual effects, stunts, and special effects, and the juxtaposition is consistently idiosyncratic, like two ideas that don't belong together. Yet not only does the extraordinary hodgepodge only enhance the story that already has such an eccentric, indescribable tone, but it works incredibly well. At a glance this looks like unprofessional mess; the assemblage of so many far-out characters and story beats seems like it couldn't possibly hold water. But nothing about this title is sloppy, or accidental; there's terrific intelligence, wit, and heart underlying all the offbeat notions herein, to the point that in no time at all I was hooked and totally in love with what the picture was doing. To be frank this is such a kooky flick that I'm not even entirely sure how I'd explain it to another person by way of making a recommendation; I'm confident many folks will enjoy this, but I don't know how to express that thought. All I can say is that whatever I thought I might get from a "comedy-drama" starring Steve Buscemi as a clown named Bananas, this certainly wasn't it, and I'm so very pleased that my expectations were wholly upended. I think most anyone could appreciate this in one form or another, but especially for those who like the side of cinema that's more off the beaten path, '13 moons' is a a blast, an underappreciated film that deserves far more recognition! Highly recommended!

horrible!

[cody_4343 · 15 July 2004]

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.