13 Moons (2002)

Must See Movie...

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

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.

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.

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.

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.