The greatest movie ever!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

"Valley of Bones" is a short, eye-catching title for a film that seeks to be action-adventure but goes wide and ends short of the mark. Not a bad idea for a movie, just a premise that could not be believably sustained by the author and director. Female paleontologist with a criminal past and a young son she is raising with her father gets wind of a potential dinosaur find on a remote ranch which the audience and one other character know to be a scene of drug-running violence. Apparently the drug cartel thinks it can profit from a heap of dug up fossils, too. So much is not how things are really done in the real world of pre-historic fieldwork. Fossils are not bones. Major finds are not worked by a couple of folks with shovels who can extract them over lunch. Most junkies are not good at taking down barflies. It's not the sketchy characters, it's the sketchy story and the plotholes and timing problems. BTW, Mark Margolis pays a visit from 'Better Call Saul'. Why? I'm thinking he lost a bet.

The film's main themes: digging up dinosaur bones, family issues, drug and money issues.The story-line is reasonably well thought out, the casting is pretty good, the acting is basically good, and even the action is handled fairly well.But there will be things that will bother you while viewing this film. Certain important people or events are passed over completely, and the ending is ruined by no less than three over-the-top scenes/moments. These were all completely unnecessary, and they placed a serious downer on the way I felt about the film as the credits began to roll.So is it worth the time needed to have a look? Well, that depends on what kind of film you are looking for. If you like small, low budget productions then yeah, take a look, as I found it reasonably enjoyable to watch. But if you're with a couple of friends and you've just finished watching Gladiator and are wondering what to watch next, I really couldn't recommend this. At the very least, watch this one first and the blockbuster second.

Dan Glaser's Valley of Bones is a compelling cinematic exploration of an interesting hybrid of genres. The kid in you watches wide-eyed at the mystique of paleontology and the "fortune and glory" that comes with uncovering dinosaur bones, while the thrill junkie in you is overcome with intrigue as a man who gets involved with the wrong people has to face the grueling consequences.The film has guts, both literally and figuratively. The director (Glaser) and lead actors (Molony and Reeser), don't pull any punches and therefore, thrash its audience perfectly through a roller-coaster ride of tension, heart, and unpredictability. Molony gives a stunning and nuanced performance as a desperate-addict-turned-drug-monster, mastering the characterization of a very complicated and sensitive man. Reeser confronts her role with grace as a struggling paleontologist and mother. Her performance was extremely refreshing, largely because this role would usually be given to a male actor. If this is a statement against the unsettling amount of leading men over women in Hollywood culture, then message received and hats off! Both leads were phenomenal.The team of VOB isn't concerned with adopting any tropes commonly used in cinema. They're creating their own rules, while respectfully staying within the general boundaries of coherent storytelling. In other words, I was constantly at the edge of my seat.Filmmakers seldom take the risk of brewing a mixing pot of conflicting genres because of their fear of having the end product come out half-baked. Thankfully, this is not the case for the VOB team. They tackled an unconventional concept and presented it fearlessly to a body of modern audiences who are usually accustomed to watered down, fluffy content produced by large Hollywood studios. The film can be ruthless and unforgiving, and I love love love that. I was frankly unprepared to be whipping around in my seat, and as an avid film goer, I can't think of anything I'd want more from a film. It is one of the small handful of films that I reflect on as an experience rather than a viewing. The VOB team is successfully paving the way for incoming filmmakers who want to make something new and different.Valley of Bones explores the dangers of running away from your problems, as well as a realization that sometimes the most valuable thing to uncover isn't what's buried among the bones, but rather, the importance of family. It is impeccably shot in the hauntingly beautiful Badlands, directed with tremendous care, and acted with a big, unflinching heart. It deserves everyone's eyes.

When purchasing a ticket to a movie with a title like "Valley of Bones," a viewer probably has at least a fairly general idea of what he might be getting into—likely a horror picture. And in buying a ticket to this new release, he wouldn't be wrong. At least not completely.And that's part of the trouble: "Valley of Bones" changes gears, and genres, so often that it seemingly can't make up its mind precisely what it is—a crime thriller, an adventure, a soap opera, a western, a horror picture, or a domestic drama. At one alarming point, the movie seems to be on the cusp of becoming a musical—the heroine and the villain, having bonded over shared stories of their pathetically inadequate parenting skills, sing a bedtime duet from different sides of the screen, as in "West Side Story." It's a nice enough moment—it just belongs in a vastly different picture.Briefly, "Valley of Bones" concerns the efforts of a disgraced paleontologist to regain her professional honor by recovering what promises to be the largest complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton ever located. The enormous fossil was inadvertently discovered in the North Dakota badlands by a lowlife, low-level drug dealer marked for extermination by a homicidal international narcotics kingpin known as El Papa. The dealer seeks to use his share of the profits from the dig to settle his enormous debts with El Papa, and buy back his life. In the unlikely meantime, both the paleontologist and the drug dealer seek to become better parents to their alienated youngsters.By the time the picture finally sorts out its various and diverse plot elements, it's already too late. In the end, "Valley of Bones" is sort of a half-baked, stoner version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," with the gold dust sought by the various characters in that 1948 classic replaced and substituted by either crack cocaine or dinosaur remains, depending on your perspective.Worse, the filmmakers apparently know about as much about paleontology as they do about story construction. While actual fossil recovery efforts as large as this continue for years and sometimes decades, the gigantic fossilized Tyrannosaur in this picture is unearthed and crated-up within a day or two. And although one of the beast's teeth is as long as your forearm, the entire skeleton is finally loaded onto the back of a large pickup truck. Instead of practicing actual scientific paleontology, these people behave as if they're digging up the remnants of last week's barbecue.Usually a motion picture as compelling and intelligent as "Valley of Bones" holds its gala premiere in the discount bin at Walmart. Presumably this picture made it as far as select cineplexes because the distributors noticed nothing much else going on during the first weekend of September, and decided to take a shot—a long, long shot.Judging by the same names listed over and over in the picture's credits, "Valley of Bones" was very much a family affair—writers Dan Glaser and Steven Molony are also the picture's director and co- star, respectively, and various other members of the cast and crew also pull double- and sometimes triple-duty.Your best option is much simpler—just stay home, save your money, and wait for a movie worth seeing. "Valley of Bones" is the kind of picture which sooner or later will find its way to the patented mockery of the new Netflix reboot of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."