"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.

Single mother, starving, paleontologist Dr. Anna Olsen (Autumn Reeser),is down on her luck. She is estranged from her son (Mason Mahay). She is offered a chance at a big find. She goes there with her son and Uncle Nate (Rhys Coiro). The issue is that junkie Wes McCoy (Steven Molony) discovered the location. He owes the cartel who want their money, or else.

To be honest, I was more interested in the bones than the drama and limited action. This is a me-too film with forced excitement. It is movie you will forget once you see the next one.

Guide: F-word. Stripper Nudity (Kelly Cossette).

Dingy, violent little number, about a paleontologist ( recently out of prison, and trying to redeem herself, obligatorily ) who receives a tip from a meth junkie ( with vaguely defined ties to, and undefined debt to, a drug cartel who is threatening his family ) about a tyrannosaurus Rex buried on a desolate plot of land in North Dakota, which could potentially be worth a fortune.

Characters with overly cluttered backgrounds people this well photographed drama/ Western/ horror thriller, which never climaxes, so much as it just stops, with no resolution to any of its numerous plot lines. However, if we were to take out the overly complex character backgrounds, all we would be left with is the odd story of an archaeological dig, with the vaguely defined prize going to the undefined highest bidder, and again, some good cinematography, making good use of the bleak North Dakota land.

This is another film ( similar to The Gracefield Incident, from a month or two ago ) which was filmed several years ago ( in this case, this was filmed from 5 October 2015 - 2 November 2015 ) and sat unreleased until its abrupt, barely advertised limited release ( in September 2017 ) and has barely any information on its IMDb page, or Wikipedia page, and doesn't have a Boxofficemojo page, and didn't get a Thursday night preview screening. I saw a trailer for this one single time, about a week ago, and there was a standee in the cinema lobby, and apparently that was all of the promotion this received.

Edit: it now has a Boxofficemojo page, and this opened in a limited release, on only three hundred screens, bringing in $164.738, placing it at number 44 for opening weekend. The following week, it plummeted from 300 screens down to only 13, and from 44th down to 105th place.