Mystery Monday

     Why not start your week off with a good whodunit? Here are a few I've seen lately that are pretty good and not so good.

Eye See You
     On paper, you wonder why this movie was never released. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Charles S. Dutton (it's his birthday today), Kris Kristofferson, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Berenger, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick, Courtney B. Vance and Rance Howard.
     When you see it, you wonder how they got that many big names in the cast. You can't tell me that they tricked all of those guys. They must have been fighting each other to be the killers next victim just so they could leave the movie.
     It was originally titled D-Tox and is the bastard child that Universal wants nothing to do with. It got a European release but didn't show up state side until the magic of home video.
     The story line follows a killer who's targeting cops. Stallone plays a fed brought in on the case. When the killer takes out his girlfriend, he goes over the edge. After a suicide attempt, he checks into a special program set up for law enforcement.
     The facility is in the middle of Wyoming and of course, there's a white out. Oh yeah, and the killer isn't dead. Insert every cliche about secluded buildings here and in an hour you'll see the end credits.
     I can only recommend this to Stallone fans because it's almost like he knew this would never see the light of day so he just tries things you'd never see him do under a studio system.

La habitacion de Fermat (Fermat's Room)
     Written and directed by Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena, this mystery combines the best elements of a whodunit and a Poe revenge tale.
     Four mathematicians are invited to a dinner party by a mysterious host. Each a stranger to the other and assigned famous alias' by their host, they find themselves trapped in a room that gets smaller with every puzzle they don't solve in time. This movie is definitely worth your time.

Mystery Street
     This 1950 film noir stars Ricardo Montalban as a police detective who has to rely on forensic medicine to identify a skeleton. Once it's discovered she was murdered, he must track down a killer.
     As an early study of forensics and an interesting mystery to boot, this movie works on a lot of levels. You should check this one out.

One For The Money (2012)
      If more chick flicks were like this, they probably wouldn't get such a bad rap. Based on Janet Evanovich's novel (the first of 18, anybody else see a sequel in the works?), the story follows a woman as she enters the male dominated field of bounty hunting.
     The first person she goes after is a former acquaintance who's now a cop on the run. He's trying to clear his name and she just wants to collect the money on his bond.
     It's well cast. Katherine Heigl even attempts to act in this movie which is refreshing after watching her go through the motions of being "Katherine Heigl" for the last 10 years. I would say it's well worth a look.

Stephen King's Bag Of Bones
     Talk about a waste of potential. I do have to admit to enjoying the book and when I heard that it was a four hour mini-series, it seemed like a no brainer. They'd have to clean up the language a little for television and tighten up a few scenes but other wise, it could be worth watching.
     I'm not sure what Matt Venne was thinking of while he wrote the screenplay but it's pretty obvious he never read the book. It's like he walked in half way through and overheard somebody talking about the book.
     The best scene in the movie comes when Pierce Brosnan sits down to write after his wife passes. That was a pretty honest scene. Everything else just seemed to happen because it needs to happen or out of convenience. Do yourself a favor and read the book, leave the movie alone.