Truth be told, I did not have the time of my life. But then I always thought the first Dirty Dancing a tad overrated. Not really a sequel so much as a rewrite, this version uses the title and features one character in the same occupation as in the 1987 Jennifer Grey-Patrick Swayze vehicle. More puzzling than the question of why wait 17 years to make this movie is why transport it to the late ‘50s pre-revolutionary Cuba that has already been depicted in such films as The Godfather, Part II, Cuba, and Havana. And none of this is to say that Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is bad, it is just insignificant. (more…)

Joe’s Review
The best reason I can give you to see this movie is summed up in two words: Meg Ryan. After years of playing pixie-like, spunky girls in her movies, she’s finally found some grit and gravity to embody a real woman struggling to be taken seriously in a “man’s world.” This film, very loosely based on the biography of the first successful female boxing manager, has given Ryan a coming out showcase of sorts for her adult on-screen persona. It is a welcome arrival that helps to lift the film just above mediocrity. (more…)

Bill’s Review
Far too often, and for reasons inexplicable, a movie is preceded by the title card with some variant of “based on a true story.” As the numerous authors who have analyzed history as depicted by the motion picture have written, there is rarely more than a tangential relationship of fact to fiction. Such is also the case with the myriad “true stories” which make their way to the multiplex. The truth is changed for any number of reasons including the truth is boring (although that does not seem to stop screenwriters most other times), the need to compact time, no permission from secondary persons, the writer is a lazy idiot who does not know the true story, etc. But least forgivable are those cases where the screenwriter tarts up the truth with movie clichés and ends up with a worse story. And this brings us to Against the Ropes… (more…)

Welcome to Mooseport

Directed by Donald Petrie

Opening nationwide 2/20/2004

2 *

Having never watched Ray Romano’s show Everybody Loves Raymond, I do not know if his television work is of the same level as his mediocre film starring debut in Welcome to Mooseport, but I also do not care.

The star vehicle for the big television star is a movie that is the sort of easily defined one sentence high concept formula Hollywood is so fond of. Here goes: A former president of the United States moves to a small town in Maine and runs for mayor… and hilarity ensues. OK, I am lying about that last part. But it hardly seems worth hiring Gene Hackman for hackwork like this (and speaking of mediocrity, I seem to be channeling Gene Shalit).

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My Flesh and Blood

Directed by Jonathan Karsh

Opening exclusively at the E Street Cinema 2/20/2004

3.5 *

Those awaiting Mel Gibson’s cinematic testament The Passion of the Christ this Friday can see a more earthly proof of God’s love and existence in My Flesh and Blood, one of the most emotionally heartfelt and wrenching movies that this reviewer has ever seen.

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